Two crushing defeats for pro-Israel lobby

These victories for free speech are crucially important

The Western world is currently in the grip of the biggest assault on free speech since Senator Joseph McCarthy sat in the Chair of the House of Un-American Activities Committee seven decades ago.

In that context, any victory is vitally important.

In the first victory, a case brought by the so-called ‘Campaign Against Antisemitism’ against the comedian Reginald D. Hunter has been quashed - and brutally so.

The saga began in August 2024 when Hunter - an award-winning comedian - was performing at an Edinburgh Fringe Festival performance, and two Israeli members of the audience objected to a joke he had made about Israel.

The CAA subsequently launched a private prosecution against Hunter over communications he had sent to a pro-Israel activist named Heidi Bachram.

The judgment is utterly damning. It concluded:

The CAA have demonstrated by the misleading and partial way in which it summarised its’ application and its’ wilful, repeated, failure to meet its’ disclosure obligations, that its’ true and sole motive in seeking to prosecute RH is to have him cancelled. I have no doubt that the prosecution is abusive.

And finally:

…my view of the conduct of the CAA is consistent with them as an organisation which is not “playing it straight” but is seeking to use the criminal justice system, in this case for improper reasons.

The judge noted that the CAA had not notified him that they were being investigated by the Charity Commission. He ordered that a copy of his judgment must be disclosed by the CAA in all future prosecution applications.

And in another case, Avon and Somerset Police have concluded that no further action will be taken against punk rap duo Bob Vylan over chants such as ‘Death, death to the IDF’ at Glastonbury Music Festival.

In their statement, they said:

We have concluded, after reviewing all the evidence, that it does not meet the criminal threshold outlined by the CPS for any person to be prosecuted.

No further action will be taken on the basis there is insufficient evidential for there to be a realistic prospect of conviction.

The case was self-evidently ludicrous. The IDF is a foreign military force which, as per the consensus of genocide scholars - including in Israel itself - is committing genocide.

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by the IDF.

It was those conflating the IDF and Jewish people - by claiming that attacking the former was attacking the latter - who were actually promoting antisemitism. It is an outrage to associate Jewish people as a whole with the IDF’s war crimes.

If an artist had chanted ‘Death, death to the Russian Army’, there would have been no criminal investigation. Well, it wouldn’t make sense, would it: given Britain is arming Ukraine, the chant would merely reflect official government policy.

Both Reginald D. Hunter and Bob Vylan have been subjected to mass cancellations by venues.

Since the genocide began, of course, those who spoken out in some form have faced being sacked, deplatformed, threatened, arrested, beaten up by police officers, incarcerated, even deported.

History will judge that the world has been turned on its head. It is those who facilitated and justified one of the great crimes of our age who should be suffering these sorts of consequences. One day, it will be.