Jewish groups dispute claims Palestine Action targets ‘Jewish-owned businesses’
The offices of Israeli lobby group the British Israel Communications and Research Centre, London, spray-painted by Palestine Action activists, 2 November 2024
Katherine Hearst reports in Middle East Eye on 11 February 2026:
Jewish activists have challenged claims featured in a documentary that the British protest group Palestine Action targeted “Jewish-owned businesses”, saying that these organisations were selected due to their complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
In an episode aired this week, Channel 4’s Dispatches interrogated the government’s justifications for the proscription of Palestine Action – including alleged links with Iran – questioning whether these claims were used to obscure the fact that the actual basis for the ban was criminal damage.
Jonathan Hall KC, the government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation and a member of its proscription review group, told Dispatches journalist Matt Shea that the press briefings about Palestine Action’s alleged ties to Iran were “wrong”. Among the other allegations levelled at Palestine Action by the government are claims that the group target Jewish-owned businesses.
This claim was repeated in the documentary by Gideon Falter, chief executive of the controversial pro-Israel group Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA). He told Dispatches that Palestine Action had “created a climate of fear” in the Jewish community following a string of alleged actions which he said targeted “Jewish-owned businesses”.
“This has been years now of people turning up at their places of work, usually places of work, finding that everything’s covered in red paint. Computers have all been smashed, these are thuggish, violent attacks,” he said. He cited the targeting of Hillsdown house in north London in November 2024, in which Palestine Action activists splattered the office block with red paint. At the time, these were the registered offices of the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (Bicom).
Bicom, which was set up after the Second Intifada in 2001, describes itself as aiming “to increase understanding of Israel in the UK”. The organisation has attempted to shape perceptions of Israel by providing journalists with access to senior Israeli officials and even flying journalists to the country.
“It is very hard to see what links there are that would justify this kind of thuggery,” Falter told Shea.
“There is a common thread though that connects those seemingly unrelated attacks, and that tends to be that they are Jewish-owned businesses,” Falter added. “The fear that they cause in the Jewish community may not be their primary objective, but it’s incidental to what they do.”
In response, Shea questioned “if there is a risk of conflating criticism of Israel with an attack on the Jewish population more generally”.
Palestine Action refutes claims
Later in the film, Huda Ammori, Palestine Action’s co-founder, said in response to the allegations that the group has targeted companies “regardless of the identities of the owners, it was never about that, it was about the connection to the Israeli weapons industry”. She added that the allegations were “weaponising antisemitism” and “obfuscating the facts”.