Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

Meet Ben Soffa, the national secretary of the UK-based Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

You would think he was a dedicated pro-Palestine campaigner. He has, after all, worked since 2013 at the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the lead UK group organising the massive demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine over the last two years.

In addition, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign states that it is anti-Zionist. Its 2024 annual report states this unambiguously: “We are an anti-Zionist organization.” Soffa has even been referred to as an “anti-Zionist Jew” by that doyen of non-Jewish Zionists, the sometime arms industry lobbyist, Labour Party enforcer and We Believe in Israel head, Luke Akehurst.

So surely the national secretary of the PSC is actually an anti-Zionist?

Unfortunately, matters are not so clear. In a new disclosure to MintPress News, he has admitted for the first time that he worked together in the Labour Party with former Israeli spy Assaf Kaplan. Stating that they had “limited interactions” in his role working at the Labour Party as head of digital organizing. This was at the same time as he worked as national secretary of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

In addition, Soffa serves as the chair of the Lancaster and Lakes Jewish Community (LLJC), based at Lancaster University. It’s a member of the Board of Deputies of British Jews (BoD).

As is well known, the BoD has been Zionist since 1939. In its 2020 annual report, it boasted about its relationship with the genocidal Zionist regime. It has a “close working relationship with the Embassy of Israel in the UK” and “strengthened links to the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs and the IDF Spokesperson Department.”

The LLJC states that it mainly uses the “Liberal prayerbook,” associating it with Liberal Judaism. This is itself a Zionist synagogue movement, being an affiliate of the World Zionist Organization and affirming “a love for the Land of Israel and a strong commitment to the State of Israel,” on its website.

As a member of the Board of Deputies, LLJC is entitled to elect a representative to the board. The LLJC states that “Ben leads on the external representation of the community.” Thus, it might be thought likely that he is the BoD representative for the group, although the names of deputies are not disclosed by the BoD or by LLJC itself. A request for confirmation on this point was sent to the Board of Deputies and directly to Ben Soffa.

The Board of Deputies did not reply. Soffa was asked: “It appears that you are a Zionist, but that the PSC is an ‘anti-Zionist’ organisation. So, first, can you confirm: Do you believe that the State of Israel should exist?” In an emailed response, he said:

I am not a Zionist, I am an anti-Zionist. Any claim to the contrary would be defamatory. I fundamentally disagree with there being an ethnostate that dominates, occupies and dispossesses Palestinians on the basis of ethnicity, nationality and religion.”

As can be seen from that carefully worded response, Soffa did not reply to the question about the existence of the “State of Israel.”

Soffa also stated, “I am not, nor have I ever been, a delegate to the Board of Deputies.” This reply, of course, leaves open the question of the identity of the BoD representative at the Lancaster and the Lakes Jewish Community; the extent to which they take instruction from the chair of the Shul, who is Soffa; and of course the wider questions fo how “anti-Zionists” can be part of a hardline genocidal Zionist organisations like the Board of Deputies.

Ben Soffa and Noah Katz, Zionist networkers

Soffa’s deputy at the LLJC is Noah Katz, a self-proclaimed ‘peacenik’, who has also been chair of the BoD’s Under 35 Assembly. Katz now works for the BoD in public affairs. Katz, who uses the pronouns they/(((them))), was “a UJS Deputy”—that is, a UJS representative on the Board of Deputies for three years until December 2024—and “a member of the World Jewish Congress’ Jewish Diplomatic Academy.”

The UJS is the Union of Jewish Students, the national body to which all university Jewish societies in the UK are affiliated. It is formally signed up to the Zionist movement, as I have repeatedly noted. The WJC is also a hardline Zionist group. Katz has also held positions at the National Union of Students, raising concerns about possible Zionist influence.

A biographical note utilizing Katz’s preferred pronouns states, “They were elected to sit as a Member Director of the National Union of Students and is a Trustee of NUS Charity following a term as Vice President Education at Lancaster University Students’ Union.”

In March 2025, Katz appeared on a panel for Jewish Book Week titled “Young Zionist Voices,” chaired by the Zionist fanatic Natasha Hausdorff of UK Lawyers for Israel. UKLFI has most recently received significant pushback for suggesting that the deliberate Zionist starvation of Gazans, “may increase average life expectancy in Gaza, bearing in mind that one of the biggest health issues in Gaza prior to the current war was obesity.” This was so repellent that even the Guardian covered it.

Katz is also co-founder of the Yad Fellowship, a campus interfaith initiative dedicated to penetrating and subverting Muslim political organizations on campus in the UK. According to the Jewish Chronicle (JC), it also appears to involve joint Zionist/British intelligence assets such as New Horizons in British Islam, Mitzvah Day and Nisa Nashim.

Perhaps most shockingly, for a professed Zionist peacenik, since January 2025, Katz is listed as an advisory council member of Jewish on Campus on his LinkedIn page. This is run by an Israel-based nonprofit called ATID, which stands for Academy for Torah Initiatives and Directions. It is financially supported by the U.S.-based nonprofit the American Committee for the Advancement of Torah Education in Israel Inc.

It is run by Rabbi Chaim Brovender, who was sent to occupied Palestine by the Chabad Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who died in 1994. Chabad is a genocidal ultra-Zionist cult, deeply involved directly in the genocide. Brovender established a Yeshiva in Efrat, an illegal settlement in the West Bank. He also served as a Rabbi in the occupation forces (the so-called IDF) for more than 20 years.

In other words, Ben Soffa, the national secretary of the “anti-Zionist” Palestine Solidarity Campaign, appears to be a  Zionist who collaborates daily with other heavily networked Zionists, who are, obviously, supporters of genocide, if not specifically of Netanyahu.

In an emailed reply to MintPress News, Soffa stated:

I am not the ‘Chair of a Zionist Shul.’ You seem to have an extremely superficial understanding of how the organisations of the Jewish community operate. Branding all Jews who engage in the organisations of the Jewish community as ‘Zionists’ erases the growing number of Jewish people who increasingly question or reject Zionism. The logic of your argument is that anti-Zionist Jews should exclude themselves from the organisations of the Jewish community. I believe the very opposite.”

Let’s examine his history and role in the Palestine solidarity movement.

Family background

Soffa was born in April 1982 and raised in Cardiff. His family has been in Wales for about a century—his great-grandfather immigrated to London from Russia in the 1890s and moved to Cardiff around 1901, according to Soffa’s father, Stanley.

In a 2012 interview, Soffa remarked: “There’s definitely a strong Jewish component to my identity, as well as a Welsh one. I don’t speak Welsh, but even though my family’s only been in Wales a hundred years, it feels like it’s something of me.”

It’s hardly surprising that Soffa came to have Zionist views in his youth, given his family background. Research for Palestine Declassified reveals that his father, Stanley Soffa, is one of the 300 deputies of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, having been “elected” to represent the Cardiff Reform Synagogue in 2014. He has served as president of the South Wales Jewish Representative Council, which is also Zionist, for some time.

Stanley Soffa even lobbied the Labour Party in Wales in support of the Israel lobby antisemitism scam.

Ben Soffa’s mother, Diana Frances Soffa, is listed on Companies House as having been on the board of The Interfaith Network for the United Kingdom (June 2008 – February 2011). The Network, which wound up in January 2025, was packed with other Zionists, including Amanda Bowman, Vice President of the Board of Deputies (July 2022-January 2025), and Susan Siegel, a leading operative in the Scottish Zionist movement. It also features Muslim assets of the British intelligence agencies, such as Mustafa Field (September 2022- July 2023). Soffa, therefore, as Zionist lobby enforcer Luke Akehurst has admitted, is from a “Zionist family.”

Obviously, the sins of fathers or mothers should not be attributed to their offspring. Perhaps Ben Soffa moved away from Zionism in his youth? Yet this appears not to be the case.

In 2012, he gave an oral history interview, stating plainly, “Reform Judaism is definitely within the spectrum where I’m most happy, both in terms of its view of religion and acceptance and human equality. I think Judaism is an ethical code, and while it’s not the complete way that defines how I behave, I think it’s a big part of how I see things like injustices, and that feeds into a fair amount of what I do, even if it’s in an indirect kind of way.”

This is an admission in 2012—at the age of 30—that he remained a Zionist. “I go back to Cardiff about six times a year,” he said, “and some of that is for festivals, which will often involve going to shul. There’s a lot about that community I miss: the enjoyment of everything being the same for the most part, and being able to catch up with people who I’ve known for thirty years, some who are now in their eighties and nineties.”

The Reform shul (synagogue) to which he is referring is the Cardiff Reform Synagogue, one of the two synagogues that still exist in Cardiff. Both are Zionist. The Reform Shul, as the name suggests, is a member of the Movement for Reform Judaism, which states on its website that it is “unequivocally Zionist.”

In 2013, the year after he gave this oral history interview, Soffa was appointed as the director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. In 2017, he was appointed as the company secretary.

PSC and its racist supporters?

In April 2017, Soffa gave an interview to a Ph.D. student researching the PSC. In his account of the various currents of support for the PSC, he stated: “PSC as an organization, we do not take a position on UK domestic politics and we are very very [sic] happy to receive anyone, to be welcoming to people right across the political spectrum, as long as they are not racist or involved in racist parties.”

According to the official PSC view, Zionism is racism. Yet within the looking-glass logic of the organization, acknowledging that this creates a contradiction is virtually unthinkable. Anyone who points it out risks being labeled an antisemite. This blind spot is also evident in the organization Stand Up To Racism, which likewise refuses to acknowledge either the relevance or the fact that Zionism is racism.

Thus, it’s no surprise that Soffa has addressed Stand Up To Racism meetings promoting what they describe as “anti-racist unity.” But the unity they invoke is, in practice, unity with Zionists. If it were genuinely anti-racist, it would confront the racism of Zionism itself.

Soft pedalling the Community Security Trust?

In 2014, a year into his role as a PSC director and already using the title “national director,” Soffa appeared on Channel 4 News to debate whether attacks against Jews were on the rise. His interlocutor was a young Eylon Levy, who would go on to become a spokesperson for the Zionist regime before being sacked a decade later for lying. One of the central flashpoints in the discussion was an image of an Israeli flag with the Star of David replaced by a blue swastika.

The flag had appeared at a PSC demonstration, prompting the organization to issue a public condemnation. This occurred before the election of Jeremy Corbyn in 2015—an event widely claimed to have conjured into existence the genie of antisemitism—and before the adoption of the IHRA working definition of antisemitism in 2016. It was one of many examples, stretching back over five decades, of the transnational Zionist movement’s efforts to manufacture the myth of a so-called “new antisemitism.”

The debate also occurred before the PSC amended its constitution in 2022 to weaken its stated opposition to Zionism. Notably, the subject under discussion—comparisons between the state of Israel and Nazi Germany—was one of the key examples later included in the IHRA’s final definition of antisemitism, adopted in May 2016.

At the time, PSC appeared paralyzed by the controversy, even though comparing Israel to Nazism is, by definition, not Judeophobic since it is about Israel and not characteristics of Jews as Jews. At most, such comparisons might offend some Jews, but they are neither racist nor prejudiced against Jewish people as Jews.

Nevertheless, the incident backed PSC into a corner. In response, Soffa cited the Community Security Trust’s (CST) praise for PSC’s condemnation of the image. Appearing on Channel Four News, he said, “Our condemnation of that was actually welcomed by the Community Security Trust, the main Jewish body opposing anti-Semitism.”

That description of CST is not uncontested, including, as we shall see, by PSC itself. In reality, as many people are now aware, the CST is a hardline Zionist organization, run by the convicted fraudster and revisionist Zionist, Gerald Ronson. It exists to run point for the Zionist regime, and its life’s work is to blur the distinction between antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

Years later, in May 2024, I challenged Soffa directly on whether there was any relationship between the CST and PSC. He replied in part: “CST Tweeted to welcome press statement by PSC. Quit pretending this = collaboration.” His response made clear that he did not deny citing CST’s approval. Describing the CST as the “main Jewish body” opposing antisemitism is, at best, a generous interpretation of its role.

Ben Jamal, the national director of PSC, later quoted Soffa’s post and added that PSC “has not nor would collaborate with” CST. “We know exactly what they are and the role they play in conflating antisemitism with advocacy for Palestinian rights,” he continued. The use of “we” and the reference to PSC suggest that Soffa, as national secretary, shares this position. Yet in practice, he appears to take a softer line on CST.

For example, the FAQ section of the Lancaster and Lakes Jewish Community website, where Soffa serves as chair, encourages members to report any perceived antisemitic incidents to the CST, noting that the organization monitors such cases nationally. There is no mention of CST’s role in targeting the Palestine solidarity movement, just as there wasn’t in Soffa’s 2014 Channel Four News appearance.

Before becoming chair of LLJC in late 2024, Soffa was a committee member responsible for managing the website.

Soffa’s role at PSC

What role has Soffa played in PSC over the past decade? Evidence suggests he has taken part in blacklisting and witch-hunting anti-Zionists and supporters of armed resistance, and was likely supportive of PSC’s 2022 decision to weaken its formal opposition to Zionism.

After the launch of the Al-Aqsa Flood operation by the Palestinian resistance on Oct. 7, 2023, the Manchester branch of PSC marched with a banner supporting the operation and published a statement on its website that same day: “Palestinian freedom fighters from besieged Gaza broke Zionist colonial barriers and entered settlements built on stolen Palestinian land inside ‘48 Palestine.’”

PSC in London distanced itself from its Manchester branch in a statement published on its website, calling the branch’s support for Palestinian resistance “unacceptable.” Despite the branch complying with PSC’s demand to delete the website post and a related post on X, the national office suspended Manchester PSC’s officers anyway.

On Oct. 27, Soffa wrote to the branch, stating that “following a preliminary consideration by PSC’s standing investigative committee,” the officers’ membership in PSC had been suspended. “In all,” writes Asa Winstanley, “Soffa sent identical emails to four of the branch’s elected officers,” according to sources in Manchester. The emails, seen by The Electronic Intifada, specifically cited Manchester PSC’s Oct. 7 post and a related Twitter post as justification for the suspensions.

Soffa wrote: “This is not a punitive suspension and is intended only to last until the matter can be investigated and a report considered by the [PSC’s] executive committee. I will be writing to you in the coming days regarding this investigation and how you may submit evidence.”

Soffa also played a key role in the expulsion of Ian Donovan from PSC around 2020. Donovan summarized his objections to Soffa overseeing the investigation, citing what he saw as a fundamental conflict of interest:

In my appeal I complain at length about the conflict of interest in your being the Secretary of PSC and acting to expel anti-Zionist socialists and anti-racists from PSC, when you are also an employed national official of the Labour Party, led by Keir Starmer. Starmer is an avowed enemy of the entire purpose of PSC, support for Palestinians, due to his public statement that he supports Zionism “without qualification” and his purging of numerous Labour Party members for their opposition to Zionist racism and support for the Palestinians. As far as I am concerned this conflict of interest makes you to all intents and purpose an enemy agent and fifth columnist.”

Little did Donovan appear to know that Soffa himself may be a Zionist.

Soffa’s role at the Labour Party

During much of this period, as Ian Donovan noted, Soffa was employed by the Labour Party as head of digital organising and was in a long-term relationship with Cat Smith, the Labour MP for Lancaster. The two were together for about 11 years before marrying in September 2016. They reportedly separated in 2020, and Soffa’s employment with the party ended in October 2023.

In a 2021 account, Soffa reportedly described the extent of his behind-the-scenes support for Smith’s political work: “I spent almost every weekend and much time besides supporting her campaigning, writing the materials that would be presented as her work and forgoing many opportunities of my own so l could be there to support her professionally.”

The Daily Express reported that the name of Soffa’s digital campaign company appeared at the bottom of Cat Smith’s official website and that the compliance officer at IPSA was reviewing whether Smith should have declared her husband’s involvement. Soffa was also listed in the parliamentary email database as a “member’s staff for Lancaster and Fleetwood.” This appeared to confirm longstanding suspicions, hotly denied in 2017, that Soffa was secretly working for Smith.

Whether or not his admission to ghostwriting speeches for Smith constitutes a rules breach, a more troubling issue arises. Between 2016 and 2020, while Smith served in the shadow cabinets of Jeremy Corbyn and Keir Starmer, she made a number of speeches, interventions and appearances that ran counter to the interests of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

In 2016, Smith was one of the two most senior members of Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet to attend a Chanukah event hosted by the Jewish Labour Movement, “the first ever held at Labour Party HQ in central London.”

On Jan. 23, 2020, she stood in Parliament and approvingly echoed Zionist talking points from Dave Rich of the Community Security Trust, the aforementioned group that serves as a proxy for the genocidal regime. Quoting Rich, Smith said:

Dave Rich of the Community Security Trust has suggested that the recent rises in antisemitism are not just about attitudes to Jewish people but are the results of our society weakening as a whole. Extremist movements in the UK and abroad have given confidence to those that previously hid in the shadows. Antisemitism always flourishes when extremism takes hold, and our current times are no different. This is a problem that all British society must confront, and it demands leadership that is prepared to turn its back on inequality and division. Prejudice and hatred of Jewish people has no place whatsoever in society, and every one of us has a responsibility to ensure that it is never allowed to fester again.”

Shortly afterward, Smith responded deferentially to Labour MP Margaret Hodge, a hardline Zionist known for her role in the antisemitism smear campaign: “I thank my right hon. Friend for raising that incredibly valid and painful point with regard to social media companies. I pay tribute to her work on always challenging antisemitism wherever it raises its head, even when it can be very uncomfortable to do so.”

In March 2020, Smith leveraged her relationship with Soffa in defense of her record on antisemitism, stating: “I have a Jewish family, my husband is Jewish and my child is Jewish.”

She went on to channel the “antisemitism” scam, asserting: “There are people in the Labour Party that hold antisemitic views and express them and the party has not been able to react fast enough to expel these people.” Regarding then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, she added:

I think he did not deal with the crisis, and it was a crisis, in the party, assertively enough, or fast enough, and, as a result, it suggested that if you were antisemitic you could be in the party, which upset me greatly. If there were any instances of that in my local party, where I have more control, I would have come down on them like a ton of bricks.”

Smith is listed as a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Antisemitism and has attended its events since at least December 2015. The group is run by the Antisemitism Policy Trust, which has received nearly all of its funding from Zionist sources since its founding in 2001. Among its most prominent funders is the Pears Family Charitable Foundation, a philanthropic group led by the Pears family, once described as Britain’s “worst landlords” by a BBC consumer program.

In May 2024, some years after she split with Ben Soffa, Smith spoke in Parliament about the advice she had taken from Noah Katz—Soffa’s deputy chair at his shul. Predictably, these were hardline Zionist talking points. She referred to Katz as the Chair of the Lancaster and Lakes Jewish Community, which he was at the time, and noted that the shul is “in my constituency.” She thanked Katz for “giving time and sharing how we can advocate for peace rather than stoking division, as well as our common views on the need to see hostages released and a ceasefire.”

She added that although Lancaster’s Jewish community is small, it “has strong links with friends and family in Israel,” and that “in the seven months since 7 October, they have provided support for local Jewish families.”

The community had, she said, adopted the Bibas family as part of the Board of Deputies’ “Seder Seat For a Hostage” campaign. “I thank Noah for the way they support Jewish families in Lancaster, including my own,” she said. Her “own” family is, of course, a reference to her by-then ex-husband Ben Soffa and their child.

Finally, it is worth noting that in 2024, Smith received £5,000 from Labour Together, the Zionist vehicle established by the effective leader of the British Zionist movement, Trevor Chinn, and others to recruit Labour MPs to the Zionist cause.

Whether Soffa’s admission that he was involved in directly supporting Smith, through unofficial ghostwriting and political advice, implicates him in any of the activities outlined above is impossible to say with certainty. What can be said, however, is that this undisclosed involvement represents a clear potential conflict of interest with his role at the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

In an emailed response to MintPress News, Ben Soffa wrote: “The attempt to suggest people should be held accountable for the views of family members or ex-partners is a particularly low form of politics. I am no more responsible for the choices they make than they are for mine.”

Assaf Kaplan

Another controversial aspect of Soffa’s work for the Labour Party, though previously reported, involves his proximity to Assaf Kaplan, the “former” Israeli spy. While Soffa served as head of digital, the party appointed Kaplan as head of “social listening and organizing manager.” Efforts were made to determine whether Soffa had any direct relationship with Kaplan, but they were frustrated by his refusal to comment.

As Asa Winstanley wrote in November 2023:

Contacted by phone, Ben Soffa declined to answer questions on the record, insisting we email PSC’s media address instead. Asked if he thinks Palestinians have the right to defend themselves using armed force, Soffa refused to answer. He also refused to answer when asked what PSC’s position is on the Palestinian use of armed defense. Asked if he, as a senior Labour staffer, has ever worked with Israeli spy Assaf Kaplan – who was hired to monitor Labour members’ social media activities – Soffa refused to answer. “That is something that I’m not going to comment on,” he said, when asked if he works with Kaplan currently.”

In his first statement on these questions, Soffa told MintPress News:

I took a job at the Labour Party a couple of months after the election of Jeremy Corbyn, in whose leadership campaign I had played a significant role. Five years later, under the Starmer leadership, another team hired the individual you are referring to. We had very limited interactions. In an organization with hundreds of staff, it is frankly bizarre to suggest any employee is responsible for the hiring choices made by other sections of the organization. In response to your question, we did not ‘share an office’ as I worked remotely throughout this period.”

The individual that MintPress News was referring to was, of course, Assaf Kaplan.

Soffa stated that he “worked remotely” and thus did not share an office with Kaplan. But he does acknowledge—in what must be a very damaging admission—that he and Kaplan had what he described as “limited interactions.” So Soffa, the “anti-zionist” head of digital organizing and the Zionist ex-spy “social listening and organizing manager,” worked together at Labour headquarters. At the same time, Soffa was the national secretary of the “anti-Zionist” Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

In conclusion

The case of Ben Soffa is instructive. It sheds light on the appalling behavior of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and its blacklisting of anti-Zionists. It also helps clarify the PSC’s relationship with the Palestinian Authority and the BDS National Committee, which leads the international BDS campaign from its base in Ramallah.

PSC has endorsed many of the BDS NC’s reactionary positions, including efforts to blacklist anti-Zionist groups and to denounce support for the legitimate right of armed resistance. This was evident in its condemnation of the Mapping Project in the U.S., and its response to the Manchester branch’s statement following the Al-Aqsa Flood operation in late 2023.

The organization has also censored me, as well as other anti-Zionist activists, including Huda Ammori of Palestine Action and the British-Iraqi rapper Lowkey. And who can forget its blacklisting of Palestinian freedom fighter Leila Khaled?

That there are actual believing Zionists in the highest levels of the organization starts to reorient our understanding toward the idea that the PSC has been, at best, penetrated or infiltrated by a Zionist asset, and, at worst, is itself an asset of the Zionist regime. And there must be questions about Soffa specifically. Was he placed in PSC to cause the damage that he evidently has?

In an emailed response to MintPress News, Soffa wrote:

Any suggestion that I am ‘an infiltrator’ would be entirely without foundation in fact and would be highly defamatory. I have been active in the campaign for Palestinian rights for almost 25 years, have come under fire from the IDF whilst in Palestine and you yourself have reported I lost my job due to my support for Palestine. On the other hand, the supposed evidence that I am not a sincere supporter of the Palestinian people seems to amount to the fact I am Jewish and am involved in the Jewish community.”

It seems likely that new revelations about the internal workings of PSC will continue to surface, as its confrontation with the anti-Zionist movement intensifies.

MintPress News also contacted Ben Jamal, the national director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, to ask when and whether he became aware that Soffa appears to be a Zionist; what, if anything, he intends to do about it; whether he considers it a conflict of interest for Soffa to chair an organization affiliated with the Board of Deputies; and about Soffa’s apparent role in advising his then-wife on relevant matters. Jamal did not respond.

Original article: mintpressnews