CAGE: Britain’s apartheid apologists
How Britain’s institutions enable Israeli apartheid
By any measure of international law, Israel is an apartheid state. The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the world’s highest legal authority, confirmed it in July 2024. And yet, in Britain, silence reigns. Worse, it is organised, deliberate, and systematised.
A powerful new report by CAGE International, Britain’s Apartheid Apologists, exposes how two UK-based organisations, UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) and the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), are leading a well-funded campaign to harass, intimidate and silence those who speak up for Palestine. They are not defending Jews. They are defending Zionism, a colonial ideology now synonymous with ethnic cleansing.
UKLFI in particular is a legal hit squad posing as a charity. It collaborates directly with the Israeli government. Its leadership includes individuals tied to the Israeli military, far-right media, and pro-settler movements. Its mission is simple, destroy dissent. It does this through a strategy of lawfare, flooding medical and legal regulators with malicious complaints, smearing respected doctors, lawyers, and humanitarians as antisemites.
Just last year, UKLFI targeted Dr Ghassan Abu-Sitta, a war surgeon who had returned from Gaza. His crime? Telling the truth about children torn apart by Israeli bombs. The complaint collapsed, but only after causing untold stress and reputational harm. And he is just one of many.
These tactics are not confined to Britain. Just weeks ago, Natasha Hausdorff, legal director of UKLFI’s charitable arm, was in Oslo. She appeared on a panel described as a forum for “honest legal dialogue” about genocide. Honest? Hausdorff has repeatedly denied that Israel is an occupying power, dismissed the Nakba as a “lie”, and praised illegal settlements as legitimate under international law. That such figures are now given platforms in Nordic capitals should alarm us all.
Meanwhile, the CAA plays the role of enforcer, using the IHRA definition of antisemitism as a cudgel to shut down criticism of Israel. Universities are pressured to cancel events. Journalists are labelled extremists. Palestinian students are surveilled. Even Jewish anti-Zionists, those with deep moral and historical commitments to justice, are targeted. The goal is total silence.
But this isn't just about two organisations. The real scandal is how British regulators and politicians have rolled over. The General Medical Council investigates doctors for tweeting “Free Palestine”. The Charity Commission harasses small aid groups while ignoring British charities that fund illegal settlements. And politicians like Robert Jenrick go further, branding human rights lawyers “Hamas sympathisers” and pushing laws to criminalise peaceful boycotts.
This is not regulation. It is state-sponsored censorship.
Let us not pretend this is normal. Let us not sanitise the reality, Britain is enabling apartheid. While condemning South African segregation in history books, it funds, arms and defends an Israeli regime doing the very same, in real time.
The CAGE report makes the consequences brutally clear. Academics are self-censoring. Charities are burning donor money on legal defences. Medical professionals are traumatised. And all the while, Gaza burns.
This is not merely about Palestine. The machinery of suppression built today, legal harassment, reputational smears, abuse of anti-racism frameworks, will be used tomorrow on other movements: climate justice, migrants’ rights, trade unionism. The precedent is clear, criticise the wrong regime and your life can be dismantled.
The way forward demands courage and confrontation:
A judge-led public inquiry into foreign interference in UK civil society
Legislative protections for professionals targeted by vexatious complaints
Reform of regulatory bodies captured by ideological agendas
Accountability for politicians who abuse public trust
Media reform to expose, not echo, Zionist lobby talking points
This moment demands moral clarity. If you defend free speech, you must defend the right to denounce apartheid. If you believe in law, you must stand with the ICJ. If you honour the victims of genocide, any genocide, you must oppose those who commit and those who cover for it.
Silence is not neutrality. It is complicity.
In the aftermath of the ICJ ruling, anyone still supporting Zionism, whether through legal trickery, media whitewashing or regulatory capture, stands on the wrong side of history and of humanity.
We owe it to the Palestinian people, and to ourselves, to ensure that the current crisis Zionism finds itself in is not just a moment, but a reckoning.
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Article Series Zionism
