📰 Our Fight Weekly — From Manchester to Nova | 2026-05-27
The Nova Exhibition was launched in London last week, just days before the anniversary of the Manchester Arena terror attack. Both were examples of the cowardice of Islamist terror.
This past week
Last Wednesday, May 20th, we were honoured to be invited to the Israeli Embassy's celebration of Israel's 78th Independence Day. It was an uplifting evening, and it was fantastic to meet and chat with so many of the allies and friends we have made during our campaigning these last few years.
On Sunday, May 24th, Our Fight campaigners joined with North London Friends of Israel to talk to the public on the streets of Hampstead. There were lots of good discussions including a few in which people were shocked to discover there is no apartheid in Israel, despite what their friends had been telling them...
Monday, May 25th, saw the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) release a video interview with Mark Birbeck, which explained the recent ruling that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) must pay CAA's legal costs in relation to the failed case accusing Mark of assaulting two police officers. Once again, we are immensely grateful to the CAA for supporting all of our cases, both financially and with invaluable advice.
On Tuesday, May 26th, we joined a group of 18 to 30 year olds at the Nova Exhibition, at a tour organised by the charity Living Freedom. A talk after the tour was given by Or Levy, who was taken hostage from Nova. His wife Einav was murdered as he was being forced away, but he only learned of her death on his release. In his moving reflections he used a phrase popularised by Viktor Frankl in Man's Search for Meaning — "he who has a why to live can bear almost any how". Or explained that this is what gave him the strength to endure his captivity, because his 'why' was the drive to be reunited with his young son Almog.
On Wednesday, May 27th, we held an Our Fight group visit to the Nova Exhibition.
Coming up
Thursday, May 28th, 6.30pm: An in-person discussion on Islam and Islamism will be held in central London, which is open to anyone who is making a regular donation to Our Fight.
Saturday, May 30th, 11.40am: An Our Fight group visit to the Nova Exhibition. Pre-book your ticket directly from the exhibition website, and select the 11.40am slot. Meet outside the venue entrance at 11.20am.
Wednesday, June 3rd, 7.30pm: The World Zionist Organisation are hosting an evening with rescued hostage Almog Meir Jan and injured IDF soldier Ben Ladany — two young men whose lives were forever changed by October 7 and the war that followed. They will share their experiences in a rare public appearance, interviewed by Jewish Chronicle journalist Nicole Lampert.
Tuesday, June 30th, 7.30pm: Our amazing friends at Comedy Unleashed are organising a fundraiser for Jewish community charities, as well as for Our Fight and Stop the Hate, called Stand Up for Jews! The response has been incredible, with all of the tickets being sold in only a few days. If you missed out, there is a waiting list that you can join.
Focus: From Manchester to Nova
At the Nova Exhibition that opened in London last week installations of tents and deckchairs recreate a festival campsite. Smoke fills the rooms, and videos play on multiple screens, combining to create a sense of chaos, disorientation and fear. On one screen you see young people running across open fields with nowhere to hide. On another, Islamists repeatedly throw grenades into bomb shelters full of unarmed ravers. And on phones placed on chairs, perched on sleeping bags or balanced on cool-boxes you will see young people give their final messages as they cower under cars, or try to comfort each other.
As you move through to the final part of the exhibition, and are confronted by a wall of hundreds of beautiful faces — a tally of the dead — one thing breaks through above everything else: this was barbarism at its most nihilistic and cowardly. Heavily armed terrorists murdering defenceless young people at a party, accompanied by the relentless chant of 'Allahu Akbar'.
Disturbing as it is, we know we have seen this before. Not just in Israel, but in Salman Abedi's cowardly self-detonation at Manchester Arena in 2017, and the slaughter of the defenceless at the Bataclan in Paris in 2015.
Yet our political and cultural elites meet this cowardly violence with cowardice of their own. They meet Islamism with appeasement. They pretend Nova and October 7th are distant problems, not warnings about the dangers we face in Europe today.
So go and see the exhibition. Take your friends. Dwell. Ponder. Reflect. Bear witness. We cannot let the beautiful faces of those who perished be forgotten. And then get angry. Because we cannot allow the barbaric cowardice of Islamist violence to be met with indifference.
The Nova Exhibition runs to July 5th, in Shoreditch. Visit the exhibition website to buy tickets.
You might have missed
Here are a couple of older articles that also looked at the need to recognise the domestic Islamist threat.
Our Fight
Our Fight
Worth a read
A moving account of the meeting of two mothers, who both lost sons to Islamist terrorists: Figen Murray’s at the Manchester Arena bombing, and Lisa Marlowe’s at the Nova Festival.
Judith Woods
For members
On Thursday, May 28th, we'll be holding an in-person discussion on Islam and Islamism, which is free to anyone who makes a regular donation to Our Fight. Those who have registered will receive the location address by email on the morning of the event.
Our Fight
Due to the bank holiday, there was no catch-up meeting on Monday, but we are back to normal on Monday, June 1st. We've also shifted the start time from 6pm to 6.30pm, finishing at 8.30pm. The weekly catch-up meetings are held in person in central London. Full details are in our WhatsApp group.
We need your help
Thank-you to everyone that responded to the call for proof-readers and editors! We'll be setting up some WhatsApp Groups and Trello boards to help with the work, and will get back to you all shortly.
If you are able to support our work, please make a donation, or become a regular contributor.
Thanks for being part of this,
Mark Birbeck
Founder and Director
Our Fight
P.S. We're still settling into our newsletter rhythm, so apologies that this is a day late. But in other news, you'll be pleased to hear that our merch site is up and running, and the number of items and designs is growing. If you went to give the mensch in your life some #mench merch or tell the world that 'Some people are Zionist — get over it', head to our store.
