Inside the fracturing pro-Palestine movement: Purges, paranoia and a far-left revolt

In March of this year, the Chelmsford branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) made the following announcement: “It is with deep sadness that we recognise that our vision no longer aligns with the greater Palestine Solidarity Campaign. As we are no longer able to pursue our goals under PSC, we therefore tender our resignation.”

A few days earlier, the branch had announced an “educators workshop” panel discussion, to take place the following month at Anglia Ruskin University. Its subject was “Restoring Integrity in Education, Challenging narratives through a decolonial lens and empowering educators”. Not long before the announcement of its withdrawal from the PSC, the Chelmsford group released a statement saying: “We regret to inform you that the event has been cancelled due to unexpected developments.”

What had happened? David Miller, the former University of Bristol Professor, had a view, telling his Twitter followers: “It’s my understanding that this occurred after a vicious monstering by head office. All because PSC Chelmsford had the temerity to invite me to speak.”

To a bystander, it might not be hard to understand why a national campaign would not be overwhelmingly keen to associate its brand with a man who now produces a show for Iranian state television, flew to Lebanon in February to attend the funeral of the leader of Hezbollah and  regularly fulminates online against “Jewish supremacy”. But this fails to acknowledge the shifting situation within the wider “pro-Palestine” movement. Put very simply, while the Jewish community struggles over whether to embrace some highly questionable people who define themselves as “Zionist”, there is a less noticeable struggle taking place within the wider anti-Zionist movement in Britain over who should be embraced – and who held at arm’s length.

In July this year, for example, there were reports that Lowkey – a rapper who had made a name for himself because of his vehement anti-Israel activism – had been quietly dropped as a patron by the PSC back in August 2023. The source of this claim – the usually execrable Electronic Intifada – posited that the reason for this was because Lowkey had been publicly supportive of Palestine Action – and that Ben Jamal, the director of the PSC, was opposed to the direct action group. (Palestine Action was proscribed as a terrorist organisation in July after some of its activists videoed themselves infiltrating an RAF air force base and damaging two military planes).

This is not a recent phenomenon. There are those who were once closely involved with the work of the PSC who in recent years have been relegated to the very far sidelines. Tony Greenstein, for example, is an extreme anti-Zionist Jew who was one of the founders of the PSC. In recent years Greenstein, perhaps now best known for losing a defamation claim against the Campaign Against Antisemitism after they called him a “notorious antisemite”, has had little to do with the PSC, reportedly resigning from it in 2022. George Galloway used to be a regular PSC rally speaker back in the 2000s. In June this year he told viewers of his online show: “The Palestine Solidarity Campaign has blacklisted me for 10 whole years for issues which have zero to do with Palestine.”

The PSC, however, has previously managed to drop such connections relatively quietly. The organisation has traditionally operated by focusing on the many injustices it attributes to Israel, while demonstrating significant ambiguity about its own long-term goals. For example, it does not commit to any specific plan as to what it wants a future Palestinian state to look like. When questioned as to whether it supported a two-state solution or not, it responded that it “does not take a position either in support or against a one state or two state solution, but insists that any solution must be based on the protection of human rights and upholding the collective rights of the Palestinian people as recognised under international law.”

In some ways, though neither side would likely appreciate the comparison, the PSC is effectively run in similar fashion to certain Jewish communal organisations, namely through operating a broad-tent policy, specific on certain top-line issues but otherwise enabling an atmosphere which, for the most part, enables people within the wider movement to agree to disagree. In certain circumstances, where individual branches of the organisation have breached behaviours it deems to be acceptable (quite a high bar to clear, given that the content shared by a variety of PSC branches can be fairly repulsive), the PSC main office will act.

In February 2023, for example, the Brixton branch of the PSC shared a 10 page pamphlet, titled, “How to talk to Zionists”, on its Instagram page. Among other things, it encouraged people to call for the sacking of Zionist co-workers, teachers or lecturers. When asked about this, the PSC said: “The post did not reflect the values of PSC; the branch was contacted and immediately removed the post.”

But since 7 October 2023, the landscape in which the PSC has been able to operate has changed. Even as Hamas was carrying out its slaughter in southern Israel, the PSC head office quietly put in a request to the Metropolitan Police to hold a demonstration in London during the coming period.

Less quiet was the organisation’s Manchester branch, which released a statement titled, “Manchester supports the Palestinian resistance”, and which began by saying: “In a heroic move today, Palestinian freedom fighters from besieged Gaza broke Zionist colonial barriers and entered settlements built on Palestinian stolen land…The brave fighters gave us all a glimpse of a liberated Palestine as they took over entire Israeli settlements”.

By the end of that month, the PSC issued a statement confirming it had suspended the officers of its Manchester branch, stating that such postings were “unacceptable, do not reflect the positions of PSC and do not serve the legitimate cause of the Palestinian people and their struggle for justice and liberation”.

The same statement from the PSC’s main office said that “international law makes clear that the deliberate killing of civilians, hostage taking and collective punishment are war crimes. We condemn any such acts, no matter who perpetrates them”.

The primary reason for the PSC avoidance of the “H” word is not hard to understand. They are very much aware that the majority of the British public are repelled by Hamas

The statement, of course, did not name who had carried out the 7 October massacres, reflecting a longstanding situation where the PSC effectively tries to pretend that Hamas does not exist. The organisation as a whole had published its own statement on 9 October, which referred to “the severe escalation of violence since 7 October” in its opening statement before spending the next 12 paragraphs blaming Israel, with no mention of Hamas at all.

The primary reason for the PSC avoidance of the “H” word is not hard to understand. They are very much aware that the majority of the British public are repelled by Hamas – a perspective capped off by the British government’s decision in late 2021 to proscribe the group in full as a terrorist organisation. At the time, PSC condemned the move, saying it would “do nothing to advance the cause of peace, considering the role of Hamas in the political fabric of Palestine as evidenced by its winning of the PLC elections in 2006”. By contrast, when an attempt was made earlier this year to launch a case to de-proscribe Hamas as a terrorist group, there was no evidence to suggest any involvement by the PSC – neither the organisation nor any of its key leaders were mentioned in the legal filing or any of its numerous annexes.

In the febrile atmosphere of the last two years, it has clearly been harder to keep everyone happy in what, quite clearly, is a fractious coalition. In March 2024, the organisation attempted to distance itself from a fundraiser being held by its West Midlands branch, featuring terrorist airplane hijacker Leila Khaled. The PSC managed to get its local branch to withdraw its official involvement with the event, held at a Birmingham restaurant – but the event still want ahead, with Huda Ammori, one of the founders of Palestine Action, as another of the speakers.

For the most part, the PSC has successfully managed to keep its individual branches in check. But the Chelmsford incident suggests that its grip is slipping – and that the organisation is being challenged by those who feel that its actions in support of the Palestinian cause do not go nearly far enough.

David Miller and the PSC

In 2021, Professor David Miller was dismissed by Bristol University. For the last few years, he has served as a producer and regular participant in a show produced by the Iranian Regime’s state broadcaster, Press TV, called “Palestine Declassified”. The show engages in attempts – pathetic and sinister in equal measure – to try and ‘reveal’ what it sees as the extent of Zionist influence and control in British society, targeting both organisations and individuals.

When Miller was dismissed from his university role, the PSC published a statement which managed to simultaneously condemn his sacking while implicitly admitting how deeply problematic he was as an individual. The organisation’s statement included the following sentences: “It is crucial to apply depth, context, and clarity, and to avoid narratives that oversimplify the interlinks between groups which oppose actions in support of Palestinian rights, and Israeli state actors. Doing so obscures our understanding of the way political actors’ function. At worst, it can risk drawing on antisemitic tropes about Jewish power.”

Since then, if anything, Miller has made his thoughts on Zionism and Jews far less ambiguous. In August 2023, for example, he tweeted the following at the end of a typically rambling thread of posts:

“The facts:

“Jews are not discriminated against.

“They are over-represented in Europe, North America and Latin America in positions of cultural, economic and political power.

“They are therefore, in a position to discriminate against actually marginalised groups.”

Miller has not been shy about attacking institutions and people on the anti-Israel side of the equation whom he has deemed as insufficiently dedicated to the cause, from Omar Barghouti and the BDS movement, to Zohran Mamdani, whom he recently described as “a Zionist and a servant of Zionists”. The PSC has not escaped such critiques. In July 2024 Miller was talking darkly about “attempts to marginalise” those “who are taking the fight to the Zionists and genocide supporters. There is an issue with PSC and STW (Stop the War) nationally over deplatforming and marginalising anti-Zionist voices. We need to have a debate about such questions and about strategy in the movement.”

In May 2025, however, in the wake of the Chelmsford incident, Miller went nuclear on the PSC – specifically on Ben Soffa, the secretary of the organisation, who is Jewish. The aim of the piece Miller wrote appeared to essentially be to try and “prove” that Soffa, who is anti-Zionist and describes himself as such, is in fact some sort of crypto-Zionist. Effectively, his participation in Jewish communal life is held over him. The synagogue he chairs uses a Liberal Judaism prayerbook? Liberal Judaism is Zionist. That Jewish community sends a representative to the Board of Deputies? The Board is Zionist. Soffa’s parents? Zionists. He once expressed a fondness for Reform Judaism? Reform Judaism is Zionist. He worked for the Labour Party at the same time that Labour employed an Israeli who did his army service almost a decade earlier in Israel’s most elite cybersecurity unit (despite the fact that Soffa stated that they worked in different departments in a party which employed hundreds of people)? In Miller’s troubled mind, this is clearly suspicious.

In his article, Miller specifically cites what he describes as the PSC’s censorship of him “as well as other anti-Zionist activists, including Huda Ammori of Palestine Action and the British-Iraqi rapper Lowkey. And who can forget its blacklisting of Palestinian freedom fighter Leila Khaled?

“That there are actual believing Zionists in the highest levels of the organization starts to reorient our understanding toward the idea that the PSC has been, at best, penetrated or infiltrated by a Zionist asset, and, at worst, is itself an asset of the Zionist regime. And there must be questions about Soffa specifically. Was he placed in PSC to cause the damage that he evidently has?”

The answer, to anyone with a working brain, would be “no, you’re more barking than Crufts.” But the fact remains that the PSC is now being vocally attacked from the far-left (Miller’s article was published by “Mintpress News” known more generally for its pro-Iranian regime and Assadist stances).

But the PSC itself is clearly increasingly incapable of exercising control over its various cohorts. Take Dr Rahmeh Aladwan, a doctor whose regular rants about “Jewish supremacy” in the UK are well documented. PSC high command has steered well clear; its individual branches have not. Last month Aladwan was arrested (on the anniversary of 7 October she had tweeted a picture of one of the bulldozers used by Hamas to break down the border fence between Gaza and Israel on two years before, writing: “Glory to the breaking of the 17 year long illegal siege. Glory to the Palestinian resistance. Glory to our martyrs. Al-Aqsa flood. Palestine.”)

Later that day the Bristol branch of PSC posted on Instagram that Aladwan had been released, stating “Dr Rahmeh has faced repeated harassment and investigations for speaking out about Palestine and calling for justice. Today’s arrest sparked outrage and an incredible show of solidarity from supporters across the country.” The Gloucestershire branch of PSC claimed that “Dr. Rahmeh Aladwan is being silenced by the GMC following pressure from the Israeli lobby.”

Somewhat predictably, last week Aladwan, who has already appeared via video-link on Palestine Declassified to decry “Jewish supremacy”, posted a picture of herself and Miller meeting in person, and announcing “the launch of anti-Zionist movement (AZM). The umbrella group defining anti-Zionism and grounding our struggle in the thawabet to tackle Jewish supremacy.”

The thawabet, the Palestinian national charter created by the Palestinian National Council in 1968, lists among its points that, “The Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion will be considered Palestinians”, and that “armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. This is the overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase.”

In other words, it is a document dedicated to the ethnic cleansing of millions of Jewish people from Israel, and specifically dedicated to doing so via violent means.

The curious case of Corbyn

Perhaps the clearest example of the cracks emerging within the wider pro-Palestine movement have become apparent in the targeting of the most high-profile pro-Palestinian politician in Britain (and longtime patron of the PSC) Jeremy Corbyn.

Recently, Corbyn has been questioned at events organised by Your Party, the new political grouping created to coalesce around the former leader, by activists demanding to know if he is a Zionist. Corbyn and his entourage have seemed confused by the questions – and understandably so. This is a man whose support for the Palestinian cause is decades old, who once referred to both Hamas and Hezbollah as his “friends” (prior to the full proscription of both groups) and described how “Zionists… clearly have two problems. One is they don’t want to study history, and secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, they don’t understand English irony either.” The very idea is ludicrous.

At another Your Party event, where Corbyn was not present, an activist who had managed to gain access to the microphone talked about how, “If Corbyn’s Labour positions, the Labour left, are at the forefront of Your Party, we will not see any movement for Palestine succeed”. An increasingly bewildered looking Laura Alvarez (Jeremy Corbyn’s wife) found herself in the position of trying to take back the microphone from someone shouting “Free Palestine”, a position she agrees with. The speaker then moved on to a chant of “there is only one state, Palestine ’48”, before telling the crowd, “I am being kicked out because I asked if Corbyn will be pro-Palestine”.

Two weeks ago Corbyn moved to try and silence such people by stating that Your Party is committed to “absolute opposition to Zionism”, while throwing in a conspiracy theory about how “the whole Zionist project was about expanding Israel forevermore, which is exactly what Netanyahu is doing with the Greater Israel project.”

But the questions aimed at Corbyn did not come out of nowhere. In July, David Miller tweeted: “Jeremy Corbyn is a liberal, a Zionist, and a coward who — despite being buoyed by the most popular mass political movement in recent British history — threw it all away to the Zionist movement rather than stand and fight, betraying all his comrades and ensuring certain defeat. He is the last man in the land fit to lead a new socialist party. No lessons have been learned.”

A few weeks later, Asa Winstanley of Electronic Intifada accused Corbyn of “pandering to Zionism”. When a Corbynite responded saying that Corbyn was “anti-Zionist”, Winstanley responded saying: “I think you’ll find that Jeremy Corbyn has never said he is anti-Zionist. In fact, in a 2018 article he claimed there were ‘honourable’ Zionists and that it was ‘wrong’ to describe Zionism as racism”. Winstanley followed that up not long after by citing an interview with Corbyn and asking, among other things, “Why does he still refuse to say he’s anti-Zionist, now he’s free of Labour pressure?”

In late August, when Corbyn was first challenged directly in this regard, David Miller shared the video of that confrontation, stating “I know it’s hard to get your head around this, but we have to face facts. If not now, when? #DismantleZionism.”

Learning the lessons of history

It seems clear many anti-Zionists know very little about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – and what they do know will ultimately have been sourced from grotesquely one-sided works by writers such as Ilan Pappe, Avi Shlaim and Rashid Khalidi. I imagine relatively few of them, particularly among the younger generation, know much about the Abu Nidal organisation; not in terms of the terror attacks it carried out internationally in support of the Palestinian cause, but specifically how it brought itself to destruction. So, as a public service, I thought it might be helpful to provide that information.

The Abu Nidal organisation, named after the nom de guerre of its founder, Sabri Khalil al-Banna (“Abu Nidal” means “father of struggle”), split from the PLO in the 1970, over the position as to whether there should be any compromise whatsoever with Israel. The ANO maintained that there could be no solution other than a struggle to the death. It was subsequently responsible for the murders of hundreds of civilians around the world, in dozens of terror attacks.

But what the ANO would ultimately become better known for was the murder of hundreds of its own Palestinian members, accused of being traitors. As Abu Nidal’s paranoia grew, members of the group would regularly be tortured, including via the melting of plastic onto skin, frying their genitals, and whipping them until unconsciousness before ‘reviving’ them by rubbing salt into their wounds.

When the prison cells grew too full to house all the organisation’s members accused of treachery, newly suspected traitors would be buried alive, with nothing but a steel pipe connecting them to above to enable them to breathe. If (or rather when) Abu Nidal had determined their guilt to his own satisfaction, death would simply come by a bullet shot down that breathing tube.

Eventually, the organisation collapsed under the weight of its own paranoia.

It is up to the wider pro-Palestinian movement in Britain whether they decide that such a path – in terms of rhetoric, rather than torture and death – is something they particularly want to pursue. Zionists like me will certainly not mourn the movement’s inevitable self-destruction if they do.