The following piece contains depiction and description of hate, images of hate gestures (namely Nazi salutes) and one instance of a slur about disabled people.

There is a crisis fermenting in British Jewry; it is being caused by Stop the Hate (StH). Since its formation in March 2024 under the name Enough is Enough (unrelated to the similarly named 2018 anti-Corbyn campaign), the group and its satellite organisations – Our Fight, Christian Action Against Antisemitism (CAAA) and The Society of Independent Legal Observers (SILO) – have become Israel’s most prolific defenders on London’s streets. 

With a core of about a hundred people, StH stages counter-protests in north and central London, pickets supposedly anti-Israel institutions – The Times, LBC and Pret a Manger — and organises marches attended by thousands. StH demonstrations have been addressed by Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis, the Board of Deputies has repeatedly co-organised rallies with them, and they have received sustained praise from the Israeli Embassy.

While the Board of Deputies and Jewish Leadership Council condemned Tommy Robinson as “a thug who represents the very worst of Britain”, StH has cosied up to his far-right anti-immigrant movement. Despite their claim to oppose “all forms of prejudice”, StH members publicly parrot rhetoric reminiscent of Robinson’s far-right movement and have begun openly courting his followers. Their demonstrations are hotspots for vile abuse of any perceived critic of Israel, at times through physical violence. With Robinson on the rise, and Jewish communal organisations supporting StH, the time has come for an examination of StH and its satellites – who they are, how they act, and their relationship with Britain’s far-right.

Mapping the clique

StH, Our Fight and CAAA may appear separate, but their “membership” is largely the same hundred-person clique with any real difference being tactical. Co-founded by Itai Galmudy, a publican and veteran of the IDF’s 2014 invasion of Gaza, who is the group’s most visual senior figure, StH organises the static counter-protests to London’s large pro-Palestine marches during which Galmudy and his lieutenants distribute pre-printed placards, lead chants and blast songs from large speakers. 

At these protests, a cadre of StH regulars film pro-Palestine protestors. According to a recruitment leaflet distributed by StH at the 2024 March Against Antisemitism, the footage captured by these people is “systematically documented, leading to complaints, crime reports, and identification of offenders”. Although the footage is often used to complain to the police, it is also farmed out to several anonymous Twitter pages, where Palestine activists are doxxed and sometimes fired from their jobs. Three men in this StH subgroup operate under the name the Society of Independent Legal Observers (SILO). 

In his telling, Mark Birbeck set up Our Fight with “friends” in October 2023, to encourage non-Jews to defend Israel. (“I’m not Jewish, I’m British,” Birbeck told an interviewer in March 2025, as if the two were mutually exclusive). By cross-referencing the named contributors to Our Fight’s blog, those “friends” seem to be Birbeck’s old comrades from the LM Network, a peculiar cadre of ex-communists who migrated to the right in the 1990s, courting controversy to gain notoriety. 

In 2000, the LM Network was in effect sued out of existence when its magazine LM (formerly Living Marxism) lost a libel suit to ITN for engaging in what Nick Cohen called “the Holocaust denial of the 1990s”; publishing an article by Thomas Deichmann claiming that photographs and descriptions of Serbian concentration camps holding Bosnian Muslims had been fabricated in order to spread false accusations of war crimes. The LM Network regrouped in the Academy of Ideas and the website Spiked.

From this milieu Birbeck first formed Our Fight, a blog in which almost exclusively LM Network alumni, including Deichmann, pontificate on Israel, antisemitism and refer readers to Spiked articles. Birbeck’s comrades, including his wife Jan MacVarish, co-founder of British Friends of Israel, attended StH’s first counter-protests. In time, Our Fight undertook its own more disruptive and legally dicey actions. Initially aided by his fellow LM alumni, but soon coming to rely on regulars at StH demonstrations and the evangelical Christian Kurpa Patel, Birbeck wades into the middle of static pro-Palestine crowds with, among other signs, a banner reading “Stop The Lies – There Is No Genocide”. 

At pro-Palestine marches in London, where StH holds a static counter-protest, Birbeck has repeatedly led a group under the auspices of Our Fight to block the marches. As Birbeck stated in an interview, these disruptions are intended to undercut the “message” of pro-Palestine protests: “which is to say Israel is committing genocide”. Indeed, Birbeck told a Palestine protestor outside the Foreign Office in November 2024: “other than the Holocaust, I think that there’s not really been a genocide”.

Videos of Birbeck, Patel and others being removed by police for stopping Palestine marches or disrupting protests are shared by Our Fight, StH, and those who support them to feed the narrative of “two-tier policing” – which claims that the police are appeasing, or doing the bidding of, Palestine protestors. These disruptions, observes veteran MET police officer Chris Hobbes, are a “significant problem for the MET at pro-Palestine protests.” 

Right-of-centre media spin on these incidents have not always helped the alleged provocateurs. When multiple outlets claimed a member of SILO and StH had been arrested because he was Jewish, the MET replied in a lengthy statement that he had been arrested for allegedly breaking the Public Order Act mandated separation of protestors and counter-protestors. Regulars at London pro-Palestine demonstrations have learned to recognise the individuals in StH, Our Fight or SILO who walk into their demonstrations to provoke or disrupt them, and to point them out to the police, who will usually remove or, if they see fit, arrest them.

Reverend Hayley Ace, nominally the head of the largely inactive CAAA with her husband, Reverend Timothy Gutmann, regularly speaks at StH’s protests. The couple lead what the Jewish Chronicle describes as “the fiercely pro-Israel” evangelical Christian Lea Valley Church. Remarkably ignorant about Judaism, Ace’s opposition to anti-Semitism is couched in her defence of Israel. As she proclaims: “Jesus is coming back soon – TO ISRAEL.”

Ace’s religious fervor is interwoven with an intense devotion to conspiracy theory. She has repeatedly declared that the “100% WICKED & GODLESS” pro-Palestine movement is a Trojan horse for Muslim conquest and colonisation, led by the “Islamic Regime” and funded by Qatar. In an interview, she erroneously asserted: “about 20% of Muslims are radical, which amounts to 220 million”, later citing as her source noted anti-Muslim activist Bridgette Gabriel (who said she got the statistic from “all intelligence services around the world”). For her pro-Israel activism, Ace was named Honorary Woman of Distinction by the charity Jewish Care in September 2024.

Stop the Hate versus British Jews 

StH reserves special ire for Jews whom they perceive as disagreeing with them. The group deplatformed rabbis Charley Baginsky and Josh Levy in August 2025 at the National March for the Hostages, which StH organised with endorsements and help from a range of British Jewish organisations, because the two rabbis said: “the Palestinian people, like the Jewish people, have the right to self-determination.” That middle-of-the-road statement prompted Jack Miller, a StH regular, to grab the microphone while Reverend Ace, large earrings shaped like Christian crosses dangling from her ears, appeared to order the rabbis off the stage.

At the core of StH’s conduct is the belief that Jews critical of Israel are not Jews; StH’s commitment to defending Jews does not apply to them. In the words of Gill Levy, a member of StH and SILO, a Jew critical of Israel is “a self-hating Jew” and a “self-hating white person.” StH has for over a year been in a duel of sorts with the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN), whose weekly Friday pickets, first near the Israeli Ambassador’s Swiss Cottage residence and now usually outside the Israeli Embassy, they occasionally counter-protest. 

These anti-IJAN counter-protests have taken on a reliable pattern. While StH members monitor IJAN to get pro-Palestine Jews arrested, Galmudy and company yell abuse at picketers. A compilation of recordings shared by IJAN of their 28 February 2025 protest gives a flavour of StH’s anger at pro-Palestine Jews – Galmudy shouting at them, “you represent the lowest of humanity”, while a poorly masked StH regular, his body shaking with rage, cries “you’re frauds! you’re not Jewish!”, as other StH attendees tear down an IJAN banner and sabotage the sound system. 

Non-Jews in StH appear entitled to police who is Jewish. While addressing a StH rally outside King’s College London’s Strand Campus, Reverend Ace berated Jewish students who had gathered in counter-protest. She said: “You are appropriating Judaism. You’re tokenizing Jews and it is disgusting. We see you! You’ve covered your faces because you know that you should be ashamed of what you stand for”.

At times these incidents have included acts of violence. At the 18 May 2024 pro-Palestine march in London, Judith, a Jewish woman (who recounted this incident to me and whose name has been anonymised for her safety), was moving past the StH counter-protest when she was grabbed by a policeman and shoved towards the counter-protestors, seemingly because she was wearing a kippah (she was also wearing a t-shirt reading “Jews Say Ceasefire Now”). 

Pushed by the policeman against the metal barrier separating the march and the counter-protest, Judith was wrenched by her hair by attendees of StH’s counter-protest, who spat on her, tried to remove her kippah and made explicit physical and sexual threats because she was Jewish. She was successfully extricated by pro-Palestine stewards. A policeman then informed her she should leave immediately because the fact that she was visibly Jewish and pro-Palestine was angering StH counter-protestors.

Even the groundless perception of criticism has triggered StH protestors. On 23 August 2025, the group held a march through Hampstead to protect the “largely Jewish area” from a Palestine protest which never materialised, if it existed at all. Martin and his mother Maria were sitting outside a café near Hampstead Heath (interviewed for this article, Martin asked they only be identified by their first names). When the marchers halted in front of them, music blaring from their mobile loudspeakers, Maria asked if they could keep moving due to the loud music, adding: “it’s Shabbat, I’d like to have my tea.” StH members responded by calling mother and son “terrorist sympathisers”, “IRA supporters”, and “kneecapers”; Maria later speculated to Martin that the marchers incorrectly thought her accent was Irish. As Martin tried to rationalise with them, marchers crowded around him and his mother, some filming, calling them both anti-Semites, and not caring when Martin responded, “we’re Jewish.” 

Other incidents began breaking out. According to Martin, marchers began shouting “shame on you rapists” for no apparent reason at three Pakistani men also sitting outside the café. Down the street, a store manager interviewed for this article said he felt compelled to open his shop door to extricate a female passerby who had got into an argument with marchers and quickly found herself, he said, “surrounded” in his doorway by marchers who were “grabbing and shoving her.” Similarly hemmed in, Martin brushed away a camera pushed into his face. He recalled that “within seconds I had ten or twelve men pinning me up against a big car, a four-by-four. They were pulling my arms and threatening me. I got bruised on my left side…a substantial bruise.” Police intervened and the marchers moved on. 

At no point in the entire altercation had Martin or Maria said anything about Israel or Palestine; a simple request about music volume was enough for StH protestors to turn on them. Martin reported the incident to the Community Security Trust, who admitted in a phone conversation, said Martin, that “it was a very bad image” for StH, on a march supposedly to protect Jews, to have “knowingly attacked what they knew to be a Jewish mother and son.”

Bringing in the far right

Despite Galmudy’s early attempt to portray StH as respectable moderates, its members oppose any Palestinian autonomy and have repeatedly been filmed openly airing racist views. Group regulars made headlines when they vandalised and, according to one report, “barricaded” the Palestinian Embassy in Hammersmith. Palestinians are “all born and bred evil retarded savages” declared Charlie Keeble, a StH activist, in a video he posted. 

Such gleeful dehumanisation has been repeatedly expressed at StH protests. From a StH regular twerking to Eyal Golan’s “Am Yisrael Chai” in front of a banner with names and pictures of dead Gazan children, to Gill Levy calling a Palestinian protestor “ape face”, members openly air their repugnant views. Nor is this abuse confined to pro-Palestine protestors, as a south-Asian press photographer found when a StH activist approached him and repeatedly called out: “you ain’t British”. When the photographer disagreed, the man doubled down: “British? Seriously, look at the colour of you.”

Undergirding this self-righteous zeal is the widespread belief in StH that they are defending Britain from “Islamists”. None of them explain what the term means – though it seems to be synonymous with Muslims, and fuels their portrayal of the entire pro-Palestine movement as the vanguard of “Islamist” conquest. “Stand up for your homeland,” Galmudy ​​exhorted a StH counter-protest in May last year, “stand up for this great country. Don’t let it be taken over by Islamists who want sharia law!” In his thinking, Israel is the dam holding back Muslim conquest. 

For some in the group, immigration is a part of this narrative. The British government, warns one StH regular, is “letting in radical Islamists in their thousands” who are joining the pro-Palestine movement “to destroy the west.” With falling birthrates “in this country”, Ace claims that in a generation, “other cultures, who are having multiple children, living on benefits, having multiple wives” will take over Britain. She asks her followers: “So, what are you going to do about it?”

From this fear grew StH’s collaboration with the anti-immigrant far-right. As one StH regular, commenting under the Instagram account @ocean_r_vegas, said of Tommy Robinson’s movement when it was condemned by the Board of Deputies: “if push comes to shove we need their physical support.” With a shared belief that Britain is being invaded, and the rise of a far-right which believes in a Judeo-Christian alliance against Islam, StH’s leadership appears willing to accept support from some of the most vile elements in British politics – from retweeting the neo-fascist party Britain First, to allowing far-right activists into their ranks.

At rallies co-organised by StH (then under its original name Enough is Enough) at Phoenix Cinema in May 2024 and later outside UCL, the anti-fascist research group Red Flare noted the presence of prominent neo-fascist activists. One of them was Brian Stovell, a veteran neo-fascist  who was arrested in February 2023 after making what the police described as “a Nazi-style salute” to trans liberation protestors in Honor Oak. The following month, he was pictured unrepentant with comrades in Dover. According to his livestreams, Stovell is a regular attendee of StH rallies, only temporarily ceasing his involvement last summer to livestream anti-immigrant and neo-fascist rallies across the country.

The longstanding presence of neo-fascists notwithstanding, StH’s collaboration with Tommy Robinson’s wider movement evolved slowly. Niyak Ghorbani seems to have helped bring the two together. A hero to both for his numerous arrests for disrupting pro-Palestine protests while holding a “Hamas is Terrorist” sign, Ghorbani, an anti-Muslim activist and self-described journalist, does not hide his views. In June 2024, he advised in an Instagram follower Q&A: “If you want to help Israel, focus solely on the destruction of Israel's enemies and never sympathize with them. As for UK (everywhere), do not trust any Musl!ms😊.” 

Ghorbani was featured in Tommy Robinson’s film Lawfare, spoke on stage at the latter’s June 2024 rally in Parliament Square, and was invited to the front of the London march by Robinson’s supporters in February 2025. He embraces being called far-right – “the only people who risk their lives for their country are labeled [sic] ‘FAR-RIGHT’ by the media!” he wrote on Twitter. At time of publication, Ghorbani has been in court at least fifteen times for alleged infractions in the past year and a half. Ghorbani and Birbeck are the only two members of StH’s network who do pro-Israel agitation full time, aided by having all their legal fees covered by the charity Campaign Against Antisemitism.

Dangerous mingling

Three days before the anti-immigrant riots in the summer of 2024, Birbeck, Reverend Gutmann and other StH regulars marched with their own banner among Robinson’s supporters in London. The violence of the anti-immigrant riots was condemned by StH. But support for the anti-immigrant right did not seem to lessen among the group. As Yochy Davis, a prominent member of StH said: “Now days - In the UK 🇬🇧 Anyone White, who cares about their country is considered – ‘Far Right.’” To date, the only sitting MPs to have spoken at a StH event are Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice and Sam Rankin, a Conservative proponent of mass deportations. 

By mid-2025, with Robinson out of prison and his street movement growing, StH began publicly collaborating with his followers again, inviting Mahyar Tousi, who helped organise the July 2024 march of Robinson’s supporters which Birbeck and others attended. Addressing a StH rally in May 2025, Tousi told the crowd, “we’re not just here against Islam, Islamism…destroying the west and the whole world actually” but to envision a new Britain, one which Tousi and seemingly many in StH believe Tommy Robinson will one day create.

Recognising the momentum of Tommy Robinson’s movement in September 2025, Birbeck and others attempted a union of Robinson’s supporters and the pro-Israel street movement. Gill Levy of SILO and StH rhetorically linked the two – citing Galmudy’s metaphor of pro-Israel groups as “the tip of the spear” against the “Islamist mob.” Levy added: “next week, the Giant which is the Great British public is waking up, hungry for free speech and unity.” That “giant” was Robinson’s over hundred thousand strong “Unite the Kingdom” march through central London, that Our Fight announced was “a march we should all be joining.” 

On the day, Birbeck led dozens of activists from StH and Our Fight in joining Robinson’s supporters, where they were filmed repeatedly chanting “you can shove your Palestine up your hole!”, and mingling with far-right activists as they belted out the Islamophobic chant “Allah, Allah, who the fuck is Allah?”. Ghorbani mixed with the crowd while Galmudy stood in front of the assembling march, watching. In a first, those with Birbeck passed out leaflets for Our Fight to Robinson’s followers, since the group is explicitly for non-Jews, openly urging them to join their pro-Israel street demonstrations.

There has been no public indication that Galmudy and others disagree with advertising Our Fight to Robinson supporters. After a summer away, the neo-fascist Brian Stovell returned to StH for their 11 November Kentish Town demonstration, where he was welcomed with enthusiasm. One StH regular said: “We all follow you.” Stovell, with evident amazement, observed: “everybody seems to know my name around here”. Gesturing at the pro-Palestine protestors across the street, one StH regular assured his frustrated comrade that “Tommy Robinson will sort all the fuckers out.”

Union with the far-right

The recruitment of Robinson supporters seems to have driven a more militant shift in the group. At a StH protest in April 2025 opposite the SOAS pro-Palestine encampment, attendees were filmed joking about shooting and slitting the throats of pro-Palestine students. When King’s College London students last December protested an on-campus event involving the Israeli Embassy, however, the violence was real. StH counter-protestors chanting “IDF” surrounded the students and repeatedly assaulted them, in one instance kicking a student in the head and then attempting to jump on him (the StH counter-protestor missed and hit the pavement).

While StH and Our Fight organised and led this January’s protests in London against the Iranian government, Robinson supported them, publicising and attending their 11 January demonstration on Whitehall, at which Galmudy, Birbeck and Ghorbani spoke. At the rally, the inclusion of Robinson’s followers was not entirely harmonious, as evidenced by the Robinson-supporting livestreamer who assailed a member of StH and couple wearing Israeli flags – saying “the Jews are teaming up with the Muslims to fuck up Europe.” 

Robinson himself was in the crowd, also livestreaming. As he wove among those holding signs, he was accompanied by Shabab Zaheri, wearing a lanyard indicating he was one of StH’s designated event staff. Like Ghorbani, Zaheri is an Iranian monarchist and regular attendee of StH demonstrations. He had repeatedly assaulted King’s pro-Palestine students a month prior, footage of which he shared with his seventeen thousand Instagram followers. With Zaheri accompanying him, Robinson interviewed rally attendees, filming as StH regulars approached him to thank him and urged him to “take back the country.” 

Having come to rely on the same hundred-or-so people, StH and its network have failed to create a mass base of active support among British Jews. This is likely why they have begun recruiting from Robinson’s movement. Nevertheless, the embrace of the group by the Jewish community’s supposedly respectable institutions is a damning indictment of their rot and moral corruption.

Apart from those interviewed, all of this investigation is based on what StH and its network have said and done publicly. Their behaviour is obvious to anyone who looks. Yet they are supported by the Campaign Against Antisemitism and receive fawning coverage in the Jewish Chronicle, while its leadership is fêted by the Israeli Embassy. Most disgustingly, the Board of Deputies (BoD) has the audacity to publicly condemn Tommy Robinson while aiding and co-organising with a group that spews rhetoric identical to Robinson’s, has long harboured known neo-fascists in its ranks, and defends Israel to the point of attacking those who criticise it, including Jews. 

As fissures deepen within British Jewry over Israel, the BoD and a wide range of “mainstream” Jewish religious and communal groups appear content to allow StH to inject “the very worst of Britain” into the community they claim to hold dear.

Stop the Hate did not respond to a request for comment sent via the contact portal on their website. Our Fight, Christian Action Against Antisemitism, Campaign Against Antisemitism, Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis’ Office, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Mahyar Tousi and Niyak Ghorbani did not respond to an emailed request for comment. The Society of Independent Legal Observers did not respond to a request for comment sent to their Instagram. Nor did Gill Levy in a message sent to his blog.