"The net effect is the country is poorer for it. For my own experience, I barely have any engagement with these groups," he said.
"They’re involved in defending one particular sort of protest," he added.
"I think it is an example of something we have seen with Palestine Action group, where people on the whole get their brains scrambled by Gaza, so they tolerate very violent behaviour, which they wouldn’t have done on the extreme right.”
He added that he had "reason to believe some of these organisations are worried about the direction of travel".
"I really hope they can pull themselves back from the brink and remember what they are there to do," he went on.
Hall, who has served as the UK's Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation since 2019 and is the first Independent Reviewer of State Threat Legislation, was speaking at the launch of a report by US charity watchdog NGO Monitor that alleges a network of foreign donors and state-linked actors has helped fund anti-Israel activism in Britain through charities, companies and unregistered organisations.
The report calls for reforms to the UK’s regulatory system to improve transparency over the funding of the groups behind pro-Palestine marches.
Hall described the report as a valuable exercise in “transparency”.
“Dark money is a tough nut to crack, so the first task is to shine some light in. Transparency allows regulators, journalists and the public to understand what is happening.
“We should be careful about reaching too quickly for sweeping new powers, but Britain already has financial, corporate and legal tools that can be used more effectively where there is evidence of malign influence, illicit funding or threats to democratic life,” he said.
Former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Lord Carlile, said regulators lacked the resources needed to enforce existing powers effectively.
"They have means by which they can close down charity, but it takes a very long time and they don’t have enough investigators to deal with it," he said, adding that such action can sometimes take a year.
He also argued that Companies House needed more investigators.
"One of their major duties is due diligence, which is very rarely carried out in any meaningful way," he said.
Jonathan Hall KC, Anne Herzberg, Legal Advisor at NGO Monitor, Lord Walney (Roath PR Consultants Ltd)[Missing Credit]
The NGO Monitor report examines 40 organisations that have been involved in anti-Israel demonstrations in Britain since October 7 2023, and found six organisations appeared at 80 per cent of the protests analysed.
The report alleges that some groups involved in UK activism have connections to US-based funding as well as networks linked to Qatar, China and Iran.
It also found cryptocurrency fundraising was increasingly being used to hide finance sources and that some groups connected to terrorist originations have used Gift Aid.
The report scrutinises household names including Amnesty International and Oxfam, alongside several of the leading organisers of anti-Israel demonstrations including the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
It alleges that some organisations are targeting young people with anti-Israel material.
Lord Walney – who hosted the report’s Parliamentary launch on Wednesday – said: "For too long we have treated hostile foreign influence as something that happens at the fringes of our society.
"This report shows it operating at the centre: inside respectable charities and household-name organisations, laundering extremist narratives into mainstream British life.
“Our defences are currently too weak, with insufficient transparency, sluggish enforcement, and regulators lacking the powers they need.
"The new prime minister must direct his ministers to build a counter-extremism regime equal to the scale of the problem."
Anne Herzberg, legal advisor at NGO Monitor, who was in London for the debate, said: “The hate marches of the past few years have not simply been spontaneous, grassroots expressions of free speech.
"They have been highly organised, professionally coordinated and driven from the top down.
“These organisations can become vectors of transmission, carrying extremist narratives and the messaging of hostile actors into mainstream British debate. We have even seen the language of terrorism blurred or erased.
“But when groups can mobilise hundreds of thousands of people, raise money through opaque channels or cryptocurrency, and operate through international networks, the public has a right to know who funds them, who governs them and whose interests they are serving.”
