Human rights groups are tolerating terrorism against Israel, the UK’s independent reviewer of terror legislation has said.
Jonathan Hall KC said Left-wing activists regarded violence towards supporters of Israel as a “kind of exemption” because their brains had been “scrambled by Gaza”.
He said that many civil liberty NGOs had abandoned their “traditional” focus on “domestic issues” and instead become “sucked in” to an obsession with the Palestinian struggle.
Speaking at an event at Parliament, he said that some human rights groups had “lost this really precious neutrality and ability to be consistent” on the subject of Israel.
Mr Hall said: “I’ll be able to tell you from my own experience, I barely have any engagement with these sorts of groups. You’d think that Amnesty UK would be right in the forefront of saying: ‘There is an amendment to this legislation, what should we do?’ No, they’re involved in really defending one particular sort of protest.
“And I think that it’s an example of something that we’ve seen with the Palestine Action group response, where people on the whole get their brains scrambled by Gaza.
“So they tolerate behaviour, very violent behaviour, which they would say, if it was being done by the extreme Right or an Islamist group, ‘yes, of course that would amount to terrorism’. But they seem to regard it as a kind of exemption.”
Earlier this year, six Palestine Action activists were cleared of committing aggravated burglary after a break-in at the UK headquarters of an Israeli-owned arms company.
The six activists were found not guilty over allegations that they had used or threatened unlawful violence.
They had used an old prison van to ram-raid an Elbit Systems factory in Bristol in the early hours of Aug 6, 2024, and attacked police officers with sledgehammers, according to Avon and Somerset Police.
They “genuinely believed” their demonstration at the factory would help the Palestinian cause in Gaza, the court heard.
Mr Hall urged humanitarian groups to “pull themselves back from the brink and remember what they really are there to do”.
He said he had spoken to senior executives at British NGOs who are “worried about the direction of travel” but are being “pushed” in that direction by younger members of staff.
“Some organisations that once prided themselves on neutrality and rigorous scrutiny have allowed single-issue activism to overwhelm those principles,” he said.
“That matters, because influential NGOs help shape public debate, government policy and the boundaries of what is considered acceptable.”
Mr Hall was speaking at an event in Parliament hosted by Lord Walney, a former government adviser on political violence and disruption.
Pro-Palestine marches funded by foreign donors
The event marked the launch of a new report which found that pro-Palestine marches were being funded by a complex web of foreign donors and state actors.
The research, conducted by the Israeli organisation NGO Monitor, found examples of Iranian and American far-Left groups bankrolling anti-Israel groups in the UK, creating an “ecosystem” of disruption.
It also found cryptocurrency was increasingly being used to hide funding sources for organisations accused of anti-Semitism, with gift aid also being used by these organisations.
The report’s authors also accuse organisations of deliberately targeting young people with anti-Israel material.
The report calls for a wholesale reform of Britain’s regulatory system to improve transparency about how the groups and charities behind pro-Palestine marches are funded.