We will privately prosecute Kneecap if necessary

The provocatively-named Northern Irish hip hop band, Kneecap, appears to have given its support to Hamas and Hizballah last November in London at their concert at the O2 Forum Kentish Town.

One member, draped in a Hizballah flag, shouted to the crowd, “Up Hamas, up Hizballah.” This is the emblem of a terrorist group committed to the extermination of Jews.

Kneecap’s onstage antics aren’t just childish — they’re reckless and incendiary.

This rhetoric and conduct goes well beyond performance art.

We have written to Glastonbury and other festivals to demand that Kneecap be dropped from their line-ups. Any venue that hosts them risks sending a message that hate has a place on the stage, and that Jews are not welcome.

Labour Member of Parliament for Hemel Hempstead, David Taylor, has also written to Glastonbury Festival, for which we are grateful.

Moreover, Hamas and Hizballah are both proscribed terrorist organisations in the UK.

We have reported Kneecap to Counter Terrorism Police, which is now reviewing footage of the concert, and instructed our lawyers to prepare for a private prosecution if necessary.

Yom HaShoah

Last Thursday was Yom HaShoah v’HaGevurah (The Day of the Holocaust and the Heroism), when we remembered the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust and paid tribute to the courage of the survivors, the bravery of the rescuers and the sacrifice of the liberators.

We also took the opportunity of Yom HaShoah to ask members of the British public about the Holocaust. Watch the full video here.

A problem in our supermarkets

We are hearing from many of you about kosher and Israeli-sourced supermarket produce being vandalised.

The fact that British Jews are unable to buy kosher food without facing damage caused by anti-Israel extremists is completely unacceptable. It is a clear demonstration of how anti-Israel obsessiveness seeks to threaten the well-being of Jews in this country.

Is it any wonder that, according to polling we released this year, more than four-fifths (84%) of British Jews agree that boycotts of Israeli artists, academics or businesses selling Israeli products constitute intimidation?

Generally, the supermarkets are unaware of these incidents and do not tolerate them, so please let a manager know and they will rectify the situation. If they fail to do so, please e-mail us with information at [email protected].

We recently examined the issue of boycotts, their history and their impact on Jewish communities today. You can watch here.

Campaign Against Antisemitism calls for more bans on terror groups while battling to safeguard existing ones

We recently published our submission to the Foreign Affairs Committee, following calls for evidence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

We made the following recommendations to the Committee:

• The Government should treat Hamas as an illegitimate entity and ensure that any policy that it pursues ultimately aims towards a world in which Hamas does not exist. It would be unconscionable for the British Government to risk appearing to endorse a group that is proscribed in the UK as a respectable partner abroad.
• The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) must make greater efforts to ensure the safe and swift return of all of the remaining hostages. This must be undertaken in a way that does not legitimise or empower Hamas, especially through pressure on Iran, Qatar and Egypt, all of which have relations with and leverage over Hamas.
• All of the organisations that were involved in the 7th October 2023 attack must be proscribed in full under the Terrorism Act 2000.
• Hamas is an offshoot of the Society of the Muslim Brothers, popularly known as the Muslim Brotherhood. This organisation is proscribed in a number of countries, and the UK should follow suit.
• Ansar Allah (the Houthis) is a terror group backed by Iran with a long history of violent attacks in a number of different countries, and whose slogan is “Death to America, Death to Israel, Damn the Jews.” The Houthis must be proscribed in full under the Terrorism Act 2000.
• The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the US, Canada, Israel, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Britain must finally follow suit, in fulfilment of Labour’s pre-election pledge.
• Any British funding to United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) must be carefully vetted to ensure that it does not directly or indirectly benefit terrorist organisations or promote antisemitism, in addition to rigorous safeguards against corruption. The FCDO must disclose whether legal advice was sought or obtained in relation to the decision to resume funding to UNRWA, and must publish a summary of the legal advice. British Jews in particular have a clear and significant interest in understanding how the British Government is guaranteeing that funds to UNRWA are not being used to directly or indirectly benefit terrorist organisations or promote antisemitism.

Read the full submission here.

Elsewhere in the world, Jordan has announced a ban on the Muslim Brotherhood.

Our representative polling shows that more than four-fifths (85%) of British Jews think that the British Government should proscribe the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group.

This organisation is proscribed in a number of countries, now including Jordan, where the Interior Minister has announced on television that membership of the Brotherhood has been prohibited and all of its offices in the Kingdom have been closed.

The UK should follow suit and proscribe the Muslim Brotherhood now.

Even while we are calling for further proscriptions under the Terrorism Act 2000, we are battling to safeguard existing ones.

We have now written a detailed legal letter to Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, urging her to dismiss the application to deproscribe Hamas.

The ‘Hamas case’ is 500 pages of propaganda dressed up as law and a bad-faith attempt to mainstream genocidal antisemitism.

To remove Hamas from the UK’s list of proscribed terrorist organisations would not only embolden a group that has proudly claimed responsibility for the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, but would also endanger the safety and wellbeing of Jewish communities in the United Kingdom.

The Home Secretary must act now to reassure the Jewish community and the wider public that support and funding for Hamas will remain illegal in Britain.

A series of bad appointments

It has been announced that Baroness Gohir is to serve as a member of the Government’s new Working Group on Anti-Muslim Hatred/Islamophobia Definition.

Baroness Gohir is a crossbench peer in the House of Lords and the Chief Executive Officer of Muslim Women’s Network UK.

In 2022, we wrote to the Cabinet Office’s Honours Forfeiture Committee regarding several posts published on Baroness Gohir’s social media. We still have not received a decision from the Committee on the status of her OBE.

In 2014, a post on her X profile read: “The hold Israel has over world leaders including Muslim ones is extraordinary that they continue to murder Palestinians and get away with it.”

Another post read: “It’s a shame that media does not highlight all those Jews who are against the Israeli aggression against Palestinians even in Israel.”

Baroness Gohir’s social media is riddled with rhetoric that breaches the International Definition of Antisemitism. She has no place on a Government committee that is supposed to tackle hatred.

You can’t fight bigotry with bigotry. There is an irony that someone who has breached one Government definition is chosen to work on another: is the Government even serious about these definitions?

We have written to Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Angela Rayner.

Clearly this appointment must be rescinded.

At the United Nations, Francesca Albanese has been reappointed as Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This decision is disgraceful and once again demonstrates the UN’s disdain for Jewish people and the Jewish state.

What does it say about the United Nations that it reappoints an official who compares Israel to the Nazis and talks about the “Jewish lobby”?

How hypocritical of all the national governments who claim to stand against antisemitism but simply stand by when someone like this is rewarded for their vitriol.

Shameful.

BBC big beasts tell us what they really think

“He was the son of a Hamas official. Isn’t that a problem?”
“I don’t think so, no.”

Gary Lineker has taken off the mask.

He feels that the BBC never should have removed its so-called documentary, Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, from iPlayer, even after it was revealed that the narrator was the son of a Hamas member. In fact, he sees no issue with it whatsoever.

Even BBC Chair Dr Samir Shah said that the fact that this film was aired was “a dagger to the heart of the BBC’s claim to be impartial and to be trustworthy.”

Mr Lineker has revealed his true feelings, and people can see him now for who he really is. Watch his shameful interview here.

Former BBC presenter Jonathan Dimbleby recently victim-blamed the Jewish community during a podcast interview.

He made the abhorrent claim that “One of the consequences of not being critical of the government of Israel today is that it exacerbates that antisemitism.”

Antisemitism is fueled by those who hate Jews, not by Jews themselves, who Mr Dimbleby seems to think are obligated to denounce Israel’s leadership.

To suggest that antisemitism is somehow worsened because Jewish people aren’t vocally opposing Israel absolves antisemites of their despicable actions, and is itself a breach of the International Definition of Antisemitism.

When a Jewish schoolboy is assaulted outside his school as his attackers yell “Free Palestine”, it isn’t because Jews haven’t spoken out on Israel.

This kind of rhetoric is commonplace in vociferous anti-Israel circles. It can hardly escape notice that it now also comes from a veteran former BBC broadcaster. Every other day, the public gets more and more of a sense of how those at the BBC feel about Jews.

Shame on you, Mr Dimbleby.

The BBC goes from one embarrassment to another. Here is its response to our complaint that it did not mention that a Gazan whom it profiled was the nephew of a senior terrorist from a group involved in the 7th October massacre:

“We give careful consideration to all aspects of our reporting to ensure that we have been providing our readers with accurate and duly impartial information, in line with the BBC editorial guidelines.”

So when the BBC profiled Alaa Abu Hilal, the nephew of a major now-deceased terrorist, and didn’t tell readers about his familial connections to that terror group, that was in line with its editorial guidelines?

Then those guidelines aren’t fit for purpose.

Reports indicate that on 9th October 2023, just two days after the barbaric Hamas-led attack on Israel, a post on Alaa Abu Hilal’s Facebook account mourned the death of his terrorist uncle, Rafat Harb Hussein Abu Hilal. Rafat Harb Hussein Abu Hilal was the head of the military section of the ‘Popular Resistance Committees’, a group heavily involved in the attack.

If the BBC’s editorial guidelines advise its journalists to omit information that links its subjects to an antisemitic terror group, then how can the BBC’s reporting be trusted?

Our national treasure has become a national embarrassment.

The TV licence fee must be suspended pending an independent investigation into BBC bias. If you have not already, sign our petition now.

As the Jewish world prepares to mark Yom HaZikaron this week, we remember the victims of decades of antisemitic terror attacks in Israel, culminating in 7th October 2023.

As Hamas attempts to get itself deprocribed in the UK, we will continue do whatever it takes to stop that happening — and to get other groups proscribed who mean Jews harm.

It is the least that we can do to honour the memory of the victims.

May their memory be a blessing.