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Jewish activists have heckled Nigel Farage at the launch of a Jewish members’ organisation for Reform UK and accused the party of planning to use the new group as cover for persecuting other minorities.
Farage spoke at the inaugural event on Tuesday night of the Reform Jewish Alliance (RJA), which he said would help the party target up to 15 parliamentary seats.
Activists stood up in the middle of Farage’s speech and accused him of advocating policies under which past Jewish refugees would have been barred from the UK.
They included Carla Bloom, who recalled her own family’s history of facing persecution and of fighting the far right in the 1930s. She said: “My mother didn’t fight the Mosley fascists in Cable Street for this.”
Farage told the event, held in a function room of the Central synagogue in London and attended by about 200 people, that “Judeo-Christian principles” were the foundation of everything Britain had achieved.
He said he decided to set up the organisation after meeting the family of Emily Damari, a British woman taken hostage by Hamas during its attack on Israel in October 2023, because there had been no effective campaign seeking her release.
The hecklers, from the group Na’amod, questioned Farage’s credibility and said they believed the allegations of the MP’s former schoolmates from Dulwich college who have accused him of making antisemitic comments. Farage has rejected allegations of antisemitism and racism.
Josh Cohen, 32, said he had been disgusted to hear talk at the event of Jews as “model immigrants”, because it was aimed at paving the way for persecution of other minorities.
“We are disgusted by antisemitism but we believe Reform are an active threat to the Muslim community and to immigrants and asylum-seeker communities in the UK,” he told the Guardian.
“Our own family experience of escaping persecution and our knowledge of Jewish history is instructive, so when they attack immigrants we feel a moral duty to stand up. We know our history and as a Jewish group we refuse to be pitted against other minorities.”
Na’amod describes itself as a movement of British Jews seeking to end the community’s support for Israel’s occupation.
Outside the event, activists from another group, the Jewish Bloc for Palestine, held placards bearing comments that Farage is alleged to have made to Jewish students with whom he attended Dulwich college.
Amy Kershenbaum, 58, who was among those inside the event, said: “Many of us would not be here if Reform policies were in place when our ancestors sought refuge.”
Referring to the allegations against Farage from Dulwich alumni, she said: “I believe the reports and the victims and I am profoundly offended that he ridiculed them. I am offended that parts of the Jewish community could want to launder and whitewash his politics.”
Farage has called allegations of racist and antisemitic bullying during his time at Dulwich college “complete made-up fantasies”, saying his accusers are “people with very obvious political motivation”.
Those involved in heading up the RJA include Gary Mond, a former senior vice-president at the Board of Deputies, the largest body representing British Jews, who resigned from the organisation in 2022.
A political divide is emerging among British Jews, according to research, with support rising fast for the Greens and for Reform. Support for Reform among British Jews rose from 3% in August 2024 to 11% in June 2025, though this was below Reform’s ratings increase among the wider electorate.
Farage was introduced at the event by Alan Mendoza, the executive director of the Henry Jackson Society, a thinktank, and a councillor who defected from the Conservatives to become Reform’s adviser on global affairs.
“There is an absolute smear campaign against this man in the press,” he said of the allegations against Farage. “I can tell you, and all of you know this, there is not an antisemitic bone in this man’s body.”
Mendoza said in his speech: “More recent immigrants have not taken on the lesson of British values and try to import their values into the UK.”
