A poppy-shaped enamel pin in the colours of the Palestinian flag is on sale on eBay for less than £2, and has reportedly been bought more than 1,200 times, according to GB News. The Telegraph lists it at £1.78; LBC and GB News report £1.74. It is being promoted in the week the Royal British Legion’s Poppy Appeal launches, with poppies available nationally from Thursday 22 October, ahead of Remembrance Sunday on 8 November.
It is not an official Royal British Legion poppy, and it raises nothing for British veterans. The campaign’s own website states that the pin is sold “not-for-profit”, that the price covers the cost of production and “a small donation towards charities working on the ground in Palestine”, and names Friends of al-Aqsa and the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians as examples of the organisations that donation supports. The same website carries a video using the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.
At Great British PAC, we believe the Remembrance poppy represents a solemn national commitment to those who gave their lives in Britain’s service and to the veterans and families who continue to carry that sacrifice. People are entitled to express their political views, but the symbolism of Remembrance should not be appropriated in ways that diminish its meaning or confuse the public about whom their donations support. Our fallen deserve respect, and our veterans deserve clarity.
The objection in public
In an interview on TalkTV, broadcaster Julia Hartley-Brewer discussed the controversy surrounding the so-called ‘Palestine poppy’, criticising the use of Remembrance symbolism for a political cause.
“That ‘poppy’ signifies terrorism. It signifies death. It doesn’t signify life. That is what our poppy stands for: life. And theirs is death,” she said.
Trevor Coult MC, a Military Cross recipient who now supports veterans through My Veteran Claim, told LBC’s Nick Ferrari that the pin was “just another way to cause division on the run-up to Remembrance Day”.
“If it’s not the Palestinian poppy, it’s the rainbow poppy. If it’s not the rainbow poppy, it’s the white poppy,” he said. “There’s no money from this poppy sale goes toward helping any veterans.”
Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Crawford, a former Army officer and defence analyst, said the design was an attempt to “ride on the coat-tails of the familiar red poppy”. The Remembrance poppy, he said, “is apolitical despite what some people might say, and commemorates our war dead by bringing people together in the act of remembrance. The so-called ‘Palestine Poppy’ is about as far away from remembrance as it’s possible to be. It is unashamedly political, designed to divide rather than unite.”
Stuart Fawcett, a former Royal Navy officer who is now a Labour councillor in Derbyshire, described it as an attempt to “hijack our national symbol of resistance”. David Reed, the shadow defence minister, said the fallen “deserve our gratitude, not our agendas”, and promised to challenge anyone he saw wearing the badge. Nigel Farage said simply: “These people have no respect for our country.”
The campaign’s own account
The campaign rejects the charge of hijacking. Its website presents the poppy as the national flower of Palestine, notes that an estimated 12,000 Palestinians fought against the Nazis, and says the pin was created “in commemoration of the hundreds of thousands of innocent Palestinian men, women and children killed, and the millions displaced during the Gazan Genocide of 2023-2025”. Its author writes of the badge becoming “an anti-apartheid symbol, similar to the raised fist, to be worn until the people of Palestine have their freedom”. The language of genocide and apartheid is the campaign’s own, not a description imposed on it. The Israeli government vehemently rejects both charges.
The design is deliberate. It has a tri-symmetric, three-petal construction with a red central ring and border and black, white and green petals, and a diameter of 3cm. The Royal British Legion’s mark is the two-petal poppy. The differences are small at lapel distance and specific in law, which is why no allegation of trademark infringement is made here: that is a question for the charity and its lawyers, not a conclusion available to a campaign.
Where the money goes
The financial claim needs care, and the campaign’s own wording is the best guide to it. A purchase price of £1.74 or £1.78 is sales revenue. The website says that price covers production and “a small donation”, which means the amount reaching any beneficiary is a fraction of the sums implied by multiplying unit price by units sold. It does not follow, and is not claimed here, that every penny reaches Friends of al-Aqsa, the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians, or anyone else. No published accounts for the pin have been identified.
The identity of the first named beneficiary is where the political difficulty begins. Friends of al-Aqsa was described as a “far-Left and Islamist” organisation in a report commissioned by the Home Office and published in 2024. That is a characterisation in a commissioned report, not a legal designation, and the organisation is not proscribed. The report, as The Telegraph reported, noted that the group’s founder, Ismail Patel, had visited the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza and later praised him as a “martyr”, and that in 2021 he had praised the killer of Eli Kay, a British-Israeli tour guide murdered in Jerusalem, in the same terms. It also recorded that Patel was filmed in 2009 declaring “we salute Hamas for standing up to Israel” and “Hamas is no terrorist organisation”.
The second named beneficiary, the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians, is a legal and campaigning organisation rather than a veterans’ charity. Neither body has been accused in this article of any criminal offence.
Labour’s own record
Labour’s position is awkward, and it is Labour’s own doing. When the party published its conference guide in September, it carried a fringe event hosted by Friends of al-Aqsa and chaired by Patel, titled “Labour’s Position on Gaza Is Betraying Justice & The People”. MPs raised objections with the party’s general secretary, Hollie Ridley, and the listing was removed from the online conference guide and the conference app within a day. A party spokesman said the event was “not a Labour Party event or endorsed by the Labour Party”, and senior figures ordered a review of how the listing had been approved at all.
That was an internal decision about a conference listing. It was not a legal finding, a regulatory ruling or a statement by ministers, and it should not be presented as one. But it does mean the party has already judged that this organisation’s involvement in its own proceedings was untenable. No minister has said whether money raised under the cover of Remembrance flowing to the same organisation is acceptable.
The Legion’s line
The Royal British Legion has been careful to stay out of the dispute. “People are free to choose to wear different poppies,” a spokesman told GB News. Its public statements have instead stressed the purpose of its own appeal, which raised £56.6 million in 2025, the highest total since before the pandemic, through 60,000 volunteers.
On its own mark the Legion has been firmer. “The Royal British Legion’s two-petal poppy logo is a registered trademark,” a spokesman said. “RBL’s red poppy is a symbol of Remembrance and hope for a peaceful future. Importantly the red poppy raises funds to support our Armed Forces, veterans, and their families whatever the need whenever it is needed.” The charity has previously worked with Border Force to seize counterfeit poppy merchandise, and it guards the mark for a reason. It has not accused this campaign of infringement, and neither does Great British PAC.
Two weeks that tested the symbol
The pin has not appeared in a vacuum. On 10 October, pro-Palestinian demonstrators scaled the Battle of Britain monument on Victoria Embankment and left poppy wreaths broken at its base, as The Telegraph reported. Six people were arrested on suspicion of criminal damage. Twenty were arrested in total, including a woman held over a Nazi salute and two people carrying placards supporting the proscribed group Palestine Action.
Heidi Bachram, whose Jewish relatives were murdered and taken hostage on 7 October 2023, said: “Wreaths lie broken and smashed at the feet of the monument dedicated to those brave warriors who defended us against the Nazis. Utterly shameful.”
Friends of al-Aqsa is a member of the Palestine Coalition, which organised the march. However, there is no evidence that Friends of al-Aqsa, the Palestine Poppy campaign or its creator organised, authorised or participated in the damage to the memorial. The incident and the controversy surrounding the alternative poppy are separate matters, although both have prompted wider questions about respect for Britain’s national symbols of remembrance.
That leaves the defence of the poppy where it has always rested in practice: with the public. The Legion will not police lapels. It relies on the fact that the red poppy is not a fashion item or a political sticker but a transaction of gratitude, in which the wearer puts money in a tin and gets nothing back except the knowledge that a veteran’s family will be helped. The new pin inverts that transaction. It borrows the recognition, takes the money, and sends a portion of it somewhere else.
Free expression protects the right to wear a badge, however provocative, and the right to campaign on Gaza is not in question. What is in question is whether a national symbol of mourning should be used as a fundraising vehicle for political organisations without the buyer being able to see, plainly, what their money funds and how much of it arrives.
Great British PAC reaction
Great British PAC defends the dignity of Remembrance without qualification. The red poppy is not a brand to be restyled or a platform to be rented. It is the country’s annual reckoning with the cost of its own freedom, and the money it raises goes to the men and women who paid part of that cost and to the families still living with it.
We support British veterans and Armed Forces families, and we will not accept a settlement in which the symbol that funds their care is quietly repurposed to fund political campaigning. Where a product borrows the poppy’s form, buyers are entitled to know before they spend: how much of the price is production, how much is donation, which organisations receive it, and what those organisations campaign for. Great British PAC believes Parliament should consider requiring greater transparency from fundraising products that use established national symbols of remembrance.
We defend the right to peaceful political expression, including on Gaza, and we make no complaint about Palestinians or about British citizens who march for civilians caught in that war. The objection is to method, not identity. A national act of remembrance should not be turned into a fundraising channel for any political cause, from any direction, however sympathetic that cause may be to those who hold it.
We ask political leaders of every party to say plainly that remembrance and political campaigning are distinct, and to treat the distinction as a duty rather than a slogan. Silence from ministers while a charity their own party judged unfit for its conference programme benefits from poppy-patterned merchandise is not neutrality. It is avoidance.
Richard Thomson, Former Royal Marine Commando and National Director of Great British PAC, said:
„The poppy is not a political prop. It is not a platform for grandstanding, activism or promoting somebody else’s cause. It is a sacred symbol of remembrance – honouring those who sacrificed everything for the freedoms we enjoy today.
To appropriate its image while sending none of the proceeds to British veterans is deeply disrespectful. To use it to promote a divisive political campaign is worse still.
There are countless symbols available to those who want to make a political statement. Leave the poppy alone.
It belongs to our fallen, our veterans and their families. Anyone attempting to hijack it for their own agenda should take a long, hard look at themselves – and feel thoroughly ashamed.“
Great British PAC believes Remembrance must remain a moment of national gratitude, not political division. The red poppy honours those who served, those who fell and the families who live with their sacrifice. Their memory deserves dignity, and Britain’s veterans deserve our unwavering support.
