'There is little which is Jewish about Israel': Haim Bresheeth on antisemitism and Gaza
Submitted by Joe Gill on Fri, 05/15/2026 - 16:12
Israeli-British author and filmmaker warns of UK 'social collapse' over antisemitism and complicity in the Gaza genocide as thousands gather in London to commemorate Nakba Day
A protester holds a placard at a demonstration organised by Jewish Bloc, Jews For Palestine in central London on 11 November 2023 (AFP) Off Thousands will be marching in London on Saturday to mark the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948, and protest more than two and a half years of Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza. Among the marchers will be Haim Bresheeth-Zabner, the British-Israeli author and filmmaker and son of Holocaust survivors.
Nearby, Tommy Robinson's far right Unite the Kingdom march will also be taking place, with fears of possible violence and clashes given the pro-Israel and anti-Muslim views of Robinson's followers.
Bresheeth will be among many Jewish people who regularly attend pro-Palestine marches in London. The Jewish bloc on the Palestine marches has been prominent from early on and has been welcomed by thousands of others in open solidarity, Bresheeth says.
"I have never felt more welcome. Ask any Jews who took part in the marches, we are never more accepted, or more part of British public life than at those demonstrations, at which there is no violence whatsoever."
Born and raised in Israel, Bresheeth is the co-founder of the Jewish Network for Palestine, and the author of the best-selling Introduction to the Holocaust (1997, with Stuart Hood) and an An Army Like No Other: How the Israel Defence Forces Made a Nation (2020). His films include State of Danger (1989, BBC2), a documentary on the first Palestinian Intifada.
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Antisemitic and Islamophobic attacks are both on the rise in the UK. Following the stabbing of two Jewish men in London last month, the focus of politicians and the media is on antisemitic attacks.
Bresheeth knows what antisemitism looks like: 17 of his mother's family were killed in the Holocaust and his parents lived through Nazism.
"My family was destroyed by antisemitism and... my father spent a long time in Auschwitz and another camp," Bresheeth told Middle East Eye.
The conflation of criticism of Israel with hatred of Jews in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition adopted in the UK and much of the West marks a break with earlier definitions of antisemitism and is deeply problematic, he says.
'If you killed a Jew, you didn't actually do anything wrong, because their life was not protected by the law. In a sense, it was allowed to kill them'
- Haim Bresheeth, author and filmmaker
"If my father was told about this [new definition of antisemitism], he would be very amused," he said.
The son of Polish Jewish survivors of Auschwitz, who were liberated in 1945, he explains what antisemitism entailed in Europe in the 1930s and 40s: "Antisemitism meant Jews were banned from any part of society, including sitting on a park bench or in a first-class train carriage.
"If you killed a Jew, you didn't actually do anything wrong, because their life was not protected by the law. In a sense, it was allowed to kill them."
He compares this directly to what is happening in occupied Palestine and Israel: "This is the situation now of course in Israel towards Palestinians."
He does not see what is happening now as classic antisemitism when compared to the systematic exclusion that occurred in Europe in the 1930s.
Instead, Bresheeth sees something else: the weaponising of Jewish fear, as seen following the stabbings on 29 April of two Jewish men in Golders Green, a predominantly Jewish neighbourhood in northwest London, which was declared a terrorist incident by police.
A 45-year-old suspect, Essa Suleiman, was charged with attempted murder over the attacks, as well as over the stabbing of a Somali man in south London earlier in the day. He left a psychiatric hospital in London in the days before the attacks.
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In the wake of the stabbings, Prime Minister Keir Starmer called a Cobra emergency meeting, and a government summit on antisemitism, raising the perception of threat to the highest level. "The narrative now is that Jews are attacked everywhere," said Bresheeth.
Gaza and antisemitism
Speaking to Middle East Eye two years ago, Bresheeth predicted that the support from British Jewish leadership groups and the British political elite for Israel's genocide would lead to rising antisemitism in the UK.
He says billions of people are repelled by Israel's actions in Gaza, but that "most understand that it is nothing to do with Israel claiming to be a Jewish state".
"The history and tradition of Judaism is obviously the best proof that there is little which is Jewish about Israel, and nothing in Judaism is supporting the genocide," he says.
'The history and tradition of Judaism is the best proof that there is little which is Jewish about Israel, and nothing in Judaism is supporting the genocide'
- Haim Bresheeth, author and filmmaker
But he warns that "people who are less educated and less knowledgeable about Jewish history are more likely to believe these Israeli, Zionist claims," he says, adding that they may also be swayed by the "ardent support by most mainstream Jewish organisations in the diaspora... who deny that a genocide is even taking place".
For such people, antisemitic bias and anti-Jewish sentiments are likely to increase, he warns.
He also sees a profound double standard at work about the treatment of attacks on different groups in Britain.
Bresheeth was present at a protest outside Downing Street on 22 April against the US-Israeli war on Iran where he said pro-monarchist Iranians made threats against Iranians who stood against the war.
Protesters told the police they felt threatened and appealed for protection, he said. But nothing was done until a protester, named in the media as Mohammed Reza, was stabbed.
"A member of the public had to stop him [the knifeman] because the police had not moved to stop him," said Bresheeth.
According to police, five men were arrested at the scene in connection with the incident, which they described as "the result of a dispute between individuals attending the protest".
A 37-year-old man, Vahid Madaffard, was later charged with "causing grievous bodily harm with intent and possession of a bladed article in a public place".
In contrast to the Golders Green stabbing, Bresheeth says the attack "was totally ignored by the mainstream media - and most people have not even heard about it".
A Met police spokesperson told MEE: "We are aware of the impact of global events on our communities in London and are working hard to ensure they feel safe and supported. We take threats of violence extremely seriously and will investigate matters reported to us."
False claims
Bresheeth has been to all but one of the London Gaza protests. "These marches include thousands of Jews, who are active to support international law - the idea those marches are in any way antisemitic is deluded," he says.
In order to maintain the idea that marchers, including Jewish groups, are antisemitic "hate festivals", while in reality they are marching because they believe the British state is complicit with an ongoing genocide, the truth must be bent wildly out of shape.
'We are in an upside down world; our elite - the media - is supporting the breaking of international law, refusing to admit this genocide is taking place'
- Haim Bresheeth
"If you want to avoid reality you can hold your hand very close to your eyes and say there is no sun," he says, referring to the denial of genocide in Gaza by the British government.
"We are in an upside down world, it's an inversion of reality; our elite - the media - is supporting the breaking of international law, refusing to admit this genocide is taking place."
This marks a new kind of political crisis in Britain and across the West, he warns.
"What we see are signs of social collapse, losing connection with reality, which is the same as what is happening in Israel - blaming the whole world as antisemitic."
Arrested on terror charge
He rejects the claim by Met chief Mark Rowley, disputed by the march organisers, that the demonstrations were deliberately planned to pass synagogues and intimidate Jewish Londoners.
"We never came near a synagogue, we never attacked anyone, everyone is peaceful... This is a very ugly and disgusting lie in order to stop our marches against the genocide."
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The 80-year-old has himself fallen foul of the UK government crackdown on Gaza protests. On 1 November 2024, Bresheeth was arrested near the Israeli embassy.
He says he had spoken at an open-air meeting "quoting from Israeli newspapers an ex-general who said Israel cannot win against Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis".
A Met police spokesperson told MEE in a statement: "Officers arrested a 78-year-old at a demonstration in the Finchley Road area on the evening of Friday, 1 November on suspicion of showing support for a proscribed organisation. This person had been a speaker at the demonstration. He was taken into custody and was later released with no further action."
UK: Starmer condemns antisemitic attack after two Jewish men stabbed in London Read More »
Bresheeth says the police took him to the police station but kept him outside and did not allow him to sit down for several hours.
"I am a cancer and heart patient… They didn't allow me to take my medication, which could have meant I would perish. I was kept outside a police station for three hours. When I was too weak to stand they brought me a chair. I couldn't eat or drink, then at last I was arrested. The charges were really bizarre."
The Met spokesperson said in reference to the incident: "After the man was taken into custody officers asked about his medical history, as is protocol. He was seen by a healthcare professional who assisted in administering his required medication after officers went to retrieve it from his home address."
Bresheeth says he was questioned for more than two hours by counter-terror police officers "asking me questions that they knew are totally meaningless, because I was a terror suspect. This is a sick society."
Around 3,200 people have been arrested for taking part in protests and declaring support for the proscribed group Palestine Action.
"What did they do to justify their arrest?" asks the author.
He contrasts this with the fact that hundreds of Jewish young men from the UK have gone to fight in Gaza where many war crimes and crimes against humanity have been documented, but British authorities take no action against them.
"What kind of democracy are we living in?"
Witness to war crimes
Bretheeth's journey to becoming a committed peace activist began more than half a century ago. Like all young Israelis, Bresheeth served as a soldier, and was deployed in three wars, before turning against Israel "as an engine of chaos", and moving to England in the 1970s.
Bresheeth last fought for Israel during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, he says.
"I went there like an idiot and realised the minute I arrived it was a mistake. That war made me an anti-Zionist. I realised that Zionism cannot exist without war, cannot exist without chaos.
"Since returning from that war, I was an activist against Zionism."
Bresheeth first served during the 1967 war as a communications officer, aged 21. "I believed in the claim we were a moral army," he admits.
'It became clear to me that we are not a moral army, we are not keeping to international law'
- Haim Bresheeth
The reality of war was very different, he recalls, recounting one incident at a brigade command post.
"On the comms we heard one of the battalion commanders saying to our commander that he had 200 - we understood he was talking about POWs. The commander said 'no one answer him, if he doesn't know what to do, let him work it out for himself'."
Bresheeth says he "heard from people who were there" that the Syrian POWs were killed, adding "it hasn't been documented; it is liminal proof, rather than direct proof. I heard from people who were there, it hasn't come up in a court."
MEE cannot independently verify this incident, although there are a number of documented cases of Israeli forces killing retreating Arab soldiers and prisoners during its wars between 1948 and 1973.
"It became clear to me that we are not a moral army, we are not keeping to international law. Each of those wars had numerous examples of immorality, illegality, the level of brutality is legend."
This has reached its pinnacle in Gaza since 2023, according to Bresheeth, including torture and the mass killing of civilians. A recent New York Times investigation confirmed what human rights groups have reported is widespread sexual abuse and rape by troops, including rape of Palestinian civilian prisoners by dogs.
"When an army is using torture daily, they are not even POWs - they are doctors, university professors - [who] are being raped by dogs under army commanders. I don't remember in any other genocide reading about this."
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