Letting Hezbollah flags fly in London is a terrible indictment of our government's approach to extremism

This now constitutes ‘business as usual’ – but we should be continuing our proud tradition of standing up to evil

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators carry the yellow flag of Lebanese Shia group, even though our government has proscribed their militant wing (Getty)

In which major capital city will the flag of a terrorist group be paraded openly and with impunity this weekend? Tehran, maybe? Damascus, perhaps? Quite possibly.

But these chilling scenes will also be played out in central London today – as they have every summer for several years.

As shoppers wind their way through Oxford Street, they are likely to be greeted with the flag of the Hezbollah group, complete with its less-than-subtle image of a rifle, being waved by and worn on the clothing of participants in the annual Quds Day parade (the event initiated by Iran’s Islamic republic in support of Palestinians and with a view to destroying Israel, as called for this week by the Iranian Ayatollah).

All this will happen in full view of police, who last week clarified that the law may not allow them to do anything other than watch as this sickening parade passes by.

The blame for this lies squarely with the fact that Britain refuses to proscribe the group’s so-called political wing, as it already has its military wing. It’s this legal loophole which enables the group’s only flag – the one with the gun – to fly unchallenged.

The glaring flaw in this logic is that there is no such distinction in reality – even Hezbollah’s own leaders say so. In the words of deputy chief Naim Qassem: “We don’t have a military wing and a political one; we don’t have Hezbollah on one hand and the resistance party on the other … Every element of Hezbollah, from commanders to members as well as our various capabilities, are in the service of the resistance and we have nothing but the resistance as a priority.”

They seem practically to be inviting full proscription, yet our government continues, inexplicably, to turn a blind eye. You could almost hear the belly laughs from Lebanon and Iran as disclaimers pointing to specific support for the group’s “political wing” were pinned to flags at last year’s march.

In the wake of that hate fest – when one speaker claimed “Zionists” were responsible for the Grenfell disaster – it felt like a corner had finally been turned. Sadiq Khan, London’s Labour mayor, demanded that the loophole be closed; thousands signed petitions demanding a full ban; and a Comres poll for the Jewish News indicated that four times as many Britons would support the proscription of the political wing as would oppose it.

At the Jewish News, we started a weekly countdown to the next time the flags were expected to appear on our streets, believing that a government led by a prime minister who insisted "enough is enough" when it came to tolerating extremism would ensure such scenes were never repeated.

Yet on the eve of the event, nothing has changed. Worse, in fact, because the flying of these flags has become as much of an annual fixture on our streets as marching bands at the New Year’s Day parade. It now constitutes “business as usual”, justified laughably by claims from those in the march about freedom of expression. What a terrible indictment on our country, itself scarred by terror and with such a proud tradition of standing up to evil.

Indeed, while the horrific carnage wreaked by Isis may be better known to UK readers, Hezbollah’s trail of terror worldwide is no less horrific. If all Jews were to gather in Israel, Nasrallah once declared, “It will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.”

And it’s no idle threat. Hezbollah has been linked to countless atrocities, including the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre which killed 85 people, the murder of Israeli tourists on a bus in Bulgaria six years ago and the killing of nearly 300 American and French peacekeepers more than three decades ago.

Even today, the group stands accused by MPs of “aiding and abetting the Assad regime’s butchery”. Do we have to wait until Hezbollah unleashes carnage in the capital before their parade is treated with the same revulsion as Isis’ banners?

This is not just about flags. Taking action would send out a message of zero tolerance, while depriving Hezbollah of the ability to raise the funds on which it is so reliant. The ball is firmly in the court of the new home secretary, who has the power to do the right thing by following America and the Arab League in fully banning the group.

Of course it would be unfair to put the blame for years of failure to change the law at the door of Sajid Javid, who has barely had time to get his feet under the table. Indeed, there’s no shortage of people who'd suggest the blame lies at least as much with a foreign office concerned about relations with a Lebanese government featuring Hezbollah members, as with any incumbent of the home office.

Whoever is responsible and whatever the reasons for inaction so far, Britain’s proud values must trump all else. Our government led Europe in proscribing the “military wing” of the group across the continent. For ministers to continue to sit on their hands over this ludicrous loophole would not only remain a stain on the country, but is simply incompatible with May's words after the London Bridge attack – and Javid’s pledge, made this week, that "our greatest strength lies not only in what we do but who we are and the values and freedoms we hold dear...I want to say to all those who stand up to all forms of extremism that this government stand with you."

Justin Cohen is the news editor of Jewish News