After the police and Zionist activists colluded to cause chaos and brutalise an anti-genocide protest in North Kensington in January, the media and political class were predictably on-message, lying about events and pushing the Zionist narrative. More surprisingly, a week after the protest, the popular local Instagram account, Notting Hill Hoodhub, weighed in to defame the peaceful protestors and platform members of the pro-Israel British far-right. Was Hoodhub hoodwinked into publishing propaganda, or is there a deeper explanation?

Protest & Backlash

The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) led the anti-genocide protest on 9^th January to raise awareness of the role of the co-founders of the Notting Hill restaurant Erev in Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip. IJAN attended in solidarity with a small group of residents who had been subjected to intimidation and physical abuse by far-right activists at a protest at the restaurant in December.

In January, the police were seen colluding with, even taking instructions from, Zionist operatives. On Zionists’ instructions, the police heavy-handedly arrested a young Jewish man, and the following day, the right-wing media, celebrities and politicians, including Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, also obeyed instructions and presented the protest as akin to 1930s Germany.

Since then, the small local protest group has resumed its actions outside Erev, handing out flyers and explaining the complicity of the restaurant’s two founders in Israel’s mass slaughter in the Gaza Strip. For just two protestors (aged 60+) outside Erev in late January, the Met Police sent two vans and 10 officers. The British political establishment has also continued their support of Erev, with a delegation from the House of Lords visiting the restaurant in February. In doing so, perhaps they are confirming that Erev is not just an unfortunate business caught up in political antagonism but is considered an important outpost for London Zionists and their supremacist, expansionist ideology. 

“Resident” Backlash

The attention to detail of the Zionist movement is impressive and a week after IJAN’s January protest, an ostensibly apolitical social media account was attempting to further shape the narrative around Erev. Wittingly or otherwise, Notting Hill Hoodhub was used by Zionists to astroturf a defence of Erev from “many residents” and to perpetuate Zionist propaganda about anti-genocide protestors being the problem, and those complicit in genocide being the real victims. Hoodhub – like the mainstream media and the Zionist blogs – avoided doing the logical thing: challenging the claims of the protestors, which are laid out succinctly on the back of the flyer they distribute. The Zionists like to express outrage at the flyer, but never critique its information.

Rather than address the facts, the Zionists have preferred to use the Erev protests as a kind of false flag, to propagate the idea that antisemitism is rampant in British cities on a level comparable with the Hitler era.  

In the Video

Hoodhub’s Erev video shows a gathering outside the restaurant on a cold January night. Members of the right-wing, non-Jewish Zionist organisation Our Fight UK who had abused protestors at Erev last year can be seen in the post.

One is Mark Birbeck, founder and director of Our Fight. Birbeck led the Our Fight contingent at Tommy Robinson’s huge September 2025 rally in central London. Although he has repeatedly found himself in legal strife over his anti-Palestinian actions, Birbeck has enjoyed the largesse of the Zionist front group, Campaign Against Antisemitism, to cover his legal costs. A former revolutionary Marxist, Birbeck has publicly denied all genocides other than the Nazi holocaust. He has visited Israeli kibbutzim and his organisation has a delegation to Israel planned for next month.

Also in Hoodhub’s video is Kurpa Patel, the other face of Our Fight UK. Like Birbeck, Patel had previously visited Erev to goad and disrupt anti-genocide protesters. An evangelical Christian, Patel has been photographed at the Israeli embassy after meeting with the openly genocidal ambassador Tzipi Hotovely.

Our Fight UK

Our Fight UK relies on a group of approximately 100 right-wing cadres to carry out its role as street-level defenders of Zionism. Members of the group were prominent in the pushback against Maccabi Tel Aviv fans being banned from attending a Europa League game at Aston Villa last year. It is unclear whether the group receives payment from the Israeli state; Our Fight currently has no online record of its income or legal status.

Our Fight is allied to another Zionist group, Stop the Hate (most members seem to interchange between the two groups) that has been honoured by Hotovely, Netanyahu’s representative in Britain. Together, Our Fight and Stop the Hate have organised rallies calling for the usurping of the Iranian state by Western powers and Israel.

A key street-level operative who is close to the Our Fight team is Shahab Zaherinasab, caught on camera kicking a student in the head at Kings College London shortly before Birbeck and a group of Zionists headed over to Erev in December to harass the small band of peaceful protestors. After forcing the protestors to leave, Our Fight operatives got into a confrontation with a group of local youths. Part of the ruckus, including an assault on Birbeck and the intervention of the police, has been published on social media. From a source who was there, Urban Dandy understands that the local youths retaliated after the Our Fight mob racially abused them, although this part of the action was not included in the published videos.

A photo of Birbeck at the hospital that night shows Zaherinasab in attendance. Zaherinasab can also be seen wearing an Israeli army hoodie alongside Tommy Robinson at a rally in central London in January. 

This is a deep and very dark rabbit hole, and a far cry from the positive vibes of Notting Hill Hoodhub and its usual output.

Hoodhub’s 16^th January Erev video has gained 893 likes, 83 comments, seven reposts and 166 shares to date. These numbers are far higher than the site’s usual stats, with a comment count that is far higher than even their most popular posts.  

Who Wrote the Hoodhub Caption?

We have established that the British far-right were well represented in Hoodhub’s Erev video. But was it really Hoodhub’s video, or was the channel used for an astroturfed pushback against Kensington’s anti-Zionist protests? The caption is set out differently to the usual copy on the site. Hoodhub tends to go with short captions that position the account as authentically local (e.g.”I love locals. Aren’t we guys marvellous?????”) but the Erev post is carefully worded, avoiding mention of the reasons for the restaurant being protested. It reads more like a PR piece for the restaurant, perhaps part of a broader campaign to persuade the police that there is no link between Erev’s founders and thousands of (prima facie) cases of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.

Hoodhub does not credit anybody else for the video or the copy, nor does it state that it was a paid promotion. But in the comments, credit for the caption appears to go to David Cohen, who is Executive Editor and Investigations Editor of the Evening Standard. The award-winning journalist Cohen, who has written articles critical of anti-genocide protests for the fanatically Zionist Jewish Chronicle, is tagged in the comments section, “you write so eloquently DC.”

Who Commented?

The praise for David Cohen came from Toby Cohen, a photographer who moved to Israel 18 years ago having worked as a paperazzi for the Daily Express and News of the World. Judging by many of the accounts that commented on the post, Erev does not have much organic support in the ‘hood. Of the accounts that are publicly viewable, there is a preponderance of PR professionals, artists, actors, designers, and journalists. A pinned post by one of the journalists showcases a recent article of theirs titled “Saddle up: 10 of the best horse riding breaks in Europe.”

If the commentors are local, they seem to spend a lot of time on breaks away from the area. There is barely a photo of the ‘hood to be found among them, with the United States and Spain featuring far more than London on the Instagram accounts of these elite professionals. Almost all of the viewable accounts are owned by white people, while the population of Erev’s council ward, Colville, is extremely diverse.

There are several company-owned Instagram accounts among the comments including the beautifully named property_wealth_management, and a surfeit of dog lovers. There are far more photos of dogs than of local people or the local area; there’s even one account owned by a dog – Leo – who commented on the post with a heart emoji – perhaps Leo just loves appropriated Arab cuisine.

There is a lot of love for dogs among these accounts, and for conspicuously wealthy lifestyles. Less for human beings; in fact none of the comments even mention the victims of the Israel/US-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which lured starving Palestinians to “aid distribution” sites in Gaza before slaughtering thousands of them. Shahar Segal, co-founder of Erev, was spokesman for this murderous initiative. When he stepped down last Summer, Segal expressed no remorse.

According to Notting Hill Hoodhub, Segal’s Erev is a “cool neighbourhood spot that truly deserves our support.”

“Proxies for wider political issues”

With its hashtag #nottinghillspirit and promotion of the high-end property market, Hoodhub had previously stayed away from political comment. The closest it came was a truly woeful attempt at a Grenfell anniversary post, see below.

The caption for the Erev propaganda, whether written by a professional, or by Hoodhub’s editor Brandon Cowan, insists that restaurants should not be “treated as proxies for wider political issues,” an attempt to disassociate Erev’s founders from their (prima facie) complicity in Gaza. Yet in the comments under the video, Cowan expresses support for the January’s CIA and Mossad-backed disturbances in Iran, “hopefully by Sunday no one will need to march for Iran and they will get the new start they deserve!”

About Hoodhub

Notting Hill Hoodhub was registered as a limited company and launched its Instagram page two years ago. The director, Brandon Cowan, said that he moved from Hampstead to West London “for the quirky mix.” The company has reported zero income, yet the Instagram page is updated multiple times each week. It has tens of thousands of followers, but its editor seems to have only a superficial grasp of the area he seeks to represent.

Could Hoodhub be part of the British state’s response to the Grenfell Tower atrocity, discussed in our recent post on state infiltration into our community in the days, month and years following the fire? Under the control of the Metropolitan Police, and under the banner of the London Resilience Partnership, when the Met declares a major incident, Civil Contingencies legislation is activated to steer the population back to what the Strategic Coordination Protocol Manual describes as the “steady state” – a return to the status quo. A key element of this is what they call “controlled spontaneity” as they “corral the Princess Dianaeqsue grief” to numb public anger. This set of techniques, initially drawn up to prepare for a potential terror attack on the 2012 London Olympics, includes ensuring certain ‘positive’ hashtags trend on social media to divert public attention from the ongoing denial of justice. 

It is easy to see Notting Hill Hoodhub with its relentlessly happy vibes being an extension of this. And, if it was already under the direction of the state as part of the Grenfell response, it would already by aligned with the forces in this country that promote Zionist interests at great cost to the civil liberties of the general population. 

We contacted Notting Hill Hoodhub, initially offering to provide them with information on the far-right activists they had shown in their video, but they did not respond. We then sent a set of questions regarding Erev, the Zionist movement and whether Hoodhub was paid for the post and if it was created by somebody else. Again, they did not respond. 

Did Notting Hill Hoodhub ignore us because it does not care about its reputation? This seems unlikely as the account has spent years portraying a love for local people and local culture. Hoodhub could be Zionists who support Israel’s war crimes, although there was no evidence of this before their Erev post. It could be they are on the payroll of the British state, tasked with generating a dumbed down image of the local area with happy hippy posts. Or it could be they were hoodwinked by the most manipulative and dangerous people around, the Zionist movement, currently trying to drag the whole world into war as they commit their latest atrocities in Iran and Lebanon.

by Tom Charles

@urbandandyldn @tomhcharles