On September 14, Channel 4 News published a video interview with Medhi Hassan, in which he defended the UK’s announced sanctions on Israeli settlement trade, repeated libels du jour against Israel, and downplayed the British Jewish community’s enduring fears of antisemitic hostility and violence, which the pro-Palestine movement has compounded.
In a country whose government resisted proscribing the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) until only two months ago, granted citizenship and anonymity to a former Hamas bodyguard and where 96% of British Jews report feeling less safe in Britain compared to before 2023, British broadcasters have a duty not to platform anti-Israel commentators uncritically.
From the outset, Hassan states that [10:15]:
These are illegal settlements; this is stolen land.
This is not an independently adjudicated fact. Although the International Court of Justice (ICJ) expressed the view in its 2024 Advisory Opinion that Israel’s settlement policy is unlawful, the opinion is non-binding, and the current US administration maintains that Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not per se inconsistent with international law. Hassan also ignores the historical record: on at least three occasions Israel offered Palestinian statehood, and each time the Palestinian leadership, supported by its people, refused.
Later, he states that [10:33]:
I think the pro-Israel folks are really mad about this, not because of the policy itself, but because of what it opens the door to down the line. Because what’s next? There will be more stuff coming.
Ironically, Hassan advances the very same proposition as UK Jewish and Israel advocacy groups have made themselves: what comes next for British Jews when the world’s only Jewish state becomes the subject of disproportionate cultural, economic, and judicial targeting by their own government?
The answer already lies, in part, with the Community Security Trust (CST). In January, the CST recorded 1,926 antisemitic incidents over a six-month period, a marked 21% increase compared to the same period in 2025. Viewed thus, it is neither alarmist nor fatalistic to suggest that once the UK government deems an economic boycott of Israeli settlement trade permissible, it risks emboldening pre-existing anti-Jewish animus.
Consider, for example, the March 2026 ‘Love March’ in London, protesters were observed with placards which read “Zionists not welcome here,” and Jewish people attending synagogue were reportedly heckled with “Free Palestine” chants. In May, during Al-Quds Day, supporters of the Islamic Regime called for the bombing of Tel Aviv, eulogised the Ayatollah Khomeini, and demonstrated support for the proscribed Palestine Action Group. Placards displayed at Al-Quds Day referenced antisemitic tropes about Jewish power, the Epstein file disclosures, and false equivalences between Israel and Nazi Germany. Protesters also slurred Jews with chants of “death to the IDF” and “Khayar, Khayar, oh Jews, Mohammad’s army is returning,” a reference to the Battle of Khaybar, a massacre of Jewish people by early Muslims in 628 CE.
In such context, it is simply naïve to claim that an economic boycott of Israeli settlements will not incite a broader pattern of hostility. Regardless of whether “Jews” is substituted for “Israel” or “Israeli settlements” in the rhetoric that follows, British Jews -and Jewish people worldwide- remain proxy targets of a broader geopolitical narrative. For instance, although UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said he was “wholeheartedly opposed” to the Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign when announcing sanctions on Israeli settlement trade, the Trade Union Congress (TUC) reportedly voted [59:31] days later for a motion endorsing it.
Hassan also rejects the claim that the government, or UK media critical of Israel, is feeding antisemitism:
It is false to make that claim. It is dangerous to make that conflation between British Jews and Israel.
I have gone out of my way to tell people on the Left, in Muslim communities, to tell people wherever I am, make sure you are criticising Israel not Judaism, not Jews. Do not conflate the two, that is antisemitic.
He argues that British Jews should not be made spokespeople for the Israeli government – so much is true. But he uses that legitimate point to smuggle in a claim that severs Jewish people from their indigeneity to the land of Israel, which is itself antisemitic. When challenged, Hassan retreats to the safety of the original point, insisting that it is antisemitic to conflate Jews with the Israeli government. The very claim that carried the argument in now shields it from scrutiny.
A 2025 survey by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research and Campaign Against Antisemitism found that 64% of British Jews identify as Zionist and 89% of British Jews regard antizionism as a form of antisemitism. This perception is difficult to dismiss when threat actors, despite antizionism’s professed separation from hostility to Jews, still treat synagogues, Jewish schools, Israeli-linked businesses and communal institutions as high-value targets.
A notable example is the Hatzola arson attack, which was immediately recast as a “false flag operation,” with social media users calling the attack as a “classic Zionist tactic,” (Image below) reflecting a recurring refusal to see British Jews as victims. Claims that Hatzola “only serves Jews,” though it serves everyone, escalated into accusations of “Jewish supremacy,” recasting communal self-protection as exclusionary.
Screen capture of Instagram users displaying antisemitic rhetoric following the Hatzola ambulance arson attack.
As CAMERA previously indicated, UK media’s immediate pivot in focus to Israel detracted from the attack itself, turning British Jewish civilians into proxies and allowing the violence to disappear into a broader political narrative. Accusations of genocide in Gaza dominated the discussion, as if Israel’s actions could contextualise, justify or at the very least relativise violence against British Jews.
Advancing his view, Hassan states [30:12]:
Of course there are antisemites in the pro-Palestine movement. There are antisemites in every part of society. There are antisemites in Reform, in Labour, in the Conservative Party, in all sorts of walks in life.
Whilst Hassan is right that antisemitism transcends partisan lines, it is precisely this ideological malleability that enables antisemites to coalesce around pro-Palestinianism activism. Under the guise of social justice politics, antisemites toggle freely and fluidly between antizionist and explicitly anti-Jewish slurs, as evidenced with Al-Quds Day and the ‘Love March’ in London. They deploy dog whistles to encode their animus: “from the river to the sea” and “globalise the intifada” become political pronouncements that, while superficially anodyne, signal an aspiration that extends beyond critique of Israeli policy to the erasure of Jewish national existence, and to the harm of Jews themselves.
Israel’s detractors often cite the minority of antizionist Jewish voices, among them Neturei Karta, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and International Jewish Antizonist Network (IJAN) to lend their arguments a veneer of legitimacy. Hassan is no exception; he draws on Peter Beinart, who has advocated for the dissolution of the Jewish state, to frame Jewish opposition to Israel. Beinart’s Jewish identity is merely invoked to imply that his marginal views outweigh those of the roughly 90% British and American Jews who support Israel’s continued existence as a Jewish and democratic state.
Later, Hassan invokes the far-right, the most recognisable and archetypal purveyors of antisemitism to divert attention from Islamism and the way it has compounded the Palestine movement [30:55]:
I think we need to be very clear about the threat that is coming from the far-right. And I get worried again when I see American and British Jewish communal organisations obsessed with policing speech about Palestine. Meanwhile, we have actual Nazis coming to power in different Western countries.
This obscures the wider threat landscape facing British Jews. Far-right extremism is undeniably a threat, as the 2024 arrest of self-proclaimed neo-Nazi Mason Reynolds, who attempted to attack a synagogue in Hove, attests. Yet the UK’s Security Service (MI5) assesses that Islamist terrorism constitutes the most significant threat to the UK by volume.
British Jews see it similarly: 96% regard Islamists and 94% the far-left as serious threats, compared with 64% for the far-right. Seen in context, British Jews people do not merely perceive Islamism a significant threat; it is also the most significant terrorist threat to the UK as a whole. In 2025, Jihad al-Shamie attacked Heaton Park synagogue on Yom Kippur, pledging allegiance to the Islamic State during the attack. Earlier this year, the Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right claimed the arson attacks on Finchley Reform Synagogue, Hatzola ambulances, and a drone attack on the Israeli Embassy.
Given the convergence between far-left and Islamist narratives, these statistics are less surprising. Framing opposition to Israel as an “anti-colonial struggle,” and applying a paternalistic ethnographic lens that creates an Oppressed versus Oppressor schema, has lent antizionism a perceived political legitimacy among the well-intentioned –albeit misguided– progressive classes, for whom Palestine has become the default motif. However, assailants, often bearing the talismanic banner of antizionism, have sought to inflict violence on British Jewish people holding vigils, convening in synagogues, and attending civic events.
Whilst some progressives within the pro-Palestine movement may not be ideologically aligned with Islamists, they nevertheless amplify the same narratives. Within hours of an Israeli strike, for instance, it’s common to see encrypted Telegram channels circulate operational guidance from militant Islamist networks, encouraging attacks against Jews globally. Simultaneously, self-proclaimed progressive TikTok and Instagram accounts will then repackage these eliminationist slogans, including “glory to the resistance” and “from London to Gaza, we will have an intifada,” as mainstream secular progressive content, normalising rhetoric that advocates for Israel’s destruction.
If Channel 4 news is going to lend its considerable platform and credibility to a personality such as Hassan, it is journalistically irresponsible to do so uncritically. Broadcast news has a duty of impartiality which requires it to identify relevant context. Allowing someone such as Hassan to pontificate on the nature of antisemitism without bringing opposing views, relevant social context or even the views of actual Jews, fails in that duty catastrophically.