A Belfast rap group with no record deal, no security detail, and no filter is now the target of British counter-terror police, tabloid smear campaigns, and the full force of the Israeli lobby. Their crime? Saying ‘Free Palestine’ too loudly.

Over recent months, Irish rap trio Kneecap has been embroiled in a series of public controversies. In late April, the band was placed under official investigation by British counter-terror police, over a comment made by one of its members at a November 2023 concert—“The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP.” A month later, another was formally charged for displaying the flag of Hezbollah, a proscribed terror organization under British law, at a London gig.

These developments have led to a welter of cancellations of Kneecap concerts and condemnation from mainstream sources. Yet, fans have forcefully rallied behind the group, and subsequent publicity has introduced the band to new audiences the world over, who are highly receptive to Kneecap’s outspoken, unrepentant anti-Zionism and infectious tunes. Furthermore, the band remains scheduled to perform at Glastonbury Festival in late June, a major British cultural institution, despite calls from parliamentarians to ban them from appearing.

Pressure has been brought to bear on the BBC not to feature Kneecap’s performance in its regular broadcast of the festival, which reaches tens of millions of people globally every year. The state broadcaster has so far stood firm. But there are palpable indications the Israeli lobby is undeterred, and has activated pro-Israel actors in Britain to torpedo the group, if not others, in the process. The stakes are high for Tel Aviv—Kneecap’s loud and proud Palestine solidarity represents an international public relations nightmare.

On June 2, Irish garage punk band Sprints revealed via Instagram that their management had been contacted by a reporter from The Daily Mail, asking if they intended to play at Glastonbury if Kneecap were “banned from the festival.”

The reporter added:

It would be really useful if you could clarify your views on Kneecap and how you feel about them performing at Glastonbury later this month. Do you feel comfortable sharing a platform with them? Will you protest if Glastonbury prevents the band from performing? Do you have any free speech concerns if they are banned, or safety concerns if they perform? It would be really helpful if you could respond with your thoughts by [June 5].”

Accompanying commentary from Sprints stated, “Daily Mail rats trying to drum up support to ban [Kneecap] from Glastonbury. Kneecap are not the story, the genocide in Palestine is the story. Let us be unequivocally clear, we will forever be comfortable sharing the stage with people who use their platform for good and to speak up for those who can’t. Free Palestine.”

The Daily Mail reporter in question was Sabrina Miller. A product of various Israeli lobby Hasbara training programs since high school, over the past five years, she—first as a student, then as an award-winning mainstream journalist—has racked up a lengthy, unpardonable record of targeting public figures in Britain for personal and professional destruction. While accusing Israel’s critics of antisemitism, Miller has also sought to foment anti-Muslim animus. Now, it appears she and the vast lobbying infrastructure behind her have focused their efforts decisively on Kneecap.

Sabrina Miller: Zionist Operative Behind Media Smears

In September 2018, Dr. David Miller was appointed Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Bristol. He was dismissed from his position for purported gross professional misconduct three years later. In the intervening time, the highly respected academic spent his time teaching classes on Zionist propaganda and how the international Israeli lobby perpetuates Islamophobic hate to whitewash its erasure of Palestinians, while battling a coordinated campaign by pro-Israel groups intended to remove him from his position.

After complaints to the University about Dr. Miller lodged by Israeli lobby groups failed, as Bristol does not allow external individuals or organizations to file grievances, a trio of students set about finishing the job. Sabrina Miller was foremost among them. During her final years of high school, she was awarded a fellowship with the United Jewish Israel Appeal, under its elite Israel Fast Track Program. UJIA’s stated aim is to create a “lifetime of connection” between British Jews and Israel, from primary school onwards.

The Appeal pushes initiatives seeking to make “Israel inspiring, relevant and accessible to young people,” while encouraging young Jews to “explore” Zionism and “experience the wonders and challenges of the Jewish state.” Under its Fast Track Program, 20 British students aged 16–18 spend three months going “deeper into [their] understanding of Israel than ever before.” They are “challenged to develop their own Zionist narrative,” thus making them “empowered to be leaders in the Israel conversation in the community, online and on campus.”

Along the way, pupils such as Miller are granted access to “Israeli politicians, activists, journalists and thought leaders.” In March 2019, as her first year at Bristol University neared its end, Miller was nominated for the Union of Jewish Students’ “Emerging Student Leader of the Year” award. UJS is an Israeli lobby group “inspiring Jewish students” to make “an enduring commitment” to Israel. A 2017 Al Jazeera investigation revealed that the Israeli embassy in London funds the organization.

When her second year at Bristol began, Miller wrote an article headlined “Being a Zionist on Campus.” She discussed how before starting university, “I thought everyone…hated Israel.” However, she quickly learned “how wrong I was,” and had grown to “love having conversations about Israel, constantly,” in the context of student politics – just as her UJIA Israel Fast Track Fellowship would have trained her to do. In May the next year, Miller joined British student newspaper The Tab.

Israel’s Student Network Takes Down a Professor

That October, she began abusing this position to target Dr. David Miller. In a series of articles, starkly contrasting with her prior account of harmonious student life at Bristol, Miller claimed the Professor’s presence had ruined her entire university experience, while his teaching made Jewish students more generally feel “uncomfortable and unwelcome.” One piece ended with an impassioned plea to “get David Miller off of my campus.” She launched a similarly titled petition in February 2021.

Miller subsequently told much the same, albeit bogus, story in op-eds for The Daily Telegraph, The Jewish Chronicle, and The Times of Israel. A false firestorm over Dr. Miller’s position successfully stoked, mainstream attacks on the academic and his employer, including from prominent politicians, and Israeli lobby groups, became an almost daily occurrence, with Bristol widely accused of exposing its students to a dangerous antisemite. So it was in October 2021 that the University fired Dr. Miller on vague grounds.

Thereafter, the Electronic Intifada exposed how two separate internal investigations at Bristol University cleared Dr. Miller of any wrongdoing. One report, authored by a lawyer, recorded how not one of his students had raised concerns about his conduct, despite being “encouraged” to do so and offered anonymity, contrary to standard complaint procedures. It also robustly dismissed any suggestion Dr. Miller harbored antisemitic views, noting he was “at pains to distinguish between Zionism and Israel, on the one hand, and Jewish people, on the other.”

Dr. Miller fought a lengthy, costly, but ultimately triumphant legal battle against Bristol University. In February 2024, an employment tribunal not only ruled that he was unfairly and wrongfully dismissed but also that “anti-Zionist” stances qualify as a “philosophical belief and a protected characteristic” under British equality laws. He tells MintPress News that Miller was “one of a number of students who organised on campus to have me fired,” and “it’s important to grasp how such individuals fit into a much wider apparatus of Zionist subversion and infiltration:”

Miller worked in close coordination with her flatmate Nina Freedman and Edward Isaacs, who both headed the Bristol Jewish Society at different times. Like Miller, they were handsomely rewarded for their efforts. Freedman is now a trustee of the Jewish Leadership Council, the most important Zionist lobby group in the UK, and Isaacs is now a trustee of the United Jewish Israel Appeal, the UK’s largest fundraiser for genocide in Palestine. This is a systemic question, not one of individual malfeasance.”

One of Sabrina Miller’s “rewards” was to be hired by the hard-right, pro-Israel Guido Fawkes blog, which has a history of publishing flagrantly antisemitic content, before even graduating in 2021. She joined The Daily Mail two years later. Ever since, she has deployed the same remarkably effective strategy for inflicting maximum reputational damage on Zionist critics that befell Dr. Miller over and over again.

Reginald D. Hunter and the Fringe Fallout

On August 11, 2024, popular comedian Reginald D. Hunter performed a set at the Edinburgh Fringe, the world’s largest performance arts festival, which sells millions of tickets annually. During, he cracked a gag about a documentary he’d recently seen about an abusive wife accusing her husband of abuse, making Hunter think, “My God, it’s like being married to Israel.”

The line was met with laughter, except for a loud, negative response from a couple seated in the front row. Their outburst was very poorly received by the audience, leading to a row breaking out between the pair, who protested that October 7 was comparable to the Holocaust, among other talking points aligned with Hasbara campaigns, and Hunter’s fans. The crowd responded with boos, and chants of “Free Palestine.” Hunter chimed in, “Look at you making everyone love Israel even more!” The couple then left the auditorium to a round of applause.

The next day, The Jewish Chronicle sensationally reported how an “Israeli couple” had been “hounded out” of Hunter’s show after he “[made] jokes about Jews.” Meanwhile, a one-star review of the gig in The Daily Telegraph dubbed the “audience [baying] at an Israeli couple…the ugliest Fringe moment I’ve ever witnessed,” accusing Hunter of “purveying antisemitic [tropes].” This was just the start of a wide-ranging media blitzkrieg against the comedian, which culminated on August 17.

That day, Sabrina Miller proudly announced she had “tracked down and exclusively spoke to that [emphasis in original] Jewish Israeli couple who were hounded out of Reginald Hunter’s Fringe show.” In a lengthy interview, which pseudonymously referred to the pair as Shimon and Talia to protect their identities, they were said to be “still physically reeling from what happened to them.” Such was their fear “of exposing themselves to even more abuse,” they asked not to be identified by their real names.

I tracked down and exclusively spoke to *that* Jewish Israeli couple who were hounded out of Reginald Hunter’s Fringe show.

‘The looks on people’s faces in the audience – it was like they wanted to attack us and beat us’ the couple tell me.

https://t.co/7imGftjkfI pic.twitter.com/txxhAl6hQb

— Sabrina Miller (@SabriSun_Miller) August 17, 2024

“Initially they had no intention of reporting what happened to authorities or sharing their story with the world,” it was claimed, but the husband and wife made the “brave decision to speak out” in the hope “their story will give other people the courage to stand up for what is right and to fight against racism and discrimination.” They also suggested Britain was a hotbed of antisemitism, and its Jewish population “always has that mental backpack packed in case they need to flee.” Miller despaired:

Even though their home country is currently a war zone, shockingly, they say it is in the UK, not the Middle East, where they feel most unsafe at the moment.”

The controversy resulted in multiple venues canceling planned gigs by Hunter, and allegations of antisemitism are falsely leveled at him to this day in mainstream quarters. This is despite the “Israeli Jewish” couple quickly being revealed as Mark Lewis and Mandy Blumenthal, two prominent Zionists tied to numerous influential Israeli lobby groups in Britain. Far from publicity shy, Lewis and Blumenthal have repeatedly made headlines for accusing institutions and individuals, including former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, of antisemitism.

What’s more, both have repeatedly publicly declared over the past decade that they intend to leave Britain due to local anti-Jewish sentiment, for the couple isn’t Israeli, but English. As Blumenthal wrote for the DC-based, unsubtly named Israel Forever Foundation, she and Lewis “have always lived in the UK” and “love our lives here.” Nonetheless, she professed to “no longer feel welcome in my own country,” so her family was “selling up and moving abroad.” As with past pledges, this appears to have come to nothing.

Markedly, Blumenthal’s biography on the IFF website brags that she “does not hide from expressing her pro-Jewish and pro-Israel views,” and “speaks out, regularly entering the lions’ [sic] den to challenge the lies of the haters.” It added, “When not supporting Jewish students facing down relentless attacks or challenging antisemitic demonstrations, Mandy seeks to enjoy all that life has to offer.” We can only speculate whether one of those “Jewish students” was Sabrina Miller, who returned the favor by assisting the couple’s coordinated Hasbara effort.

The Campaign to Censor Kneecap

Coincidentally, Kneecap has been in Miller’s sights ever since the group became subject to British counter-terror police investigation. In May, she fulminated on ‘X’ about how the group had projected a number of troublesome messages on-stage during their performance at London’s Wide Awake Festival; “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people; it is being enabled by the British government; over 60,000 people have been murdered by Israel in 12 months; Free Palestine.”

Kneecap projecting the following messages during their performance at the Wide Awake Festival in London this evening. pic.twitter.com/SYkALrykUc

— Sabrina Miller (@SabriSun_Miller) May 23, 2025

Miller subsequently slandered a sold-out London concert Kneecap performed the night before, in which the band “brazenly mocked the police,” Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch, and the death of Margaret Thatcher,” while encouraging “Free Palestine” chants. She was particularly incensed by a band member taking aim at undercover police “inside this venue tonight…making a lot of money for doing f*** all,” while linking the group’s harassment by Britain’s counter-terror directorate to London’s historic persecution of Catholics in the north of Ireland.

Miller’s attempt to sabotage Kneecap’s Glastonbury appearance was the next intended stage in her campaign. Yet, in the wake of this journalist publicly exposing her track record as an Israeli operative on campus and throughout her ‘journalism’ career on ‘X’, the task appears to have been outsourced to her Daily Mail associate and fellow hardcore Zionist, Nicole Lampert. She, too, has an extensive history of leveling false charges of antisemitism and fueling fears that Britain is an unsafe space for Jews due to Palestine solidarity.

Communications obtained by MintPress News indicate that hundreds of people scheduled to perform at or in some way involved with Glastonbury have received emails identical to those dispatched to Sprints from Lampert. Evidently, an extremely wide net is being cast in this fishing expedition, in the hope that at least one target bites. Were a recipient to condemn Kneecap, controversy over the group’s festival appearance could be manufactured. Were they to express solidarity with the group, the unsubstantiated narrative that the music industry is riddled with antisemites could be woven.

Lampert’s takeover of the operation to neutralize Kneecap might suggest Miller is so profoundly exposed as a Zionist propagandist at this point that there were fears she wouldn’t get away with it this time. However, the precise same blueprint she deployed against Dr. David Miller, Reginald D. Hunter, and others clearly remains in play. This is hardly surprising. It is how the Israeli lobby has, for years, silenced and suppressed Palestine solidarity globally. But can the approach work this time round?

“The Israel lobby is weaponising antisemitism against Kneecap. Such fabricated allegations still have the power to cost bands with anti-imperialist politics access to the mainstream. Whether or not they succeed at Glastonbury remains to be seen,” investigative journalist Asa Winstanley tells MintPress News. “The truth is, due to the Holocaust in Gaza, Israel’s propaganda is weaker than it has ever been. The returns of the fabricated antisemitism campaign are ever more diminishing.”

Israeli Propaganda, Eurovision and the Youth Rebellion

For years, Tel Aviv has attempted to influence Eurovision in its favor, conducting extensive psychological warfare operations to improve its performance in the Contest, which is regularly watched by up to 200 million people. The propaganda utility of these efforts is unambiguous. In 2024 and 2025, artificially-boosted televoting results for Israel’s entrants, which secured them fifth and second place respectively, were leaped upon by Israeli officials and their Western backers as proof that a “silent majority” of Europeans support the Israel, despite its ongoing genocide in Gaza.

As such, the Israeli lobby is well-aware of the enormous narrative threat posed by Kneecap’s Glastonbury appearance, and isn’t going to give up its crusade to deplatform the group easily – even if it’s a losing effort. According to official statistics, the BBC’s coverage of the 2023 festival was streamed more than 50 million times, a record high. That’s a large audience to be exposed to Kneecap’s message, music and politics, and potentially encouraged to engage in vigorous Palestine solidarity activism as a result.

As with prior lobby takedowns, The Daily Mail’s broadside on Kneecap is just the visible tip of a far bigger, and potentially more destructive, campaign. Israeli lobby groups have publicly called on Glastonbury to cancel the band’s appearance, while leaked emails reveal a joint letter signed by 34 music industry executives—many of them unabashed Zionists—was secretly dispatched to the festival’s organizers. They were implored to reconsider Kneecap’s invitation, due to the band’s “hateful rhetoric that is essentially denying Israel’s right to exist.”

Problematically for the lobby and Israel, a majority of young Britons already believe Israel should not exist. Kneecap’s performance could tip that balance even further. Although with Tel Aviv’s ongoing atrocities in Gaza continuing apace, even if the band’s set is cancelled, pro-Palestinian sentiment is inevitably going to rise in step in any event.

Feature photo | Kneecap performs at NorthSide Festival in Aarhus, Denmark, on June 6, 2025. The Irish rap trio has come under pressure from pro-Israel groups and British authorities over their outspoken support for Palestine. Ritzau Scanpix | Sipa USA via AP

Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg.

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