For years, Tommy Robinson has been accused of everything from secret Mossad ties to being “paid off” by Jewish groups. He laughs it off. “If I was Mossad,” he says, “I wouldn’t be walking around in a Mossad t-shirt I bought in a souvenir shop.” What matters to him is not conspiracy theories but the bigger picture: Jews need a homeland, Israel is that homeland, and the threats against it are the same threats facing the West.
Hamas Is ISIS
Robinson doesn’t mince words about Hamas. “They are ISIS,” he says. “People don’t even understand what they are.” He explains it in terms closer to home. Imagine Scotland electing a government on a manifesto that declared the Day of Judgment would not come until every Englishman was dead. That’s Hamas, funded by Iran and Qatar, Hamas was voted into power in Gaza. Their charter calls not for a state alongside Israel but for the extermination of every Jew.
October 7 proved the point. Hamas militants stormed across the border, killing, raping, and kidnapping civilians. “They were cheered for it in Gaza,” Robinson says, “but they were also cheered for it in London and in Paris.” And Hamas itself admitted its goals go far beyond Israel. On October 8, its leaders said: Israel is not our target. Rome and London are.
Left’s Alliance With Islamists
Robinson is equally blunt about the Western left. “Israel is losing the war of the mind in Western countries,” he warns. “Not the war in Israel, the war here.” He believes universities, funded in part by regimes like Qatar, have been infiltrated by Islamist propaganda. The result is a strange alliance between radical leftists and Islamists. Both want the West to fall, both despise Jews, and both use protests and social media to spread their message.
That alliance, he says, explains the thousands marching through London with Hamas flags. “It’s not the working class that hates Jews,” Robinson insists. “It’s the middle-class university types, indoctrinated into hating Israel.” He argues that propaganda no longer spreads mainly through mosques but through influencers - boxers, YouTubers, online celebrities - who promote Islam and hostility toward Israel to millions of followers.
What I Saw in Israel
Robinson has visited Israel himself, including Palestinian refugee camps in Bethlehem. What he saw challenged his own assumptions. “I expected them to say Israel was oppressing them,” he recalls. “Instead, one man told me the Palestinian Authority was their oppressor." He explained the system ‘pay to slay’ under which if you kill an Israeli, your family gets money for life. Some of this funding comes indirectly from Western aid, including British taxpayers, creating a perverse incentive that perpetuates violence.
He also met Arab citizens inside Israel. “I asked one man how difficult it was for him to live in a Jewish state. He looked at me like I was mad. He said, ‘I pray five times a day. I’ve got everything I want here. Where do you think I’d rather be, over there where bombs are falling?’” Robinson left convinced that the apartheid label is a lie. Twenty percent of Israel’s citizens are Muslim, and many say openly that they prefer life in Israel to life under surrounding regimes.
Strength Is Survival
Growing up in Luton, Robinson says he learned one thing about bullies: never show weakness. He believes the same rule applies to Israel. Israel’s enemies have used language and practices that make their intent unmistakable. ISIS openly defended taking women and girls as slaves. On Oct 7, Hamas fighters referred to Israeli female captives as “sabaya,” a term historically tied to sexual enslavement. A UN mission later found reasonable grounds to believe that sexual violence occurred during the attack and in captivity. Against opponents who speak and act this way, Israel argues it cannot afford weakness.
Critics accuse him of putting Israel first, but he rejects that. “England is first. Britain is first. But I sympathize with Israel’s situation. They’re a democracy surrounded by Sharia-driven dictatorships. If Israel falls, do you really think the jihadists will stop there? They’re coming for Europe.”
For Robinson, standing with Israel isn’t about money or politics. It’s about truth. “Most people haven’t been there, haven’t spoken to the people, haven’t seen it for themselves. I have. And what I saw is that Israel is a free country that has to be fearless to survive. Hamas belongs in the seventh century. Israel belongs in the modern world.”
Adam Starzynski
Journalist | Foreign Policy Analyst
