Legal rulings are not always the end of a battle, but they are often signposts along the way. What happened with artists Bob Vylan and Reginald D Hunter must be understood in this light. Both faced legal and public pressure in Britain after taking outspoken pro-Palestine positions, triggering smear campaigns and formal complaints led by Zionist groups and their supporters, aimed at criminalising political expression under the banner of “antisemitism”.

When victories of this kind are secured, the most important question is no longer what was said, but rather: what comes next?

The answer goes far beyond the individuals involved. It speaks to a long, cumulative struggle in which global solidarity with Palestine is advancing step by step, while the once-dominant Zionist narrative is clearly retreating; a narrative that survived for decades on claims that have now worn thin.

From “the only democracy” to the test of genocide in Gaza

For years, a familiar storyline was relentlessly promoted: that Israel is “the only democracy in the Middle East”, that it represents a necessary refuge after historical persecution, and that Jews everywhere are perpetually besieged by antisemitism. Under this cover, a deliberate conflation was engineered between criticism of Zionism and its crimes, and hatred of Jews themselves. Any challenge to Israeli policies was swiftly labelled antisemitic.

Then came the genocide in Gaza. Not as an isolated event, but as the culmination of a long pattern of daily violations, in the West Bank and Jerusalem, in Syria and Lebanon, and through the ongoing injustice inflicted on Palestinians inside the 1948 territories. At that point, the masks began to slip. The old claims became harder to........

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