In 2015, the Ministry of Strategic Affairs was made the lead ministry for challenging the Palestine solidarity movement. The Ministry, led by Gilad Erdan and run by a former military intelligence officer, used overt and covert methods to sabotage and delegitimize activist groups and individuals, smeared supporters of BDS as ‘terrorists’, recruited troll armies, and trained activists to dig up Kompromat and smear supporters of Palestinian liberation. 

One participant in this effort has been David Hirsh, a sociologist based at Goldsmiths College in London. He has been involved for decades in supporting key foreign policy objectives of the Zionist regime.

Former leftist

Hirsh is a former member of the Zionist-Trotskyist sect the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty who regards himself as part of the ‘democratic left tradition’, though he also says he has ‘no objection to being recognized as a Jew or as a Zionist’.

In 2006, Hirsh established Engage, a campaign explicitly focused on combatting BDS, which focused solely on "the monitoring and the critique of left and liberal antisemitism?” This demonstrated clearly that the focus on alleged anti-Semitism was the weapon of choice to target the BDS movement. It has been claimed that Zionist lobby groups - the Board of Deputies and Jewish Leadership Council - funneled £50,000 to Engage, which challenges the idea it was a grassroots campaign. Hirsh later denied this.  

Also in 2006, Hirsh helped develop the ‘Euston Manifesto’, concerned with countering opposition to the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. It brought together a similar group of people who had myriad connections to various Zionist lobby groups including the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Jewish Leadership Council, Labour Friends of "Israel", and the Islamophobic attack blog Harry’s Place.

In 2007, he received funds from the Rothschild family charity Yad Hanadiv to study anti-Zionism and antisemitism. 

Guest of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs 

In 2008 and 2009, Hirsh traveled to occupied Al-Quds to attend the Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism, hosted by "Israel’s" Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This was the forum that was at the cutting edge of developing offensive strategies to pursue against solidarity with Palestine. His speech at the 2008 Forum, predicted the ‘main manifestation of antisemitism in the near future is going to be conspiracy theory’. 

Covert subvention from the Zionist regime

In previously secret documents disclosed by the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs under information legislation, it was revealed that millions had been spent on funding a network of front groups to promote the regime.  

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One of the groups was the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, based in New York, which received $445,000 in 2018 - nearly 80% of its reported revenue that year. It failed to disclose this payment publically. 

The funds were earmarked for the group's annual seminar at Oxford University in the UK. 

David Hirsh spoke at both the 2018 and 2019 events. A Ministry of Strategic Affairs subvention was not mentioned by ISGAP in either year. 

A search of the publications of David Hirsh over the last two decades reveals no conflict of interest disclosures by him or referencing any money, expenses, or hospitality received from the Zionist movement or directly from the regime. He regularly denounces the idea of secret conspiracies in support of "Israel", while appearing to involve himself directly in such activities as an asset of the Zionist regime.  

A Zionist asset

Viewing him as an asset of the Zionist entity helps to contextualize his regular interventions in disputes on alleged anti-Semitism in higher education. As I noted above, Hirsh has been a key “asset” of the Zionist movement for many years. His main contribution has been to develop lines of attack on the left for the fanciful idea that there is a specifically left-wing “antisemitism” such as in his 2018 book Contemporary Left Antisemitism.

In recent years, he has been at the forefront of attacks on the UK left, especially in higher education. He spent some considerable time writing a self-indulgent “long read” on the author of this article, in which he laughably attempts to suggest that criticism of Christian Zionism and non-Jewish supporters of "Israel" is anti-Semitic.

He was also active in harassing the union branch at Sheffield Hallam University and bullying the young Palestinian lecturer Shahd Abusalama. He repeatedly supported Lesley Klaff, who is a member of staff at the university, as well as being active in the extremist UK Lawyers for "Israel", a group that is an asset of the Zionist regime and uses lawfare to intimidate and bully supporters of Palestinians. Hirsh has engaged in publishing projects with Klaff including interviewing her in a propaganda film he produced, hyping the false allegations of anti-Semitism against the Corbyn-led Labour Party. Hirsh typically has failed to reveal that the president of the Sheffield Hallam Jewish Society – one Dora Hirsh – is his daughter.

Attacking students at his university

His lack of transparency on such matters is also evident in his most recent venture, attempting to get the President of the Student Union at his own university investigated on bogus claims of antisemitism.

Hirsh had been doing his best to disparage calls at Goldsmiths University in London for decolonization by student groups. True to form as a well-known advocate of Zionist colonization of Palestine, Hirsh sought to antagonize those working to deepen students understanding of settler colonialism.

Hirsh asserted that there is “an antisemitic edge to official, institutional, university campaigns to ‘decolonize’ education”.

In response, Sara Bafo, the president of Goldsmiths Student Union, fired back by saying that David Hirsh is a “far-right white supremacist”. Following his attempts to get her investigated, she correctly described him as a “Zionist” and wrote that he had an “explicit racist history”.

She was later backed up by the current President of the National Union of Students, Larissa Kennedy, who described Hirsh’s repugnant campaign as “concerted suppression”.

Hirsh appealed to Goldsmiths Student Union to investigate Sara Bafo for antisemitism and was met with disdain from Ed Nedjari, the chief executive of Goldsmith’s Student Union defending Bafo’s words by claiming it's “protected as free speech”.

Thus was the attempted bullying rebuffed. A student of his classes at Goldsmiths gave Palestine Declassified, the show for which I am the producer, testimony on the basis of anonymity, due to fears for her safety. She revealed that Hirsh had invited into his class William Baldet, a Strategy Coordinator for Prevent, the British government’s intelligence-directed program targeting Muslim children and young people. When hosting Baldet in his class, the fearful student attested that Hirsh referred to him as a ‘very close family friend’. Hosting officials from a government intelligence program is a direct threat to both Muslim students and all active in anti-war or left-wing causes. 

Unsurprisingly, there is a confluence of interest between British state intelligence agendas and those of Zionist assets like Hirsh. But we should remember that such assets have ongoing connections with a hostile foreign regime that currently squats in occupied Palestine.