Correspondence re J. Hall's view that pro-Palestine protests should be curtailed in light of attacks on Jews

In May 2026, Hall justified the banning of pro-Palestine marches in the wake of the Golders Green stabbings. He did this by asserting, but failing to establish, a causal claim between the marches and violence against Jews. On May 14th, we sent him a letter signed by 21 individuals including many eminent figures, and three institutions (International Centre for Justice for Palestinians, Jewish Voice for Liberation and Jews for Justice for Palestinians) drawing attention to a series of statements we found illogical. We summed our thoughts up in a blog.we wrote for CAMPAIN subscribers.

Hall wrote back on May 20th referring us to his After Bondi speech that he had given to the Policy Exchange think tank on Jan 13th. He claimed the demonstrators had failed to take care about collective demonisation of Jews. Indeed, he felt there was a national security emergency for UK Jews and that the precautionary principle could apply when considering the effect of demonisation of Jews, and Israelis, in public.

CAMPAIN wrote back on July 6th with a statement analysing the After Bondi speech, drawing attention to a triple conflation between:

opposition to a political belief (Zionism) with hostility towards the holders of that belief
Zionists and all Israelis/Jews
Individuals and groups of pro-Palestine protestors (that Hall had defamed on the basis of highly unrepresentative examples which were themselves misrepresented).

We thought he was both misinformed and misleading others about the pro-Palestine movement. He had treated pro-Palestine chants used on marches as targeting Jews for murder but offered no evidence to back this up. While claiming that Jews were being demonised by protestors he ignored demonisation of Pakistani Muslims and unprovoked violent attacks on pro-Palestine protesters. At no point in his speech did Hall show the slightest empathy with Palestinian supporters who were desperately trying to get the UK government to use its leverage on the international stage to help end the horror that Israel is visiting upon the Palestinians.

In later correspondence Hall said that some recent protest activity appeared to be directed at individuals in a way that singled them out as individuals because of race or nationality. We wrote back asking him to refrain from making such comments without solid evidence that a significant proportion of the demonstrators are behaving in this way. Hall declined to further discuss the matter.

A Jewish perspective on Hall’s statements

Leah Lavane and Jenny Manson, the co-Chairs of Jewish Voice for Liberation, and David Mond from CAMPAIN, followed up with a letter saying that Hall's assertion that demonstrators are motivated by the hatred of Jews contradicted their own experience as regular participants in the Jewish Bloc attending demonstrations. He had moreover repeatedly failed to provide numerical evidence for his assertions, e.g. about red triangles, and references to Zionist scum.

In their letter they held the Jewish Establishment (Chief Rabbi, Board of Deputies etc.) responsible for any demonisation of Jews, and likewise those members of the community who turned a blind eye to what is being done in their name to the Palestinians.

Jonathan Hall’s response to this letter was as brief as it was to others. He dug his heels in and insisted that Jews were being demonised by the demonstrators.