Illustrative: A police car is seen outside Victoria Station in Manchester, England. Photo: Reuters/Phil Noble

In the United Kingdom, the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) have started an investigation into potential crimes at a gathering of members of the British Movement, a neo-Nazi group, at the Duke of Edinburgh pub in Royston on April 19.

Photos from the organization’s Telegram channel showed participants holding Nazi banners, performing Nazi salutes, and eating a cake decorated with a swastika to celebrate Adolf Hitler’s birthday, which is April 20. One man in the group wore a German soccer jersey with “Fuhrer 44” on the back.

Law enforcement have confirmed they are reviewing for potential violations of Section 18 public order laws, which criminalize efforts to foment hate. “Police in Oldham are investigating reports that a group attended a pub on Market Street in Royton in possession of Nazi memorabilia,” a GMP spokesperson said.

The British Movement’s Northern Region wrote about the event, describing how “on a gorgeous sunny afternoon in Greater Manchester, a platoon of Northwest British Movement met up to celebrate the 136th birthday of Uncle A. It certainly didn’t take long for the dimly lit interior of the Oldham boozer to be filled with the warm laughter of comrades old and new. Tables were filled with a plethora of drinks: frosty pints of beer, fruity cocktails, schooners, and birthday cake!”

Employees of the pub did not know about the public display of Nazi symbols at the time, learning only afterward and prompting a report to the police.

“They said they had a cake, but we didn’t know what happened because they covered everything up,” Jean Anderson, who is taking over operations of the pub from her partner Terry English, told The Manchester Evening News. “The pub was full. There were about six to eight men and one woman. They sat in the corner and didn’t cause any problems. I have never seen them before, but they definitely won’t be coming in here again.”

English said, “I just can’t understand why they picked this pub.”

The Duke of Edinburgh’s operator, Craft Union Pubs, released a statement to The Independent, describing the British Movement group’s efforts to hide their offensive activities.

“A group entered the Duke of Edinburgh on Saturday under the pretext of celebrating a birthday and gathered in a back area of the venue. The group actively concealed their clothing and their activities during the visit and as a result, their actions were not visible to staff at the time,” the statement read. “The operator who runs the pub was therefore unaware of what had taken place until after the event. Upon becoming aware, the operator reported the matter to the police immediately.”

Craft Union Pubs added, “To be clear, we are absolutely appalled at what took place. We do not and will not tolerate this kind of behavior, and these people aren’t welcome in any of our venues. We are focused on uniting our local communities, not dividing them. We are supporting our operator to look after their team, who are understandably incredibly distressed by the incident.”

“There is absolutely no place in any civilized society for those who celebrate hatred and evil. Honoring Hitler is not an act of free speech; it is a shameless glorification of one of the darkest crimes in human history,” a spokesperson for the Community Security Trust (CST), a nonprofit charity that advises Britain’s Jewish community on security matters. told Jewish News. “Neo-Nazism must be unequivocally condemned, and we urge the police to investigate.”

The British Movement emerged in 1968. David Lawrence, senior researcher at Hope Not Hate, called it a “highly fringe Nazi group that is repulsive even by the standards of the far right.”

Lawrence explained that “the group is trying to raise its profile with small propaganda actions, especially in the North West, where its numbers have grown slightly due to the defection of activists from a larger fascist organization, Patriotic Alternative. The promotion of base racial hatred is always dangerous. However, the British Movement today is no closer to ushering in a new Reich than when it launched decades ago and remains a tiny collection of crank Hitler fetishists and washed-up hooligans.”

CST recorded 3,528 antisemitic incidents in the UK in 2024, the second-highest level ever seen. The group noted that “there were still 909 incidents reported to CST in 2024 where the Holocaust or Nazi era were invoked, comprising 26 percent of all incidents.”

The post Police Investigate After British Neo-Nazis Shock Pub With Swastika Cake to Celebrate Hitler’s Birthday first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

April 20, 2025, Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard University and Harvard Square scenes with students and pedestrians. Photo: Kenneth Martin/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect

Two Harvard University students who were charged with assaulting a Jewish classmate they suspected of holding pro-Israel beliefs were spared a criminal trial on Monday, being ordered by Boston Municipal Court Judge Stephen W. McClenon to attend “pre-trial diversion” anger management courses and perform 80 hours of community service each.

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, an October 2023 anti-Israel demonstration degenerated into chaos when Ibrahim Bharmal, former editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review, and Elom Tettey-Tamaklo encircled a Jewish student with a mob that screamed “Shame! Shame! Shame!” at him while he desperately attempted to free himself from the mass of bodies. The two graduate students were charged with assault and battery in May.

The penalties imposed on the men by McClenon will not require their apologizing to the Jewish student against whom they allegedly perpetrated what local Assistant District Attorney Ursula Knight described as “hands on assault and battery,” allowing them to avoid a trial and jail time for behavior that was filmed and widely viewed online.

A Jewish student at Harvard University harassed by anti-Israel protesters. Photo: Screenshot

“He [the victim] did nothing wrong leading up this incident and nothing wrong during this incident,” Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin R. Hayden, who also worked on the case, wrote to McClenon — according to excerpts of court documents shared by The Harvard Crimson. “Our request that the defendants in this matter issue an apology and an admission of wrongdoing was entirely appropriate and reasonable.”

Legal counsel for Bharmal and Tettey-Tamaklo celebrated McClenon’s decision in measured terms.

“We are pleased that the court agreed with us that a diversion was the appropriate resolution of this case,” said defense attorney Naomi R. Shatz.

According to a previous report by The Washington Free Beacon, Bharmal has been continuously rewarded with new and better opportunities since allegedly assaulting the Jewish student. Harvard neither disciplined him nor removed him from the presidency of the Harvard Law Review, a coveted post once held by former US President Barack Obama. As of last year, he was awarded a law clerkship with the Public Defender for the District of Columbia, a government-funded agency which provides free legal counsel to “individuals … who are charged with committing serious criminal acts.”

In 2023, The Harvard Crimson reported that the university suspended Tettey-Tamaklo indefinitely from his role as a proctor at the Harvard Divinity school, where he was a student. Tettey-Tamaklo was also ordered to vacate free housing he received as compensation for holding the position, which involves mentoring first-year students.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post Harvard Students Charged With Assaulting Jewish Classmate Receive Slap on the Wrists first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban speaks to the media next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in Budapest, Hungary, April 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Bernadett Szabo

Hungary’s parliament approved the country’s withdrawal from the International Criminal Court (ICC) over its “political” stance against Israel and the war in Gaza, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto announced on Tuesday.

“With this decision, we refuse to be part of a politicized institution that has lost its impartiality and credibility,” Szijjarto wrote in a post on X.

Hungary’s withdrawal from the ICC will not take effect immediately. Under the Rome Statute, the international treaty which established the ICC, a country’s decision to leave the court becomes official only one year after formally notifying the UN Secretary General. Until then, Hungary is still legally required to cooperate with the court.

The Hungarian Parliament just voted to withdraw from the @IntlCrimCourt. With this decision, we refuse to be part of a politicized institution that has lost its impartiality and credibility. pic.twitter.com/C9dit8xaB8

— Péter Szijjártó (@FM_Szijjarto) April 29, 2025

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar praised Hungary’s move, calling it a “clear moral stance.”

Earlier this month, Hungary announced its intention to leave the ICC during a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Budapest for a four-day trip.

Despite Hungary’s status as a signatory of the Rome Statute, Netanyahu was not taken into custody upon his arrival in Budapest, defying an ICC arrest warrant against him over allegations of war crimes in Gaza, where Israeli forces have been fighting Hamas terrorists since the latter’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of the Jewish state.

After the ICC issued the warrant against Netanyahu, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban rejected the decision by inviting the Israeli leader to Budapest and accusing the court of “interfering in an ongoing conflict for political purposes.”

Netanyahu’s visit to Hungary was his first trip to Europe since the ICC issued the arrest warrant against him last year.

During a press conference, Orban said the ICC is “no longer an impartial court, not a court of law, but a political court.”

“I am convinced that this otherwise important international judicial forum has been degraded into a political tool, with which we cannot and do not want to engage,” Orban said after meeting with the Israeli leader earlier this month.

At the time, Netanyahu commended Hungary’s decision to withdraw from the ICC, calling it a “bold and principled action” as “the first state that walks out of this corruption and this rottenness.”

“The ICC directs its actions against us fighting a just war with just means,” Netanyahu said. “I think [this decision will] be deeply appreciated, not only in Israel but in many, many countries around the world.”

Saar also praised Budapest’s decision, highlighting the country’s “strong moral stance alongside Israel and the principles of justice and sovereignty.”

“The so-called ‘International Criminal Court’ lost its moral authority after trampling the fundamental principles of international law in its zest for harming Israel’s right to self-defense,” the top Israeli diplomat wrote in a post on X.

In November, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and now-deceased Hamas terror leader Ibrahim al-Masri (better known as Mohammed Deif) for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.

The ICC said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant were criminally responsible for starvation in Gaza and the persecution of Palestinians — charges vehemently denied by Israel, which until a recently imposed blockade had provided significant humanitarian aid into the enclave throughout the war.

Israel also says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, despite the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s widely acknowledged military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.

After the ICC’s decision to issue the warrants, several countries, including Hungary, Argentina, the Czech Republic, Romania, Poland, France, and Italy, have said they would not arrest Netanyahu if he visited.

US and Israeli officials issued blistering condemnations of the ICC move, decrying the court for drawing a moral equivalence between Israel’s democratically elected leaders and the heads of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that launched the ongoing war in Gaza with its massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

The ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel as it is not a signatory to the Rome Statute. Other countries including the US have similarly not signed the ICC charter. However, the ICC has asserted jurisdiction by accepting “Palestine” as a signatory in 2015, despite no such state being recognized under international law.

The post Hungary Approves Withdrawal From ICC Over ‘Politicized’ Stance Against Israel, Gaza War first appeared on Algemeiner.com.