Britain must not fall for this grotesque legal attempt to rehabilitate Hamas and whitewash its crimes
10 April 2025, 14:34
This week, three British lawyers submitted a legal claim to remove Hamas from the list of proscribed terrorist organisations in the UK. Campaign Against Antisemitism has wasted no time in immediately coming in to bat against them.
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Most people have rightly reacted to news of the claim with a mix of bewilderment and outrage. But the claim that they are bringing is indicative of a deeper rot.
Let’s remind ourselves of the group that these lawyers are representing.
For decades, Hamas dedicated itself to the murder of Jews, killing more innocents than any other Palestinian terrorist organisation – and there was plenty of competition – during the Second Intifada.
Hamas mastered the deadly and barbaric technique of suicide bombing — blowing up buses, coffee shops, Passover celebrations, discos and anywhere else where it could find innocent civilians.
Men, women, children, Holocaust survivors – the more they killed and maimed, the greater their delight.
After Israel clamped down, Hamas turned to missiles and terror tunnels, firing indiscriminately from above and trying to attack and abduct innocents from below, provoking numerous conflicts between Gaza, which it rules with an iron fist, and Israel.
Then, on 7th October 2023, it capped this rampage of terror with a barbaric invasion of Southern Israel, firing rockets and leading a campaign of abuse and murder of some 1,200 people in cold blood.
Hamas terrorists used sexual violence and other humiliating techniques to maximise the suffering of their victims, some of whom were burned alive, and recorded their acts with pride, having put into practice their radical antisemitic theology.
This was the worst antisemitic massacre since the Holocaust.
Among the victims were eighteen British citizens, a point the lawyers bringing this case seem to have missed when they claim in their brief that “Hamas does not target British citizens either in the UK or anywhere else.”
Maybe Jews don’t count. Indeed, more British citizens were killed on 7th October 2023 than in any foreign terror attack since 9/11.
They also took over 250 people hostage — including Emily Damari, a British-Israeli national then aged 27, who was held for 471 days — nearly 60 of whom remain in captivity in Gaza today.
That is who these lawyers are representing.
In a particularly grotesque irony, the case to de-proscribe Hamas is a human rights claim.
Yes, a group that has deprived well in excess of a thousand Jews of their lives is basing its appeal on human rights.
Specifically, the case argues that the proscription of Hamas deprives British citizens of their rights to freedom of expression and protest.
But haven’t we been told for a year and a half that all the protesters on our streets and the activists who have spent months intimidating Jews on campuses, in cultural institutions and elsewhere are not terrorist sympathisers? So whose rights are being curtailed, exactly?
Are there people in Britain who are desperate to be able to reveal that they support Hamas and its aspiration to annihilate the Jewish people?
This case appears to rest on the claim that there are.
Whatever the lawyers may say, this claim demonstrates that Hamas is struggling by any means necessary to stay afloat as pressure is brought to bear on the murderous Islamist group.
If Hamas is no longer proscribed, it can be funded from the UK.
That is likely what the organisation is really after.
Clearly, the Home Secretary must deny this application, which is what she implied on LBC this morning that she intends to do, and if this desperate claim somehow makes it to the courts, it must be refused there as well.
It is notable that this case happened to be submitted on the same day that our lawyers wrote to the Crown Prosecution Service about another matter: a Hamas-affiliated migrant who arrived in the UK by dinghy.
After we revealed his past activities and rhetoric, he was arrested on immigration charges, but we are now calling for a prosecution on terror charges as well.
Hamas isn’t confined to Gaza, and if we don’t take a stand against it now – on all fronts – it will be even more active right here at home as well.
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Gideon Falter is Chief Executive of Campaign Against Antisemitism
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The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official LBC position.
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