SUTR: How Zionism corrupted the anti-racist movement
Finally, in July 2025, after years of outrage, Stand Up To Racism (SUTR) in Glasgow has stated that pro-Israel organisations Glasgow Friends of Israel (GFI) and the Confederation of Friends of Israel Scotland (COFIS) will no longer be allowed on their marches. Scotland Against Criminalising Communities (SACC), one of the organisations that campaigned for GFI and COFIS to be excluded, has welcomed SUTR’s statement but rightly objects to SUTR hiding that it has taken years of protest to get them to change their position. We don’t even know if STUR’s change of position is limited to Glasgow or is it has been adopted by SUTR UK. Has it?
A number of times over the years, we and others strongly objected to SUTR excluding Palestinians in favour of organisations supporting Israeli genocide.
The movement both in the UK and internationally has made the genocide of Palestinians, Islamophobia, police violence against people of colour and the right of immigrants and asylum seekers the defining antiracist issues of our time. But until the July 2025 statement from SUTR Glasgow, SUTR had boycotted the Palestinian struggle against genocide despite nearly two years of Israeli bombing, shooting and starvation, targeting children and women in particular, to exterminate the people of Gaza. Zionism is a most vicious and genocidal form of racism but for many years SUTR chose to ignore it and even welcome it, whilst positioning itself as co-ordinating opposition to racism and the far right in the UK.
By its own admission,
SUTR doesn't take a stance over [Palestine] – and never has taken a stance over this – as that is not its role as an organisation, which is to campaign against racism and fascism in Britain. [SUTR’s Hogsburg to Brighton PSC]
But SUTR has convened protests against the far right allowing Zionists groups in their midst, knowing that wealthy Zionists are funding people like Tommy Robinson who promote Islamophobia, antisemitism and genocidal Israel.
The presence of trade unions and left-wing MPs in SUTR helped to hide their outrageous refusal to condemn genocide. This refusal should never have been tolerated by anyone who claims to be antiracist.
A history of racist cover up
For six years (2017, 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023, 2024) supporters of Glasgow Friends of Israel (GFI) and the Confederation of Friends of Israel Scotland (COFIS) were welcomed on to SUTR’s “antiracism” marches, with their placards, banners, and Israeli flags. (See photo above from 2017.) GFI and COFIS are part of the Israel lobby network in the UK that works with the Israeli embassy and Israeli government officials. Their participation in SUTR’s marches was not accidental: in March 2018 SUTR’s national steering committee overwhelmingly (only one person opposed) voted down a resolution to exclude COFIS; and SUTR’s convenor and SWP central committee member, Weyman Bennett, welcomed all to SUTR “whether they are Zionist and non-Zionist.”
In 2019, a statement was issued by a number of groups including Scotland Against Criminalising Communities (SACC), Muslim Women's Association of Edinburgh (MWAE), Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC), Edinburgh Action 4 Palestine, Glasgow Palestine Human Rights Campaign, ISM Scotland and Scottish Jews Against Zionism (Scottish JAZ) saying (excerpt)
We are dismayed that Stand Up to Racism Scotland will once again be allowing organisations, whose purpose is to actively promote and defend Israeli apartheid and racism, to participate in the march…SUTR Scotland's response to COFIS and GFI has been particularly objectionable, but is said by SUTR Scotland to be in line with SUTR UK policy... In ignoring Israeli state racism and reducing itself to a campaign to "Stand Up To Some Racism", SUTR risks dividing the anti-racism movement…COFIS's racist and manipulative strategies are widely recognised for what they are in Scotland's Palestinian diaspora, in its Muslim community and by campaigners for Palestinian rights.
Even so, in 2019 SUTR allowed Zionists on its march to carry signs that said ‘anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism is a crime’ – a direct attack on Palestinians and others who oppose the racism which is central to the Israeli apartheid state.
Earlier, in 2018, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) laid out exactly who these organisations are that SUTR was making space for:
…a brief visit to the Facebook page of the Confederation [COFIS] reveals them as propagators of the most offensive anti-Palestinian narratives. These include denying the Palestinian Nakba and posting material stating that no Palestinian villages and towns were destroyed prior to and after the establishment of the state of Israel; denying the status of Palestinian refugees and posting an article from the CEO of AIPAC which states that any Palestinian state is incompatible with Israel’s security. The Confederation is also part of a campaign to have student activism on UK campuses under the banner of ‘Israel Apartheid Week’ closed down. The Confederation has links with groups in the UK who – alongside Britain First and the EDL – have attempted to disrupt PSC marches and meetings.
Others were so outraged by the presence of Zionists with Israeli flags on the 2018 SUTR march that they “walled off” the Israeli flag wavers and their supporters (see images below).
As early as October 2016 several women’s and Black groups were calling for the boycotting of a SUTR conference because
… the speakers will share the bill with Weyman Bennett, Stand Up To Racism’s co-convenor and a central committee member of the Socialist Workers’ Party… We call on people to do this because the SWP’s well documented failing of two women members who accused the then central committee member of the SWP, known as “Comrade Delta”, of rape and sexual assault.
In 2019 IJAN UK wrote to SUTR highlighting COFIS’s connection to rape and GFI’s extreme right-wing agenda:
You must have decided to ignore that the head of COFIS is a member of a Facebook group run by former IDF Military Intelligence officer, Mordechai Kedar who condoned and promoted mass rape.
You must have decided to ignore GFI’s rabid pro-arms trade, anti-refugee, anti-Palestinian, anti-Corbyn messaging, particularly their maligning of the young Palestinian medic, Razan al-Najjar, shot dead by Israeli snipers during the Great March of Return – vilely insinuating that Palestinians used rape to force her to be on
the march.
SUTR has made space for these anti-Palestinian organizations in every march since 2017 – despite petitions, open letters and opposing demonstrations spelling out exactly how doing so divides and undermines the antiracist movement. After the 2023 march GFI thanked the
organisers of the SUTR march. . . for the welcome you gave us . . . who made sure that GFI and COFIS members were kept safe” and “looking forward to meeting you
again in 2024.
At the same time, UCU (University and College Union) Scotland passed a resolution condemning the presence on the march of groups that “defend Israel's racist colonisation of Palestine” and “the infiltration into the anti-racist movement of apologists for Israeli apartheid”. Having already suspended their “annual
donation to SUTR because of collusion with pro-Israel groups”, they now have suspended “all financial and other support to SUTR until explicitly pro-Israel groups are excluded.”
SUTR’s unbelievable excuses
SUTR say they don’t mention Palestine because: “It’s a Socialist issue”; “It’s a divisive issue” – they did not wish to alienate “moderate antiracist Jews”; “It’s not a British issue.” (Is it time for committed antiracists to ‘Stand Up To Racism?’ Natalie Strecker, Medium, July 1st, 2021)
As stated above, “SUTR doesn't take a stance over [Palestine] – and never has taken a stance over this – as that is not its role as an organisation, which is to campaign against racism and fascism in Britain.” (from Christian Hogsbjerg to Brighton PSC) Further, Hogsbjerg said that if SUTR were to disallow COFIS or GFI from the marches, “The mainstream media would pick this story up – the story would run the next day – 'Anti-Racist group accused of anti-semitism’.” (Email to IJAN member, Selma James) James was also told by SUTR that “We will not allow Palestine to split the antiracist movement.”!
COFIS on an anti-racism march, Glasgow, 18 March 2017
SUTR is also undermining the immigrant rights movement
SUTR claims to campaign for migrants and refugees, but has ignored racism against Palestinians who constitute the biggest refugee population in the world. SUTR also ignored African asylum seekers in Israel, their imprisonment and their struggle against deportation, including against the Israeli Rwanda plan. There was so much opposition to the plan from asylum seekers supported by some Jews in Israel that it had to be dropped. It was also scrapped in Britain despite the efforts of the British right wing pro-Israeli government.
Action Against Detention and Deportations (AADD) a grassroots part of the anti-deportation movement, refuse to organise with SUTR. Their reasons include
the fact that SUTR undermined AADD’s protests against the UK Rwanda plan:
“When we had publicised a first set of demonstrations against the Rwanda flights on June 12 and 13, 2022, SUTR also called for a demo outside of Downing Street on 13th June. It was clear that this would clash with our demo outside of the Home Office. On the morning of 13th June, SUTR changed their demo location to the Home Office to coincide with ours. SUTR brought a loudspeaker which drowned out our sound system and the activists and organisers who were speaking. This move by SUTR confused and split the crowd, making the protest less powerful and effective.
Additionally, AADD had decided not to invite any MPs as we wanted to platform voices involved in grassroots organising, and above all, people with lived experiences of borders. SUTR invited Labour MPs to speak on their sound system, which drowned out our speakers and our originally planned demo. All MPs departed immediately after speaking, showing no interest in long term coalition-building for the abolition of borders and detention.”
In 2020, organisations in Global Women Against Deportations withdrew from the Status Now for All initiative over the presence of SUTR in the coalition, stating:
“How can a campaign for Status Now for all include an organisation that sides with a racist state against people opposing occupation and apartheid, and believes that Palestinians are not worthy of the same protection against racism as others?”
The following incidents show how keen SUTR has been to shield anti-Palestinian racism:
- ·SUTR Merseyside denied Liverpool Friends of Palestine (LFOP) speaking rights at its protest against President Trump’s visit to
- Britain in February 2019.
- In 2020, SUTR banned the national secretary of Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL – Now Jewish Voice for Liberation) from speaking at a Holocaust Memorial Day event in Tower Hamlets. Their justification: they didn't want to be in conflict with the racist, Tory, Zionist Board of Deputies of British Jews. As JVL’s very mild statement in
- reply says: “This is a retreat before the forces that confuse antisemitism with anti-Zionism.” In fact, it is allowing the Israeli apartheid state
- to determine what constitutes racism.
- They even refused to join an XR event supporting Palestine to which Palestine Action had been invited, saying: “it would be uncomfortable for our Jewish members (19/3/23). That can only mean their Jewish members are Zionist.
- In March 2024, Scottish PSC and the Scottish Palestine Society refused to participate in the SUTR’s demo in Glasgow because of the continuing presence of COFIS on the march. And in August 2024 Stand Up to Racism in Oxford attempted to silence a pro-Palestinian speaker by turning off the sound system. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTUuWt5q2bs
- In 2024, at a SUTR organising event, SUTR organisers were asked by a woman of colour whether there would be more participation at their anti-fascist marches if SUTR came out in support of Palestine. In response, these organisers asked the woman if “she wanted to exclude Jews”? It’s Zionists we want to exclude, not Jews.
Until the July 2025 statement from SUTR Glasgow, SUTR had been completely silent on the Israeli genocide despite nearly two years of Israeli bombing, shooting and starvation, targeting children and women in particular, to exterminate the people of Gaza. There is no room anywhere in the social justice movement for supporters of Israeli apartheid and genocide such as COFIS and GFI.
The pressure of the antiracist pro-Palestinian movement has finally succeeded in SUTR Glasgow belatedly condemning the genocide of Palestinians, and banning those who defend it from their marches and events. But why has it taken so long? And why, to this day, does SUTR continue to exclude Zionism (the most powerful fascist entity) from its campaigning against fascism? Fascism is bigger than Tommy Robinson. IJAN knows from our own experience that UK fascist groups have been working hand in hand with Zionists.
“You can’t be antiracist unless you’re anti-Zionist.” Or, as Nelson Mandela put it when he got out of prison, “Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the
Palestinians.”
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