Correspondence with the government’s Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation
Correspondence with the government’s Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation
The current Independent Reviewer, Jonathan Hall KC, said in a public speech that he was minded to recommend banning or severely curtailing the Palestinian protest marches because he thinks they incite violence against Jews. We entered into a lengthy correspondence with him, arguing that there was no evidence of such an effect, and considerable evidence that it is extremely unlikely. We refuted every specific claim he made to us. Furthermore, a ban would increase, rather than decrease, the likelihood of such an effect.
Basically, his guiding assumption seems to be that Zionism is an essential part of being Jewish, so that, for him, anti-Zionism is equivalent to antisemitism and criticism of Zionism is criticism of Jews, qua Jews. We provided incontrovertible proof of the falsity of that assumption.
In a couple of cases he he indicated he accepted our argument. He remained inscrutable in all the other cases, except for saying we would have to agree to disagree on what constitutes “contemporary manifestations” of antisemitism. We now wait to see whether he makes a recommendation, and if so, for what.
The series of our letters and his responding emails
arch of Return at the Gaza border, and the annual Nakba Day demonstration. Yet the high correlation between spikes in people killed in the conflict and spikes in incidents here continued month after month, despite the absence of protests here except for those short periods.
1st JJP letter
Jonathan Hall KC 22 June 2026
Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation
Dear Mr. Hall,
We are Jews for Justice for Palestinians. With 2,200 signatories and more than 660 supporters, we are the largest Jewish peace group in the UK or Europe. You can see the range of our advocacy work on our website, JFJFP.com. We are writing in response to your email of 20 May to Campain, concerning antisemitic incidents and the Palestinian protest marches. We were one of the signatories of Campain’s letter but we aren’t a member of the Campain group.
We agree with you that “None of this is easy”. The right to protest against perceived injustice is fundamental in our society, and Palestinian protest is part of that. But increased antisemitism and the anxiety it causes are real enough. We would very much like to meet you to discuss the issue.
However, we believe your focus on the Palestinian support protest marches and the physical antisemitic attacks is too narrow, and your time frame of post 7 October 2023 is too short. That narrow focus prevents you from from considering the influence of the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself (to express it in international relations terms), or the illegal and oppressive Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and the violence that it engenders (to express it in historical terms), on the big, long-term increase in antisemitic incidents of all kinds here.
Physical attacks are a very small proportion of the antisemitic incidents. The Community Security Trust (CST) 2025 Antisemitic Incidents Report, shows they comprise 5% of the total, whereas antisemitic speech (verbal, written, social media, graffiti, etc.) comprises 83%. There is CST data over 25 years covering all recorded incidents here. There is B’tselem and OCHA (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) data covering deaths in the conflict, both Palestinian and Israeli, also over 25 years. All of this data should be used to inform policy reactions to the increasing number of antisemitic incidents.
Antisemitic incidents have increased gradually but hugely since 2000. The logical observation is that both the increasing numbers of antisemitic incidents and the marches (and the slogans) are responses to the conflict. The observation is borne out by plotting the data on the number of antisemitic incidents of all kinds in the UK against the number of people killed in the conflict, by month, since 2000. There is a very high positive correlation between spikes in numbers killed and spikes in incidents here, during the whole period. Moreover, the trend level of incidents has risen nearly 10-fold in the 25 years. In the absence of any other evidence, it is safe to say the increase in incidents is caused cumulatively by the continuing conflict. Please find attached our spreadsheet of charts showing the high positive correlation.
Further proof that the spikes in antisemitic incidents here are due to spikes in deaths in the conflict, and not to protests here, is that there were only sporadic protests before October 2023, i.e. during each of the five brief Israeli attacks on Gaza, the 18-month long unarmed M
The reasons for the high correlation are not hard to find. First, the conflict has been well reported for years in both mainstream media and social media. Second, Israel is inevitably associated with Jews because Israeli governments and the big Jewish communal organizations foster that association. Third, a long series of United Nations Security Council Resolutions, International Court rulings and human rights NGO reports have established beyond reasonable doubt the illegality and oppressiveness of the Israeli occupation and settlement project. We expect you are aware of all this, but we will gladly provide ample evidence of it if you wish.
Saying that what Israel does shouldn’t be associated with Jews in the UK, or elsewhere in the diaspora, is a truism, but it doesn’t change the association created by Israeli leaders and the big communal organisations. It would be surprising if people did not associate Jews with Israel.
In the light of all the evidence, applying the precautionary principle to ban or severely limit Palestinian protest marches because they might foment antisemitic incidents is misguided. There might conceivably be a feedback loop from the marches to antisemitic incidents, but that could only be minor compared to the basic cumulative cause in the conflict itself. Moreover, applying the precautionary principle requires ‘good reason’ for believing harm would result from the activity in question, and that requires empirical evidence. We know of no such evidence, but if you have some, we would be grateful if you would tell us.
Banning would in fact be counterproductive. People would resent being prohibited from protesting against the injustice they feel strongly about. Knowing that the big Jewish communal organisations have been campaigning for a ban, some would also blame “the Jews” for it. That would increase the feelings of antisemitism and the desire to express it in other ways. It would create incidents that might never have occurred.
Your email assumes that both Jews and Israel are being demonised, as if they are the same thing. They are different, and must be looked at differently:
You haven’t defined what you think is demonising Jews, so we don’t know whether you mean certain shouted slogans and placards, or all slogans and placards, or the marches themselves. We would be grateful if you would say exactly what you mean so we can respond to it.
JFJFP is part of the Jewish Bloc which has taken part in every march since 7 October 2023. We have never seen antisemitic placards or incitement to violence. If any such placards were to appear, we are confident the stewards would immediately take them down.
We cannot see how the marches demonise Israel. Protesting against Israel’s well-documented oppression of the Palestinians is not demonisation. It is a principled response to what Israel has done and continues to do to Palestinians. It does not have to be temperate to be justified.
We hope to hear from you shortly to arrange a meeting
Yours sincerely,
Arthur Goodman
Parliamentary and Diplomatic Officer
Hall’s reply, 23 June 2026
Dear Arthur
Many thanks for your email and attachments. I won’t take up your kind offer of a meeting because I’m not really into being lobbied and I believe the focus of our respective roles is different. If I understand the point of your letter, it makes the point that domestic antisemitic incidents are more likely caused by the conflict in Israel/Palestine than by pro-Gaza protests, with perhaps the implication that violent conflict, based on historic injustice, is a reason for violent incidents here and that therefore foreign policy solutions are needed. My focus is on domestic legislation for the purposes of domestic national security. I appreciate that there are important points in your letter – your challenge to my precautionary approach among them, although I suspect we will have to agree to disagree on whether some of the marchers and their placards have demonised both Israel and Israelis (to my mind, it is clear they have). Finally, you should look out for Lord Ken Macdonald’s report on protest and hate crime, as he is looking at the core laws here. I’ve been consistent that terrorism laws should not be expanded for policing protests.
Best wishes Jonathan
JJP’s 2nd letter
Jonathan Hall KC
6 July 2026
Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation
Dear Jonathan,
Thank you for your prompt reply.
We appreciate your acknowledgment of the sense of some of our arguments, particularly on the issue of using the precautionary principle regarding the protests.
However, we would also like to respond to some of your other points.
Based on the evidence, we believe the increase in antisemitic incidents of all kinds, including violence, is due to the long conflict, not to the protest marches. We note that you haven’t asked us to provide the evidence we offered of how the Israeli government and the major Jewish communal organisations foster the association of Jews with Israel, or the illegality and oppressiveness of the Israeli occupation, so we remain confidant that you don’t doubt the accuracy of what we said.
You suggest, correctly, that our locus is on Israel and Palestine (campaigning for Palestinian rights, ending the occupation and allowing the Palestinians to exercise their right to self-determination), whereas yours is on domestic legislation affecting security in the UK.
However, our loci overlap in the area we are discussing on two issues: First is the right to protest in support of Palestinian rights. Second is the abhorrent increase in antisemitism of all kinds, from social media tweets to violent attacks. The attacks, although rare, are devastating. The anxiety they cause resonates throughout the Jewish community. Therefore, we want to see the issue dealt with rationally, so the antisemitism is reduced as much as possible, and most of all, not exacerbated by overzealous restrictions on free speech or protesting.
We note that you say “some of the marchers and their placards have demonised both Israel and Israelis”. This answers the question we asked at the end of our previous letter and narrows the area of contention between us, perhaps significantly, since you are concerned only with certain slogans and placards. Would you now tell us what they are so we can consider them?
Finally, you (very politely) declined our offer to meet, and later observed that we will probably disagree on the nature of some of the marchers and their placards. The problem with leaving it like that is it denies the possibility of learning, either you from us or us from you.
So to sum up, we hope you will tell us which placards you have in mind, and will reconsider meeting us.
Yours sincerely,
Arthur Goodman
Diplomatic and Parliamentary Officer
Hall’s reply, 6 July 2026
Thanks – got it.
Re placards, have a little search online and let me know what you find or don’t find!
Best wishes Jonathan”
JJP’s third letter
17 July 2026
Dear Jonathan,
Further to my email of 8 July, I have now looked thoroughly through videos of marches. I’ve also looked at your Bondi Beach talk at Policy Exchange, as you suggested in your reply to Campain. We have also commissioned a professional photographer to systematically photograph groups of marchers in today’s march in order to create a record of the placard/banners seen and the frequency with which each one is seen.
A. Placards on the Palestinian marches
I watched seven videos and three still images, dating from October 2023 to May 2026. This includes three in 2026 which were the only ones I could find in 2026. I’ve set down the text of all the placards that could be read on the attached document. There are a few that couldn’t be read because they were filmed from the side or were obscured in some way, but I’ve got most of them.
My first impression is of a palpable anger at Israel and what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. Most placards were about what Israel does. There were also a few calling Keir Starmer or the UK government to account for still arming Israel or not doing enough to stop Israel. “Stop bombing Gaza”, “Hands off Gaza“, “Gaza, Stop the Genocide”, “End Israeli state terror” and “Stop arming Israel” are examples.
My second impression, confirmed on careful checking, is that the words “Jew” and “Zionist”, or any variation thereof, were not used even once. “Israeli” was used only once, in “End Israeli state terror”, which refers to the action of the state of Israel, not to Israelis as a group of people. Nor was there any placard holding Israel responsible for the ills of the world, only for what Israel actually does. Therefore, there was no antisemitism in the placards since they were aimed at the state of Israel, not at Jews. and only aimed at the state for what it does.
The marchers’ anger at Israel is justified by Israel’s well documented, well reported, heinous behaviour. Therefore, we cannot see how they demonise Israel. Nor can they be said to demonise Israelis, since no placard used the word “Israeli” to mean Israelis as people.
The most common placard was From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, or sometimes only the first phrase. Although the most common, it was probably less than 10% of the total.
B. The lessons of Bondi Beach, delivered at Policy Exchange, 13/1/26
On carefully reading the transcript, I have a number of comments.
(1) You cited several suspect placards or slogans as being likely to incite violence against Jews, or worse, intended to do so. I saw some of them in my search but did not see others, which makes me think those others are either very rare or perhaps even notional, i. e. not actually seen by anyone but a kind of urban myth created by one conversation between Jews anxious about the marches, leading to another and so on.
(2) In considering what a placard or slogan might mean to people seeing or hearing it, you have both to parse the words for their literal meaning and also consider how the words have actually, regularly been used. The meaning could therefore be ambiguous. However, the actual use has to be interpreted as it would normally be understood, not stretched beyond that.
(3) I’ve listed the placards/slogans that you cited:
(3a) “Globalise the Intifada” I did not see this. The literal meaning of the Arabic word Intifada is uprising or resistance against oppression, without specifying whether peaceful or violent. In the Palestinian context, it has been used to describe both the First Intifada, which was largely civil disobedience and demonstrations, and the armed Second Intifada, which was largely attacks on Israeli civilians and the IDF.
Therefore, globalising the intifada could be taken to mean resisting the Israeli occupation in all countries by peaceful means such as the protest marches, writing letters to MPs, writing letters to the editor, and BDS. It could also mean resisting the Israeli occupation in all countries by attacking Israeli government institutions such as embassies or trade missions. Because the long Israeli oppression of Palestinians has so increased the level of antisemitism, some people could also take it to mean attacking Jewish institutions, such as synagogues, as proxies for Israel.
However, the question of its meaning is irrelevant if the placard has never or very rarely been seen.
(3b) “Death to the IDF” I did not see this. However, a minority if my colleagues have heard it chanted at marches, but only rarely. It has never been reported as a common feature of marches. It only gained notoriety because it was chanted by a music group, Bob Vylan, at a Glastonbury Festival.
The precise reference is to the IDF as an organisation, which would devolve to IDF bases or units such as patrols. It could also reasonably be taken to include individuals in IDF uniform. However, the IDF exists solely in Israel and the OPT. Therefore, we cannot see an inference of inciting killing people here in the UK. Nor can the chant be seen as antisemitic as it refers exclusively to the IDF, not to Jews or even to all Israelis.
The chant is undeniably harsh, but we need to remember that the IDF has practiced deliberate, disproportionate reprisal killing of Palestinian civilians since at least least 2008, when the practice was publicly acknowledged as the Dahiya Doctrine. It is understandable that a desire for revenge against the IDF has been created.
(3c) ”From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” You only cited the first phrase, but we assume you meant the whole thing.
The meaning is ambiguous because freedom for Palestinians has been interpreted, and campaigned for, in different ways. However, the number of reasonable interpretations is limited. The call could mean an independent Palestinian state in all the occupied territories plus the elimination of all racial discrimination against the Palestinian citizens of Israel; or a single democratic, one man -one vote state; or a single bi-national state with equal rights for both communities; or a confederation of two states.
Nothing in the slogan, however, implies anything at all about how the vision is to be realised. The single democratic, one man-one vote vision contains no implication of expelling or harming Jewish Israelis. The implication is that they would lose their guaranteed dominant position. Some Jewish people may see that as a threat, but that doesn’t make it so.
(3d) “Clean the world of Zionists, or some such.” This is basically the same as “Zionists off our streets”, cited in the joint BOD/JLC/CST/UJS pamphlet After the Heaton Park Attack, as one of four examples they consider hate speech. We agree this one is hate speech because it can’t be assumed that all, or even most, self-identifying Zionists are genocidaires who support Israel’s war on Gaza. Many will be liberal Zionists who support the existence of Israel within the 1967 borders but hate what Israel does. It would also, almost certainly, be illegal because it would imply violence in order to force the “Zionists” off the streets should they decline to move voluntarily.
However, I did not see this or anything remotely like it. As I said before, the words “Zionist” or “Zionism” did not appear at all. As with “Globalise the Intifada”, the question of its meaning is irrelevant if the placard has never or very rarely been seen.
(3e) “Khayber kyahber ya yahud”. This is also cited in After the Heaton Park Attack. We agree it is clearly antisemitic hate speech because it celebrates killing of Jews. It should also be illegal because it is an incitement to murder.
I did not see this or anything like it. However, it was shouted out at protests at least twice – in May 2021 and October 2023. However, as far as we are aware, there is no record of it being shouted at a protest since October 2023.
In both cases, the perpetrators were arrested and prosecuted, but were acquitted by the jury. The acquittals are cause for concern. Your comment on the first case was that prosecutions for unusual offences are sometimes difficult until prosecutors and juries become familiar with them. (The second acquittal occurred after your speech.) We hope you are proved right. Two acquittals can be an aberration but more would cause us all to think very hard about how Israel’s relentlessly heinous behaviour has so poisoned feelings about Jews in a cross section of the population that juries can think that celebrating the killing of Jews is acceptable. The big Jewish communal organisations should think very hard about how their extreme reluctance to criticise Israeli policies has contributed to this situation.
(3f) Your last citation was that, “On 18th May 2025 a protestor held up a sign saying “The Western Zionist Puppet Masters Instruct their Evil Scum Puppets in Tel Aviv To Do Their Dirty Work”. I saw nothing like this. I daresay you didn’t find anything else like it, or you would have said so. Something so preposterously prejudiced, seen only once over nearly three years, cannot be a reason for curtailing the marches.
(4) Arbitrarily ascribing events to anti-Jewish animus
You described how four aspects of the protests gradually made you suspect anti-Jewish animus in the marchers motives. The first was the fact that the protests started immediately after the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, followed by “the persistent invocation of the red triangle” and attempts to deliberately steer the marches “near places of Jewish life”. The last straw for you was the protest “conducted at Liverpool Street Station… hours after the Heaton Park synagogue attack”.
This arbitrarily ascribes anti-Jewish animus to a sequence of events, when there are actually other, more specific and more logical explanations.
(4a) The march organisers, the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, did actually notify the Metropolitan Police on 7 October of their intention to march one week later. There is very good reason to ascribe that immediate notification to well-founded fear of massive, disproportionate Israeli reprisal against the civilian population of Gaza, in accordance with the Dahiya Doctrine. Their fears have been shown to be justified. Therefore, there is no reason to ascribe it to anti-Jewish animus, much less to celebrating the Hamas attack.
(4b) I never saw the red triangle in my video search. If it was displayed, it must have been rare. If it was displayed, it could have referred to Hamas fighting Israeli soldiers as easily as to any resistance here, depending on the wording of the placard.
(4c) The Palestinian Solidarity Campaign states categorically they never tried to route marches near synagogues or other Jewish sites. In fact, they have taken legal action against the Metropolitan Police Commissioner for claiming they wanted to do so.
(4d) You obviously thought that protesters demonstrating soon after the Heaton Park Attack did not show the same respect for the lives of Jewish people as they would have shown for the lives of others. It was crass to demonstrate at that time, and hard for all of us to take in.
But we should all take a step back and put ourselves in the shoes of those demonstrators. By that time, there had been two years of disproportionate killing of Palestinians by the IDF, the majority being women, children and the elderly. In fact, at that time, about a hundred Palestinians per day were being killed. Israel had blocked or severely restricted humanitarian aid from entering Gaza for weeks at a time.
The big Jewish communal organisations were eloquent about the carnage by their silence, satisfying themselves with tepid acknowledgement of Palestinian suffering and the need for humanitarian aid, as if the suffering was caused by a natural disaster. It is understandable that the protest group might have wondered why they should pause for a week in respect for the Jewish Heaton Park victims when the continuing Palestinian death toll was receiving hardly a mention by “official” representatives of the Jewish community.
(5) You made a strong point of this: “The well-documented removal of pictures of Israeli hostages, and the trashing of 7 October memorials are consistent with only one thing – that Israeli feelings are illegitimate and therefore they, uniquely, cannot be allowed to show grief or commemorate suffering.” This, again, is to arbitrarily seek an anti-Jewish explanation when there is a more likely explanation. That is the reaction against the constant, repeated personalising of every Israeli hostage and military death, which quickly began to look like a means of deflecting people from reacting to the continuing and mounting Palestinian death toll. (Our letter should not be taken to imply that we support the Hamas/Islamic Jihad attack on Israelis on 7 October 2023. Armed resistance against a belligerent occupation is justified, but only against the occupying forces. The Hamas/Islamic Jihad attack was a war crime and a crime against humanity because it largely targetted Israeli civilians.)
(6) You cited protests at Israeli owned restaurants and bakeries as further evidence of antisemitism. They do look like demonising Israelis, rather than BDS against companies that are involved in the occupation, but there is no evidence that marches contributed to them. It would also be important to know how often they occurred.
(7) You cited a number of attacks on people in Jewish premises or shops associated with Jews, such as Marks and Spencer. They must be dealt with by the full force of he law. They are also clearly antisemitic. However, evidence about the perpetrators, when they have been caught, shows Islamic State or similar propaganda influence, or possibly Iranian involvement, not influence by pro-Palestinian literature or by the Palestinian protest marches.
(8) Remarking on the Maccabi Tel Aviv football match issue, you said “If, according to intelligence held by the West Midlands Police, local Islamists were arming themselves and preparing to seek out and attack fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv, that can only have been because of their hatred of Israelis.” The more logical explanation is that the Muslims were arming themselves for protection because Maccabi Tel Aviv fans have a reputation for anti-Muslim violence. It would also be interesting to know what evidence the police have that the people arming themselves were Islamists, and not just young Muslim football fans.
Summing Up
People are not made angry by the marches. They march because they are angry. The anger is justified. The authoritative commentators who have spoken out publicly have concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. It would be both unjust and unwise to ban or severely proscribe the right to march because there might conceivably be a feedback loop from the marches that would make some marchers angrier, some of whom would attack Jews.
It would be unjust because it would curtail the right to free speech within the law on the mere supposition of feedback, without evidence. Equally important, and pragmatically more so, it would be unwise. People would resent being prevented from expressing their anger. Suppressed anger does not disappear. It redirects itself. For every potential antisemitic act that banning prevented, two would be created that would not have occurred otherwise.
Underlying this whole issue is the inevitable association of Israel and what it does with Jews, which has caused the steady increase in antisemitic incidents over the past 25 years. The question is what, if anything, can be done to reduce that association when Israel continues to oppress the Palestinians. The only thing we can see that would be effective is the big Jewish communal organisations starting to publicly oppose Israeli policies, and say, loud and clear, “Not in our name”. They should be willing to do that because there is compelling evidence that the majority of Jews in the UK do not support Israeli policies.
We will write again when we have the results of the photography of today’s march.
Yours sincerely,
Arthur Goodman
Diplomatic and Parliamentary Officer
Hall’s reply, 29 July 2026
Hi Arthur,
In reply to your email of 18.7.26 for which many thanks.
On my speech, I only referred to placards where there was photographic evidence (I used a variety of twitter accounts, especially @habibi). I did not rely on notional placards.
On your analysis (at (3)): I think that the fair meaning of ‘Globalise the Intifada’ is to bring violence across the world in support of the Palestinian cause; I agree that ‘Death to the IDF’ must be confined to calls for killings in Israel, but killings nonetheless; ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ I agree is more ambiguous; re ‘clean the world of zionists’, I have seen the photo; I note and share your worries about convictions for the khyber chant – but I think your apportioning blame on big organisations is wrong in principle, since people must be free to have different views about the middle east without being attacked for it; on ‘Western zionist puppet masters’, this is not a one-off – signs saying that the UK is controlled by zionists/ politicians are in the pay of zionists are very frequent.
On (4) – on making arrangements for a march on 7.10.23 to take place a week later and marches taking place soon after 7.10.23 and again after Heaton Park – the lack of empathy for Israeli suffering taken together with the other conduct was a factor in my assessment. The red triangle (now also a common hand gesture) is very frequent – I agree it probably refers to Hamas (because it’s a symbol used by them) but it is about targeting, and therefore invokes death; on routing – if there are legal proceedings, I won’t comment.
On standing back, yes please – I wish it were possible for protests to take place without targeting signs/ death invocation/ demonising.
On (5), I don’t think your explanation works, especially since poster sites are very local and cannot have the deflecting effect you suggest.
On (6), I take the point that these were not ‘marches’ but like (7) took place at the same time as the height of the demonstrations, suggesting to me that vilification and hatred was beginning to spill over.
On (8) there’s a difference between arming in self defence and arming to go and seek out.
I agree about protest being a ‘safety valve’ in principle, but as you will recall my thinking on this set of protest activity changed in the light of the signs and conduct I referred to. I do disagree with your argument that the big Jewish organisations must express different views on events overseas to anger turning into attacks. Big Jewish organisations in the UK are made up of UK citizens and residents and the focus of terrorism legislation (and here, protest laws) must be to keep UK citizens and residents safe, whilst free to exercise their right to agree with you or disagree with you.
Best wishes Jonathan
JJP’s fourth letter
Dear Jonathan, 14 August 2026
As promised, we are replying to your email of 29 July. We will be sending you the results of the photographic survey of the march on 18 July next week.
Thank you for taking the time to write a detailed email in reply to our letter of 17 July. We’d like to comment on your replies.
I registered for @Habibi and looked at several videos. I did hear chants of ‘Globalise the Intifada’ and ‘Death, Death to the IDF’ and saw one big placard with an inverted red triangle underneath ‘Greater Empires have fallen’. I didn’t see “Clean the world of Zionists”, but as you saw it, it is obviously there somewhere. However, all the videos I saw were very short clips from marches, only a couple of minutes often on a repeat loop, and therefore didn’t show how often they appeared. They showed the dramatic footage that the @Habibi editors wanted to show. They could well have been the only times in the march.
On (3), surely, bringing violence across the world in support of the Palestinian cause is a fair meaning of ‘Globalise the Intifada’, not the fair meaning, and in fact not the most likely meaning. We say this because the actual meaning of the word ‘intifada’ is throwing off, or resisting oppression, without saying how. A natural reaction to first seeing the term ‘intifada’ would be to look it up. That’s certainly what I did. Equally important, most of the marchers are certainly under the age of 40, probably under 30. They will not have the memory of the Second Intifada as their natural reference because it ended 21 years ago. So it is clear to us that, for most people living here, the obvious interpretation would be to put pressure on our own government, by all the usual lawful means, to put pressure on Israel.
On this, see, for example, (Israeli) Law Professor Neve Gordon’s Yalla, Intifada! –Let’s go!, as well as an FAQ produced by Jewish Voice for Liberation: Is saying “Globalise the Intifada” a threat to Jews?. You don’t have to agree with them to see that they are offering reasonable, plausible alternative ways of reading the slogan.
‘Death to the IDF’ is indeed harsh, and death should not be wished on anyone. But there are understandable reasons for it. First, it refers to IDF units and uniformed IDF soldiers, not even to all Israelis. Second, it is clearly a reaction to the IDF’s own disproportionate methods of warfare and how it enforces the occupation. (Those are deliberately bland terms.) I wonder if the slogan is part of what you see as demonisation of Israel and Israelis. That is obviously important to you. I’ll come back to it later in this letter.
On the Khyber chant and the concern which we share about the two acquittals, l’ll come back to the responsibilities of the big Jewish communal organisations later.
On ‘Western zionist puppet masters’, if you have often seen signs saying that the UK is controlled by zionists/ politicians are in the pay of zionists, then we accept that as a fact. In view of the increased level of antisemitism, it is sadly not surprising.
Indeed we know that Israel spends eye-watering amounts of money on public diplomacy (‘hasbara’ as they term it). The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, estimates more than $1 billion on public diplomacy since October 7, 2023, and registered pro-Israel lobby groups many tens of millions more, often making direct donations to political figures. This is widely reported in the media and social media so it is hardly surprising that some people read into this a degree of political corruption. The issue here is whether such slogans appear on marches enough to incite violence against Jews? On the evidence of our survey, they don’t. There were only two out the 880 readable slogans.
On (4), “on making arrangements for a march on 7.10.23 to take place a week later and marches taking place soon after 7.10.23 and again after Heaton Park”, I’ll refer you to the comments in my letter of 17 July about these marches.
I’d also like to add something on the marches immediately after 7 October 2023. It’s important to understand why activists march. It’s not only to express their anger. It is also to affect government policy by the cumulative pressure of marching. Activists think every march is important in the hope that it will speed the day when our government takes some action.
Perhaps you remember the threats made by Israeli government ministers immediately after 7 October. On 10 October, Yoav Gallant, Defence Minister, said “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” and “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.”2 “Energy minister Israel Katz followed it up by ordering the immediate cut of the water supply to Gaza.”3 Those despicable threats went around the world. They redoubled the protesters’ desperation to continue marching in the hope of pressuring our government to apply pressure on Israel to forestall the starvation conditions it threatened to impose on Gaza – all of Gaza – and the inevitable killing that would go with them.
We think you have assumed these marches demonstrate protesters indifference to Israeli or Jewish suffering, when there are actually more direct explanations in the demonstrable Israeli indifference to Palestinian lives and the big UK Jewish communal organisations apparent unconcern about it. As with the jury acquittals on the Khyber chants, we think the attitude of the organisations is important. It is worth saying that most Jewish participants in the marches have direct experience of Jewish suffering and never forget it,
On (5), we meant the Israeli Government’s constant, repeated personalising of every hostage and every military death, not the local memorials in the UK. It was on the TV news on what seemed every night. At first, it just began to jar, as if the Israeli government thought non-Jews didn’t realise Israelis had families and personal relationships, and so had to be told they did, over and over again. (And as if Palestinians arrested and held without trial didn’t also have families who cared for them and personal relationships, some indeed living in the UK). After a while, it began to look like an attempt to deflect people’s attention from the continuing slaughter in Gaza. We think that is the explanation for trashing the local memorials here.
On (6) and (7), you seem to be assuming a spill-over from the marches to the antisemitic acts. Such a speculation requires evidence, which you haven’t suggested, and we are not aware of any plausible chains connecting one to the other. You said in a previous letter that the marches can act as a safety-valve, so we don’t understand why you didn’t speculate that there might have been more incidents if not for the marches.
What we have provided is compelling evidence that the increasing antisemitism for the past 25 years is caused by the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself. That is proved by the charts attached to my first letter on 22 June. It logically follows that both the antisemitic incidents and the marches, independently of each other, are reactions to the conflict.
On (8), we think the distinction between arming for self-defence and arming to seek out is more apparent then real. Surely it would be understandable if young Muslims, knowing of the reputation of the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans, had decided to take the fight to them rather than waiting to be attacked. It would be a case of minimising their own injuries. The whole situation should not have occurred, but it was caused by the reputation of Maccabi Tel Aviv fans. Most important, no-one has offered any credible evidence that it was in any way related to the marches.
On standing back, I’m sure you understood I meant we – all of us – should reflect carefully before assuming that all kinds of reactions to Israeli actions are due to antisemitism. The explanations should first be sought in what Israel does, judging it against the normal standards of civilised behaviour and international law.
On protests, you can’t expect the slogans and chants to be circumspect and carefully phrased not to offend. Being intemperate in protests is allowed, even necessary, so long as the slogans are within the bounds of free speech under the law. Feeling offended by a slogan does not mean the slogan is actually offensive, even less that it is antisemitic. And criticism of Israel: intemperate, exaggerated, over the top or even plain wrong on the facts is not in and of itself antisemitic.
Turning to the issues of the big Jewish communal organisations and demonisation, which we touched on earlier
Responsibility of the big Jewish communal organisations
We refer to the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council. The Chief Rabbi is also important as he is taken by the public as representing all Jews. It’s not enough to say simply that the organisations comprise individual citizens who have the right to their own opinions.
These organisations put themselves forward as representing the whole Jewish community – to the government by the usual means of lobbying, and to the public through their websites, press releases and op eds. Their officers therefore have a responsibility to represent the views of the community as they actually are, regardless of what their own personal opinions might be.
Israel is probably the most important public issue of all to most Jews, whether they support or oppose Israeli policies. Therein lies the problem, because the organisations have not represented the views in the Jewish community about Israel as they actually are.
Repeated surveys have shown that opinion in the Jewish community about Israeli policies is sharply divided. While a big majority have feelings of attachment to Israel, that does not lead to majority support for Israeli policies. In fact, small majorities are now opposed to them. The sharp division has been evident since at least 2015, when City University published its seminal survey, Attitudes of British Jews towards Israel. The big Jewish communal organisations do not reveal this division of opinion about Israel.
The depth of disquiet about Israeli policies, even within the Board of Deputies, was laid bare by the open letter signed by 36 members of the Board, published on 16 April 2025 in the Financial Times. The letter was an anguished and very deep criticism of the cruelty of Israel’s war on Gaza, clearly written because the Board itself would not criticise Israel. Among other things, the letter said “Silence is seen as support for policies and actions that run contrary to our Jewish values.” It also said many more members shared that view but would not do so publicly. The Board’s response to the letter, publicised 10 days later, was to initiate disciplinary proceedings against the signatories. The five leading signatories were suspended for 18 months and the other 31 were given “notices of criticism”.
However, the Board’s more subtle response, a month later, was to start criticising Israel’s conduct, sometimes even strongly. Clearly, the officers of the Board reluctantly conceded they did, in fact, have a responsibility to reflect the reality of opinion in the Jewish community about Israel’s conduct. Unfortunately, neither the JLC nor the Chief Rabbi followed the Board’s lead. It is the absence of criticism of Israeli policies, combined with explicit support for Israel and criticism of UK government decisions and UK court rulings that recognise Palestinian rights, which have given the false impression of big majority Jewish support for Israeli policies. That can only have exacerbated the antisemitic feelings aroused by Israeli policies.
If you wish, we will supply the survey evidence of Jewish opinion about Israeli policies and the big Jewish organisations relevant public statements and op eds.
Demonisation
To say someone or some group has committed evil deeds is a serious accusation. It should not be made lightly. If it is done without good reason, it is demonising them. By the same token, accusing someone or a group of demonisation is a serious accusation, and that also should not be done lightly.
The key is evidence. Accusing someone or a group of doing evil is not demonisation if there is good reason to believe it. It is calling out the evil deeds and those responsible for them. The issue here obviously is the protest slogans and Israeli actions and policies.
The protesters have good reason to believe what they say about what Israel does. The occupation’s brutalities are well reported by reputable news sites such as BBC News 24, Channel 4, CNN and the Israeli news site Haaretz. They are also reported and analysed by Israeli human rights NGOs such as B’tselem, Peace Now Settlement Watch, The Association for Civil rights in Israel and Adalah, and by websites such Al Jazeera English, Middle East Watch and Mondoweiss. The latter group are partisan but present reliable news and op eds. Therefore, the protesters have good reason for their allegations of Israeli misdeeds. The allegations are not demonisation.
Taking genocide and apartheid, the two most serious allegations, as examples, the protesters’ allegations are amply supported by published, authoritative analysis.
Genocide
From the beginning of its assault on Gaza after the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, the Israeli army was clearly flouting the principles of proportionality and discrimination central to the protection of civilians in time of war. Authoritative commentators called their actions a war crime and a crime against humanity. They were devastating conclusions.
As the Israeli offensive continued month after month, evidence mounted that the Israeli government was intent not merely on killing large numbers of Palestinians, but on substantially destroying the Palestinian population of Gaza. The vast majority of authoritative commentators therefore came to the even more devastating conclusion in mid 2024 that Israel was committing genocide. Appendix 1 contains our record of all the published comments as of June 2024.
Apartheid
Beginning in September 2020, seven respected NGOs produced reports concluding that Israel has created a system of apartheid. The Israeli NGO Yesh Din, Human Rights Watch and the Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic jointly with the Palestinian NGO Addameer, have concluded that Israel has created apartheid in the West Bank, although Israel itself and East Jerusalem, while having some severely racist characteristics, did not reach the legal threshold of the crime of apartheid. Amnesty International, the Israeli NGO B’tselem and the Palestinian NGO Al-Haq have said that Israel, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza are one geographical area characterised by a system of apartheid.
Whichever legal interpretation of the extent of Israeli apartheid ultimately becomes the consensus view, the plain fact is that Israel has created an apartheid system in the 21st century. Appendix 2 contains links to all six reports
Summing up
You have seen antisemitism as the common thread in certain protest marches and the events that drew you to think protesters were motivated by antisemitism. That is clear in your Bondi Beach speech and your email of 29 July to me. We don’t accept that because there are persuasive specific explanations for those protest marches and events. The bakery boycotts and M & S attacks, discussed in section “On (6) and (7)” above, were unrelated to the protest marches. Perhaps your understandable concern with the effects of antisemitism has prevented you from looking for specific explanations. Based on the evidence, the common thread in the protest marches and the slogans is justified anger about Israeli policies and actions, not antisemitism.
Reiterating part of the conclusion in our letter of 17 July, People are not made angry by the marches. They march because they are angry. The anger is justified. It would be both unjust and unwise to ban or severely proscribe the right to march because there might conceivably be a feedback loop from the marches that would make some marchers angrier, some of whom would attack Jews.
It would be unjust because it would curtail the right to free speech within the law on the mere supposition of feedback, without evidence. In fact, our survey provides evidence that feedback is extremely unlikely. Equally important, and pragmatically more so, banning would be unwise. People would resent being prevented from expressing their anger. Suppressed anger does not disappear. It redirects itself. For every potential antisemitic act that banning prevented, two would be created that would not have occurred otherwise.
Thank you reading this long letter. The issue is serious and demands careful consideration, which unfortunately is never brief. We hope you will carefully consider what we have said.
Best, Arthur
1. Bing Videos
3.. Israel defence minister calls Palestinians in Gaza “human animals”
Hall did not reply
JJP’s covering note to the photographic survey of the 18 July march
18 August 2026
This paper refers to the survey spreadsheet showing the results of the photographic survey of the march on 18 July that we commissioned.
The survey provides a systematic, very large sample of the slogans and, all important, the frequency with which each one was seen. The march was photographed from the start to the stragglers at the end. All but a few stragglers were photographed. In addition, some banners that were not seen – or only glimpsed – at the beginning were noted or clarified from pictures taken as the photographer followed the march after photographing the stragglers. 976 banners/placards were seen, of which 879 (90%) were completely readable. That is a huge sample, almost the whole placard and banner population, giving extremely high confidence that it accurately represents the whole population of placards/banners.
Some notes on the survey spreadsheet:
Photographing started at 12:59. The main photographing ended with the end of the march petering out at just before 2:00, after which there are photographs of stragglers and some groups holding banners or placards at the side.
The numbered groups are photos of groups of marchers, each photo group representing a different group of marchers. The purpose of using photo groups was to record all the banners and placards held by each group of marchers and to read as many of them as possible. The time stamps indicate when the photos in each group were taken, or when each single photo was taken.
Most of the march proper is covered by photo groups. There were about seven minutes half way through the march when single photos were sufficient. Almost all the photos of the stragglers were single photos.
The top of the spreadsheet, rows1-11, shows the total number of banner/placards, divided into: all seen; completely readable; printed banners and placards that are unreadable, partially readable or mostly readable; the same for handmade placards; and the number of each type in each time slot. The rest of the spreadsheet, from row 12 down, shows every slogan seen, the number of times it was seen and the time slots when it was seen. The slogans are listed in descending frequency order.
There is also a simplified spreadsheet showing only the slogans and their frequencies
Frequencies
There were 380 different slogans.
You will see that “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, which you cited, only occurs seven times, well down the list and only 0.8% of the completely readable slogans. The most frequently occurring slogan with Zionist or Zionism, with which you were also concerned, only occurred five times. Others appeared only once or twice, only 0.1% or 0.2% of the total.
They will be swamped by all the other slogans. Not only are they not antisemitic or an incitement against Jews, they will not have been seen by many marchers.
Summing up the survey
We need to think about the sequence of events in a march necessary for a slogan to actually incite someone to attack Jews. First. a violent, sociopathic person has to see the slogan. Such people are thankfully rare. Second, that person almost certainly has to see it a few times because, as any psychologist or advertising executive will tell you, repetition is necessary for messages to have an effect.
Whether a slogan can realistically be said to incite violence against Jews therefore depends both on what it says and the frequency with which it appears. Both inciting language and sufficient frequency for it to be seen by enough people so that a sociopath is among them, are necessary. How much frequency is a judgement. To take extremes, 1 in 1,000, i.e. 0.1%, would not be enough, 500 in 1,000, i.e. 50%, would be enough.
The survey confirms what I found in my study of videos and still photos of past marches, the only exception being that Zionism and Zionist appear rarely, whereas I didn’t see them at all before. On the evidence of this survey, we cannot see a case for saying the marches incite antisemitism, much less attacking Jews.
Arthur Goodman
Diplomatic Parliamentary Officer
18 August 2026
J. Hall’s reply, 28 August 2026
We will have to agree to disagree I’m afraid on anti-Semitism. Look at these ones: Bank of Zionism, Zionist lobbyists out of Parliament, No more Zionism in no.10, End Zionist control over the UK, End Zionist control of UK politics, End the power of the Zionist lobby. I don’t know what they can mean except for some sinister Jewish plot. Are these slogans protesting against something grounded in evidence? If Zionists controlled UK politics, why has the UK recognised Palestine? I’m afraid these are the same old memes, invoking Jewish plots and dark control. And this one: Degenerate Zionists – degeneracy is a Nazi-era slur. 2
JJP’s fifth letter
Dear Jonathan, 26 August 2026
Thank you for your immediate response to our list of slogans.
We think your interpretation of seven slogans – “I don’t know what they can mean except for some sinister Jewish plot” –is rushed and plain wrong.
You ask if they are grounded in evidence and the answer has to be yes.
There is widespread evidence of the work of the Israel lobby and many questions about the transparency (or lack of it) with regard to its funding.
There is a large amount of evidence of political donations from people linked to Zionist causes.
Sir Trevor Chinn donated £50k to Keir Starmer’s leadership election campaign. Sir trevor was awarded the Israeli Presidential Medal of Honour for service to the state of Israel. He is a Vice President of the Jewish Leadership Council and sits on the Executive Committee of the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM).
Stuart Roden donated over half a million pounds to Labour before the 2024 General Election. He is “the lead funder of a Zionist educational initiative named I-gnite, which was established after Israel’s last war with Gaza in 2021. It aims “to support students, teachers and parents” in Britain “to find their voice when discussing Israel and antisemitism”.”
Some 180 of Britain’s 650 MPs in the last parliament accepted funding from pro-Israel lobby groups or individuals during their political career.
‘Friends of Israel’ groups funded 56 trips for British politicians to Israel in the two years after October 7th
Asaf Kaplan, hired by Labour to run its social media strategy soon after Starmer took office, worked for Unit 8200, the cyber branch of the Israeli Defence Force, from 2009 to 2013, condemned in 2014 by 43 veterans who worked for it for its widespread surveillance of Palestinians in the oPt.
Here is Peter Oborne, journalist and author of Complicit: Britain’s Role in the Destruction of Gaza, saying that it is” especially interesting that CFI [Conservative Friends of Israel], which lobbies for a foreign country, has approached US sources to fund its work”.
We are not suggesting that lobbying is illegitimate – it is part and parcel of our democratic system. But equally, there is legitimate concern that lobbying groups might be, in effect, buying influence. And concern that the source of funds of lobbying groups is not transparent
It’s not just the Israel lobby that there is concern about. As you know the role of Palantir in the NHS is causing grave concern as is the role of privatised health companies in lobbying and funding MPs in general.
But on a demonstration in support of Palestinian rights it is inevitable that some of these concerns about the Israel lobby will arise.
We are painfully aware of the historic associations of Jews with money and the antisemitism that is associated with it. We condemn that antisemitism out of hand, but at the same time there are legitimate questions about the role of money in buying influence in our political system.
Your rush to put the worst possible interpretations on the slogans (which by definition cannot express some of the nuance of a proper discussion of the issues) is, we suggest, simply not grounded. There are, in fact, perfectly good explanations for all of them, grounded in what the Israel lobby does.
We have again looked carefully at the slogans you cited.
“Bank of Zionism”
While this may seem to be the old antisemitic trope of Jewish money and power controlling things, there are factual explanations directly linked to support for Israeli policies. First is the well-known lobbying activity and political donation policies of AIPAC in the United States. Exposed by the seminal 2007 book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, AIPAC funds Congressional candidates who explicitly agree to endorse its pro-Israel policies, and funds opponents of candidates who refuse to agree. The lobbying activities of other major American Jewish lobby groups that support Israeli policies, such as the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organisations, the Anti-Defamation League, and the American Jewish Committee, have also become well known.
Second, to quote from our letter of 14 August, “Indeed we know that Israel spends eye-watering amounts of money on public diplomacy (‘hasbara’ as they term it). The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, estimates more than $1 billion on public diplomacy since October 7, 2023, and registered pro-Israel lobby groups many tens of millions more, often making direct donations to political figures. This is widely reported in the media and social media so it is hardly surprising that some people read into this a degree of political corruption.”
Zionist lobbying
You cited these five slogans: “Zionist lobbyists out of Parliament”, “No more Zionism in no.10”, “End the power of the Zionist lobby”, “End Zionist control over the UK”, and “End Zionist control of UK politics”. They could be taken to mean either Israeli government lobbying or lobbying by the big Jewish communal organisations on behalf of the Israeli government. Neither meaning is antisemitic. They are both factual. I expect you are aware of the activities of the Board of Deputies, the Jewish Leadership Council and the Chief Rabbi. You may recall I offered to provide evidence of their relevant public statements and op eds in my letter of 14 August. I have now attached the evidence as Appendix 1.
The fourth and fifth slogans are hyperbolic because the Zionist lobby doesn’t control our government, but there is more than a grain of truth in them. To see that, you have only to look at two episodes in the previous government’s responses to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. First was Foreign Secretary, David Lammy’s, powerful statement in the Commons about Israel’s continuing war on Gaza, and what happened to the record of his speech. It was not until 20 May 2025 that he used strong words to call out Israel’s continuing policy of disproportionate bombing and induced famine. He called it “extremist”, “abhorrent”, “monstrous“, “repellent”, and “wholly disproportionate”.1 It was as near calling it genocidal as possible without actually saying the word. But the record of his speech on the FCDO website omits those words entirely.
Second was Prime Minister Starmer’s long-delayed recognition of the State of Palestine. When he finally made it after much pressure on him from inside the Labour Party, he hedged it about with strange conditionalities that no other government applied. It could have been designed to allow Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to avoid British recognition of Palestine by making a couple of empty promises.
Not only can these five slogans not be called antisemitic. They can’t be said to incite violence against Jews. There is no hint of that.
Lastly, Degenerate Zionists
As you say, degeneracy was one of the Nazi-era antisemitic slurs, and the word rings harshly in any circumstance. However, a word cannot be erased from usage if it realistically applies to what is being described because it was once an antisemitic slur.
You have selectively cited the first two words of the slogan. Its never a good idea to quote part of a phrase and expect to understand the whole phrase in its context. The whole slogan is “Degenerate Zionists Release the 9000+ Palestinian Hostages from their torture cells now!”
The reference is to the treatment of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons after 7 October 2023. Videos of Palestinian prisoners released in the prisoner exchanges show emaciated weakened men being helped off buses. Those videos went around the world. So dire was their treatment, including evidence of starvation, that two Israeli human rights NGOs petitioned the Israeli High Court in April 2024, “demanding that security prisoners be provided with food in the quantity and composition suitable for maintaining their health and identical to that supplied to the other prisoners. Testimonies of prisoners and security detainees attached to the petition indicate that since October 7, 2023, the IPS have been deploying a policy of starvation towards Palestinian prisoners and detainees.” Two years later, after a series of prevarications by the Israeli government, further hearings and rulings, the Court issued its final ruling on April 23, 2026, “that the judgment applies to all security prisoners,… and clarified that the State must ensure that additional food is available whenever needed.”2
The most notorious prison case was Sde Tieman prison, which was the subject of a petition by five Israeli human rights NGOs in May 2024. The petition stated “More than 1,000 detainees are held in cage-like facilities, without beds or any other equipment. Testimonies have revealed an incomprehensible reality of surgeries performed without anesthesia, the holding of detainees for days on end in painful positions and such severe handcuffing that led to amputation, blindfolding for long periods of time – even while providing medical treatment and defecating – holding some of the detainees with diapers, beatings and abuse.” As the result of the petition, international outrage and repeated court reviews, the number of prisoners held at Sde Tieman was gradually reduced. Yet in September 2024, the Israeli government was still arguing “that it could exercise powers within the detention facility in ways that deviate from the established legal framework.” The court rejected the state’s argument.3
In July 2024, five soldiers from Sde Tieman were eventually charged with assaulting a Palestinian detainee. The five soldiers were charged with “beat[ing] the man, dragging him across the floor, stepping on his body, breaking his ribs and puncturing a lung. One of the charges also describes the detainee suffering an internal rectal tear after being stabbed in the buttocks. All five of the soldiers denied any wrongdoing.” There was a long right-wing campaign in Israel against the charges and on March 12 2026, they were dropped by the newly appointed Military Advocate General. Two Israeli human rights NGOs castigated the decision as showing, yet again, that the IDF military justice system is a sham. Prime Minister Netanyahu and his allies hailed it.4 All that also went around the world. In your Bondi Beach speech, you said “It is well established that even convicted terrorists have rights against physical mistreatment.” This Israeli government clearly does not think so.
We would not have used the word “degenerate” but it is an understandable if highly charged emotional reaction to the Israeli government that tolerated such abuse, the soldiers who perpetrated it and the Israelis who clamoured for their exoneration. However offensive you may have found it to be, it is a response to appallingly offensive events. Nothing about its use in this context is antisemitic.
Zionism
It is clear to us us, from your email and your Bondi Beach speech, that you see Zionism as an essential part of being Jewish, so that, for you, anti-Zionism is equivalent to antisemitism and criticism of Zionism is criticism of Jews, qua Jews. We don’t believe that is correct. Zionism has two faces. It was both a Jewish independence movement to escape from antisemitism and a settler colonial movement with all the oppression of the indigenous population which that implies. That intense moral contradiction lies at its heart.
Within that conundrum, there is a strain of Zionist thought that wanted accommodation with the Palestinians on the basis of equality, whether in a single state or in two states, but it has been progressively marginalised in Israel so that, today, it hardly exists there at all. But the position is very different here in the UK. In fact, in the UK, only 64% of Jews self-identify as Zionists. The other 36% (comprising non-Zionists, anti-Zionists and don’t knows) is a substantial minority. Among 20-29 year olds, only 47% self-identify as Zionists.5
Most people on the demonstrations – we would guess almost all – do not know of all that. They understand Zionism as its second face, or simply as the “policies and practices of the Israeli government”. Therefore they have the right to criticise Zionism, even to call it by deeply unpleasant names, because they are criticising the Zionist ideology of setter colonialism and/or the actions of the Israeli government, not the religion or ethnicity of Zionists. That is why criticism of Zionism, including anti-Zionism, should be taken at face value unless there is specific evidence of anti-Jewish animus. Anti-Jewish animus can’t simply be assumed.
Summing up
As we said, we believe there is no case for calling the slogans antisemitic or incitement to violence. But even on the belief that they are, their infrequency would prevent them from actually inciting violence because they wouldn’t be seen often enough to have that effect.
We hope you will give us a considered response to this, to our survey and to our letter of 14 August.
Best,
Arthur
Notes
1. Bing Videos
2. End the Policy of Starving Security Prisoners | Association for Civil Rights in Israel
3. Close the Sde Teman Detention Center | Association for Civil Rights in Israel
4. Assault charges against Israeli soldiers dropped in controversial end to a yearlong scandal | CNN
5. Two years after the October 7 attacks.October 2025.FINAL_.2OCT_0.pdf
Some links
Pro-Israel tycoon gives Labour half a million pounds
Israel lobby funded a quarter of British MPs
Lawyers complain to Labour over hiring of ex-Israeli intelligence officer
‘Friends of Israel’ groups have funded 56 trips for British politicians
Revealed: Pro-Israel lobbyist’s secret funding operation
Hall’sreply, 28 August
Hi Arthur
Many thanks for your letter. I do think we have to agree to disagree on the slogans. I don’t disagree that there has been unjustifiable behaviour by Israel and its officials through act, and through omission – referring to their failure to deal with settler terrorism. On the slogans, this is not raising questions about lobbying but assertions of fact (Zionist control, which I interpret as meaning Jewish control given the trope). Rather than go round in circles, it would be interesting to ask the people who had the banners what they meant – have you ever asked any of them what they mean?
Best wishes Jonathan
JJP’s 6th letter
Dear Jonathan, 1 September 2026
Thank you for your email of 28 August
We’d like to take your replies one by one, and then refer to part of our letter of 14 August and a BBC news report of 28 August.
Your replies of 28 August
1. We think you have implicitly agreed that Israel’s treatment of Palestinian security detainees has been unjust, and that is a mild word for what was done. Bearing in mind your own statement about the rights of convicted terrorists, you could hardly disagree. It follows that the slogan “Degenerate Zionists Release the 9000+ Palestinian Hostages from their torture cells now!” means what it says. It can’t be called an antisemitic trope because it clearly uses “Zionists” to mean the Israeli prison service acting in accordance with Israeli government’s wishes. It refers to what they did, not to who they they are.
2. You have misinterpreted the meaning of the slogans saying Zionist or Zionism that you cited. They are decrying the lobbying that supports Israeli policies, nothing else. Therefore, Zionist or Zionism in the slogans can only denote “Israeli government lobbying or lobbying by the big Jewish communal organisations on behalf of the Israeli government.” Neither meaning is antisemitic because they refer to what Israeli diplomats and the big Jewish communal organisations actually do in support of Israeli policies, not to them as Jews, or to the old antisemitic trope of imagined Jewish manipulative control over world affairs.
You refer again to the two slogans saying Israeli “control” of our politics. If you recall, we acknowledged they are hyperbolic because Israel doesn’t control our politics, but we cited two episodes in the previous government’s responses to the Israel-Palestinian conflict that showed there is more than a grain of truth in them. Here is a third episode. The UK was the last country to reinstate its contributions to UNRWA after three independent reports concluded that the Israeli claim of Hamas infiltration into UNRWA, made in January 2024, was unfounded. The UK did not reinstate until July, whereas the other countries reinstated in March or April (and one in May).
Further evidence of the meaning of the slogans is found in the context of the march itself, i.e. the great bulk of slogans which create the “message” of the march. 25 slogans make up the top 65% of all readable slogans. They appear 574 times between them. The most frequent appears 87 times, the least frequent 7 times, and the average appearance is 33 times. They contain the words: Palestine, free, Gaza, Iran, Israel, freedom, starving, genocide, crime, stop arming, apartheid, sanction, occupation, resist, ethnic cleansing, Trump’s wars, hostages, hands off Lebanon, cut war not welfare, ceasefire now, stop killing our people, justice, peace. (That’s an exhaustive list of the operative words in those 25 slogans.) The words Zionism or Zionist do not appear in them at all, nor do any words in them imply incitement to violence.
They all relate to freedom for Palestinians, to what Israel does (or is alleged to do if you prefer), and once to Donald Trump’s alleged complicity. People watching the march or participating in it will have taken the message of the march from those slogans.
Therefore, the slogans saying Zionist or Zionism that you cited should be seen in that context, which does not in any way refer to the old antisemitic tropes. You have interpreted them as if they did relate to the old antisemitic tropes, whereas the specific evidence we presented in our letter and the context of the march itself argue that they relate to Israeli and Jewish communal lobbying on Israel’s behalf.
We cannot see how your interpretation of those slogans would justify a recommendation to circumscribe the marches when the evidence is that they are neither antisemitic nor incitement to violence.
Further evidence is that there were only two readable slogans in the march with the word Jew or a variation of it. They also contain Zionism. Far from being antisemitic or inciting harm to Jews, they distance Judaism and Jews from Zionism. One says in part, “Zionism does not =Judaism”. The other says in part, “shaming Jewry worldwide”.
3. This brings us back to Zionism. Your email really confirms what we said in our letter, “that you see Zionism as an essential part of being Jewish, so that, for you, anti-Zionism is equivalent to antisemitism and criticism of Zionism is criticism of Jews, qua Jews.” That appears to be your guiding principle.
To express what we said in our letter in a different way, let’s do a thought experiment. Suppose every Jew in the world, including all 2,203 of us in JJP, was a fervent Zionist. Other people would still have the right to criticise Zionism, even to be antizionist, because Zionism is as much a settler colonialism that displaced most of an indigenous population as it is the Jewish independence movement. Therefore, people have the right to have an opinion about it, without being called antisemitic. For that reason alone, criticism of Zionism or Zionist lobbying for Israel cannot be considered antisemitic without additional evidence of anti- Jewish animus.
4. In answer to your question about the marchers, my colleagues who go on the marches don’t ask other marchers what their slogans mean. They assume they mean what they say. In any case, serious conversations would be difficult to hold in view of the noise, nearby conversations, chanting and sometimes drumming.
As we said in our letter of 22 June, “JFJFP is part of the Jewish Bloc which has taken part in every march since 7 October 2023. We have never seen antisemitic placards or incitement to violence. If any such placards were to appear, we are confident the stewards would immediately take them down.” Its also worth noting that the Jewish bloc has always been warmly welcomed by other marchers.
Your question invites an impressionistic and very partial response. We think the photographic survey and the burden of the most frequent 65% of the slogans tells the story accurately. We think you should credit the marchers with the ability and honesty to say what they mean in their slogans.
Our letter of 14 August
Regarding the slogan “Globalise the Intifada”, you will recall we said “So it is clear to us that, for most people living here, the obvious interpretation would be to put pressure on our own government, by all the usual lawful means, to put pressure on Israel.” In fact, our photographic survey showed there was only one handmade placard with this slogan on the march of 18 July, but the full placard said “Globalise the Intifada_non-violent worldwide. [ ] of the Aparthied fascist state_End the occupation” That is the opposite of inciting violence. It incites non-violent international opposition to Israeli policies, just as we said is the obvious interpretation of the slogan.
BBC news report of 28 August
The BBC reported the conviction of four men for setting fire the Hatzola ambulances in March this year. The men all pleaded guilty. The report said British intelligence chiefs had concluded that Iran or its proxies were involved in the attack. That position was “further confirmed by the FBI’s investigation of and allegations against an Iranian-Iraqi man facing trial in Manhattan for orchestrating a series of attacks against Jewish communities across Europe…. In many cases the attacks on Jewish community interests were claimed online by a shadowy group, Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya, or the The Islamic Movement of the People of the Right Hand. The US court papers say that the social media account for the group posted claims saying it was behind the ambulance attacks.”
You may remember, in our letter of 17 July, we replied to your comments about antisemitic “attacks on people in Jewish premises or shops associated with Jews, such as Marks and Spencer”. We said “However, evidence about the perpetrators, when they have been caught, shows Islamic State or similar propaganda influence, or possibly Iranian involvement, not influence by pro-Palestinian literature or by the Palestinian protest marches.” The intelligence we cited above confirms what we said.
We note you haven’t replied to our letter of 14 August or to the main burden of the photographic survey. In the absence of replies, we are beginning to think you agree with what we have said.
We hope for a considered reply. This issue is too important to be left in limbo.
Best,
Arthur
J. Hall’s reply, 2 September
Hi Arthur,
Many thanks. I confirm receipt.
I do want to draw this conversation to a close now because I need to get on with writing my final 2 reports and I have a busy 3 months ahead before I finish my term at the end of Nov.
Please don’t interpret my not replying to any particular point as agreement, nor as discourtesy, since I very much appreciate the level of detailed analysis you have done.
We disagree about anti-Semitism and its causes and its contemporary manifestations but I do wish you and your colleagues well and a safe and peaceful new year when it comes round.
Best wishes, Jonathan