Judge in Palestine Action case worked for Israeli spy Robert Maxwell

Victoria Sharp's twin brother also sits on charity board with Trevor Chinn.

Victoria Sharp, her brother Richard Sharp and Israel lobbyist Trevor Chinn. The latter two are trustees of the same charity. (Courts and Tribunals Judiciary/BBC/Alex Morris, Declassified UK)

Campaigners are alleging a “stitch-up” after the British judge who was to consider the legal challenge to the ban on Palestine Action was replaced at the last minute.

The Electronic Intifada has learned that a judge with ties to the pro-Israel lobby will lead the new panel on the case. A three-day hearing began on Wednesday and is due to conclude on Tuesday.

Before the change, High Court Justice Martin Chamberlain, an expert on free speech law, had been set to rule on whether or not to overturn the government’s ban on Palestine Action as a “terrorist” group.

But on Wednesday last week, he was abruptly replaced by a panel of three – Victoria Sharp, Karen Steyn and Jonathan Swift. For a judge to be replaced so close to the hearing date is unusual.

High Court Judge Victoria Sharp’s twin brother Richard Sharp sits on the board of trustees of charity One Million Mentors alongside Trevor Chinn, a key British funder of pro-Israel groups.

Richard Sharp is a former chairperson of the BBC. When he was appointed in 2021, the BBC reported that “Sharp’s heritage is Jewish and he is considered by those who know him broadly pro-Israel. He has a twin sister, Victoria, who is a senior judge.”

He stepped down from the BBC in 2023 after breaking the rules on public appointments by failing to declare his connection to a $1 million loan made to Boris Johnson, who was prime minister at the time of Sharp’s appointment.

An investigation had found a “potential perceived conflict of interest.”

As a barrister in the 1980s, Victoria Sharp was instructed by Mishcon de Reya, a law firm which later represented the Israeli government and pro-Israel groups in the UK and has worked to fight boycotts of Israel in the courts.

In a case she took on instruction from founder Victor Mishcon, starting in 1987, she is reported to have been one of the “principal advisers” to newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell – who was later revealed to have been a spy for Israel.

Groups backed by Chinn include Labour Friends of Israel.

When the new Labour government came into office last year, an analysis by Declassified UKfound that half of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s cabinet had been funded by the Israel lobby, and that one of the key donors was Chinn. “I’ve spent my entire life working for Israel,” Chinn told a meeting organized by LFI in 2013.

In January, Chinn was awarded the Medal of Honor by the Israeli president for his “contribution to Israel and the Jewish people.”

Asked by The Guardian why Chamberlain had been removed from the case, the Ministry of Justice referred the paper to the judiciary’s press office, which declined to comment.

As a lawyer in the late 1980s, Victoria Sharp acted on the instructions of the pro-Israel law firm Mishcon de Reya, representing Robert Maxwell in a case relating to a critical biography of the newspaper tycoon he had attempted to block from publication.

Mishcon de Reya later acted on behalf of the Israeli embassy and prime minister Ariel Sharon in another case.

Newspaper tycoon and spy for Israel Robert Maxwell and his daughter Ghislaine Maxwell in 1987. (MirrorPix/Newscom)

Maxwell pursued author Tom Bower for years, repeatedly sued him and even, according to Bower, paid a private detective to spy on him.

Bower wrote in a later book that: “Four lawyers were Maxwell’s principal advisers. Lord [Victor] Mishcon and Anthony Julius were his solicitors and Richard Rampton QC and Victoria Sharp were the barristers. During their frequent court appearances, they betrayed no hint of doubt about their client’s virtues. On the contrary, they pursued his mission with depressing vigor, commitment and pitilessness.”

Although replacement of Chamberlain at the last minute was an unusual step in the British legal system, it also happened earlier this year in the case led by Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq against the British government for its role in exporting F-35 bomber parts to Israel. Karen Steyn was one of two judges who replaced Chamberlain in the F-35 hearing. Steyn ruled in Israel’s favour.

Tayab Ali from the Bindmans law firm, which acted in the F-35 judicial review, told The Guardian that “a sudden and unexplained shift from the single judge who already had conduct of the [Palestine Action] case to an entirely new panel of three is deeply concerning, particularly without any stated justification.”

A spokesperson for activist group Defend Our Juries, which has been campaigning against the ban on Palestine Action, said in a statement that the replacement “makes it hard not to draw the conclusion that this is a stitch-up.”

Campaigners were once again arrested this week for holding signs saying they support Palestine Action. Under a controversial ban imposed in July, the direct action campaign group has been classified as “terrorist” by the British government. (Defend Our Juries)

Justice Chamberlain “had been consistently confirmed as the judge presiding over this judicial review,” the spokesperson said. “If Dame Sharp believed a panel of judges was necessary, the usual process would have been to add judges to sit alongside him, not to remove Chamberlain entirely.”

“The judiciary is meant to be independent of political influence. Yet with no transparency around this decision,” they said, “public confidence is being seriously undermined. That two of the replacement judges have links which at least raise the appearance of a conflict of interest only deepens these concerns. This includes Dame Sharp’s family connections to Boris Johnson, to prominent pro-Israel lobbyist and major Labour Party donor Trevor Chinn.”

Sharp’s work for Robert Maxwell is of concern for big historical reasons.

Maxwell, who died in mysterious circumstances in 1991, was later reported to have been a spy for Israel.

After he was found dead at sea, Maxwell was buried in Jerusalem at an extraordinary state funeral ordered by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, according to authors Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon in their book The Assassination of Robert Maxwell: Israel’s Superspy. “He has done more for Israel than can be said here today,” eulogized opposition leader and previous prime minister Shimon Peres at the funeral.

Thomas in his book Gideon’s Spies wrote that, “No fewer than six serving and former heads of the Israeli intelligence community” attended the funeral. Thomas described Maxwell as “Israel’s superspy.”

In his eulogy, Chaim Herzog, then Israel’s president, praised Maxwell’s aid for “the security of our country.”

Whistleblower betrayed

US reporter Seymour Hersh wrote in his book The Samson Option that Mirror newspaper group owner Maxwell and his employee Nicholas Davies had betrayed their source Mordechai Vanunu to Israel.

Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear whistleblower who provided the definitive proof that Israel had the bomb, was lured to Rome and kidnapped by a Mossad team soon after. His photos of Israel’s Dimona nuclear plant were published in the rival Sunday Times newspaper in October 1986.

He spent 18 years in jail mostly in solitary confinement and is still banned from leaving the country.

Robert Maxwell was the father of Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence in a low-security jail after being convicted for her part in the sex trafficking ring of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Like Robert Maxwell, Epstein is also increasingly reported to have been an Israeli spy (also like Maxwell, Epstein died in mysterious circumstances).

While there’s no suggestion that Victoria Sharp was aware of Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal activities, or of the scope of her former client’s intelligence activities for Israel, questions are being raised by campaigners about a potential conflict of interest.

Judge Jonathan Swift. (Courts and Tribunals Judiciary)

Another new judge on the panel raising campaigners’ concerns is Jonathan Swift.

In 2023, Swift rejected Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange’s appeal against deportation to the United States. In a 2018 interview, the reporter summarized that Swift had said his “favorite clients were the security and intelligence agencies.”

Trevor Chinn and Richard Sharp did not respond to requests for comment.

Victoria Sharp did not respond to a request for comment sent via the judiciary press office. The judiciary press office did not respond to a request for comment.

Originally published by The Electronic Intifada.