By Steve Winston, Managing Director, National Jewish Assembly
There are legal stunts. There are political farces. And then there’s this: Hamas, the genocidal Islamist terror cult responsible for the most barbaric mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, has filed a petition in the United Kingdom to lift its designation as a terrorist organisation.
On the surface, it is a case so lacking in moral seriousness that it ought to have been dismissed with a flick of the judge’s pen. Instead, it is being entertained – and the rot it reveals is as dangerous as the application itself.
Hamas’s legal petition argues the designation is “politically motivated” and “restricts free speech.” That’s rich, coming from a group whose very raison d’être is the annihilation of Israel, the subjugation of Jews, and the establishment of a caliphate governed by medieval theocracy. On October 7, 2023, Hamas demonstrated its nature clearly: kidnapping toddlers, burning families alive, gang-raping women next to the corpses of their friends. These were not “resistance” fighters. They were death squads.
And yet, this is the organisation now petitioning for legitimacy in the UK courts. A group that still holds Israeli hostages, fires rockets indiscriminately at civilians, and celebrates martyrdom like it’s a national sport. The very fact this legal gambit is being taken seriously speaks volumes about Britain’s moral confusion and political cowardice.
Even more revealing than the case itself are the individuals behind it. Leading Hamas’s legal charge is Fahad Ansari, a solicitor who has referred to Hamas as a “legitimate resistance movement” and claimed it is “protecting the Palestinian people from UK-sponsored genocide.” Ansari has further asserted that “Hamas is more popular than ever,” that “it is Zionism, not Hamas, that needs to be eradicated,” and that “Israeli hostages were extremely fortunate not to be Palestinians.” This is not legal advocacy. This is jihadi apologism with a law degree.
Joining him is barrister Frank Magennis, who describes himself as “radicalised” around Palestine, proudly used a photo of Hamas gunmen invading Israel on October 7 as his social media banner, and believes Zionists “will increasingly find themselves shunned and treated as reprehensible pariahs.” Magennis has openly endorsed the violent uprising known as the Intifada, while labeling Gaza an “open-air prison” that punishes Palestinians for being “insufficiently Jewish.”
This isn’t a legal team. It’s a propaganda unit in robes. But the real danger lies not in their bile – free speech, even repugnant, is not a crime – but in the UK government’s silence. For many British Jews and other citizens who cherish liberal values, that silence is deafening. Will the Home Office stand firm? Will MPs rally to defend a position that, until five minutes ago, was utterly uncontroversial: that Hamas is a terrorist group?
There is growing fear that this government – or the next – might cave. That in the name of “community cohesion” or electoral calculus, they might entertain this grotesque revisionism. That a nation which once stared down fascism in Europe might now dither over whether to offend Hamas sympathisers in Birmingham or Bradford.
No country that values human rights, democracy, or basic decency should ever flirt with de-proscribing a group that uses child soldiers, fires rockets at civilians, and trains its population to glorify genocide. More than 15 countries, from the United States to Australia, have designated Hamas as a terrorist group. Britain joined them in full in 2021. That designation must remain.
Hamas is not merely unfit to be removed from the terror list – it is the textbook definition of why such lists exist. And yet, because this case is going ahead, Britain must confront an uncomfortable truth: that our system can be gamed by extremists in tailored suits, and that our courts can be used to launder the reputations of theocrats with bloodied hands.
Britain must send a clear message: No legal theatre, no radical barrister, and no jihadi agitprop will ever whitewash Hamas. And if the UK government cannot say this loudly and proudly, then it’s not Hamas that needs to be proscribed again – it’s our own political courage that needs to be rediscovered.
