We won’t let the pressure let up on Kneecap

You will recall that the provocatively-named Northern Irish hip hop band, Kneecap, appeared 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.”

We submitted a complaint to Counter Terrorism Police, which is investigating.

They were also revealed in recent days to have said in November 2023: “The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP.”

The band has issued a defiant statement purporting to be an apology.

We have been clear that concert-goers must be allowed to enjoy live performances without worrying about whether they may be subjected to open support for proscribed terrorist organisations that have openly declared it their mission to murder Jews.

Accordingly, we have written to a number of venues and festivals to cancel. Eden Sessions and Plymouth Pavilions have cancelled concerts, as have numerous venues in Germany. We hope that more will follow.

We are not alone in our concern.

Henry Schachter BEM – whose parents were murdered in the Holocaust and who only survived thanks to the courage of a Christian family who hid him – has, like us, written to Glastonbury.

He said: “It is highly inappropriate for Glastonbury festival to allow such an entity to perform at the UK’s largest music festival. If the performance goes ahead, that would be a disgrace.”

We are yet to hear from Glastonbury, which is coming under pressure from political figures as well. The silence from the organisers of the world-renowned festival is shameful.

We also asked the British public what they think about Kneecap, and whether its concerts should be cancelled. Watch the full video here.

For an anti-establishment band that hates the United Kingdom, Kneecap also seem to have received an awful lot of public funding from the British state.

What does it say about Government grants, National Lottery funding and the British Film Institute that such controversial groups are reportedly awarded in excess of £1.5 million pounds over the years?

We have also led the media coverage and analysis of the Kneecap controversy as it relates to antisemitism.

The Hamas lawyers

Today, we have reported Fahad Ansari to the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

Mr Ansari is the Director and Principal Solicitor at Riverway Law, the law firm representing the terrorist group Hamas in its desperate bid to get the group deproscribed in the UK.

According to posts on Mr Ansari’s social media accounts, he seems to find a bulldozer breaching the border fence between Gaza and Israel on 7th October to be “one of the most iconic, hopeful images of our time”, hails Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin as a “hero”, and, referring to “the heroic Palestinian resistance”, hopes that “every one of their bullets hit their targets”.

Another post read: “At this point, Israel could literally set up gas chambers for Palestinians during Ramadan and the genocide enablers in the Western media will be shouting ‘What about Hamas?’ and crying antisemitism if anyone draws a comparison with the Holocaust. Make no mistake, if these people were alive in the 40s, they would have sided with the Nazis.”

This rhetoric is stomach-churning and brings the legal profession into disrepute.

It is ludicrous that someone with views like these is permitted to practise law in Britain. The SRA must urgently open an investigation into Mr Ansari.

Meanwhile, one of the barristers representing Hamas says that Hamas’ call to “end Israel” — the world’s only Jewish state — is really just “a call for peace. It’s a call for a democratic state.”

Not only is Mr Magennis’ argument absurd, it is also deeply insulting to Jewish people in general and to the victims of Hamas’ barbaric attack on southern Israel on 7th October 2023 in particular. When terrorists murdered around 1,200 people, took over 250 hostages, and committed horrific acts of sexual violence, they were not “calling for peace” — they were carrying out the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

It is shocking that someone like Mr Magennis is a practicing barrister in the UK.

What is a Zionist?

This week, we celebrated Yom Haatzmaut, which marks the founding of Israel, the world’s only Jewish state.

According to our polling, eight in ten British Jews identify as Zionists, so the occasion resonates with most Jews in this country.

But what is a Zionist? And for that matter, what is an anti-Zionist? Watch here to find out.

A wake-up call for Western academia

“No other group was constantly told that their history was a sham, that they or their co-religionists or co-ethnics were supremacists and oppressors, and that they had no right to the protections offered by anti-bias norms. Many Jewish students told us they feel like objects of suspicion.”

The report on antisemitism released this week by Harvard University is absolutely damning.

It details, case by case, how its campus became a hostile environment for Jews and just how low what was once one of the West’s premier institutions of learning has sunk.

Unvarnished antisemitism and victimisation of Jews by students and faculty, privileging of intimidatory protests over the rights of Jewish students, instances of downplaying the Holocaust and 7th October, litmus tests for Jews and more. The report is a catalogue of shameful incidents and testimony. It vindicates the brave Jewish students and faculty who have been blowing the whistle and fighting for their basic rights for the past year and a half.

This is a wake-up call for academia across Western society.

Universities have never been immune to antisemitism – indeed there have been eras when they have been incubators of it. Sadly, we are living through just such a time.

Institutions of higher learning around the world, including in the UK, must urgently take heed.

Educating against antisemitism

Harvard – like so many campuses in Britain – demonstrates why we cannot simply wait until students get to university to educate about antisemitism.

That is why we educate all ages – including pupils and, just as importantly, their teachers.

For example, we recently delivered our ‘Understanding Antisemitism’ course to Thomas’ Battersea, a preparatory school in south London that educates 600 boys and girls between the ages of four and thirteen.

Our training was the core component of the school’s all-staff INSET Day, delivered at the request of the headteacher and attended by approximately 100 staff members.

By equipping educators with the tools to recognise, understand and challenge antisemitism, we are supporting teachers in the broader fight against anti-Jewish hate in our society and enabling them to share these insights with their pupils.

If you would like to arrange a training session for your organisation or community, please e-mail us at [email protected].

Do you want to take a step forward in the fight against antisemitism?

This year, you can run in the Maccabi GB Community Fun Run on behalf of Campaign Against Antisemitism!

If you plan to be in London on Sunday 22nd June, sign up now, get sponsored and get fit!

As we celebrated the founding and endurance of the world’s only Jewish state this past week, we have been reminded of how Zionism means so much to so many British Jews.

Israel occupies such a central part of the identity of so many Jewish people and represents the last refuge from antisemitism.

Kneecap and others might wish to bear this in mind when they reflect on why their words are so insulting, not to mention dangerous, for British Jews.