A Manchester alternative-fashion retailer has permanently withdrawn merchandise depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a Hitler-style moustache after UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) raised concerns that the imagery amounted to Holocaust inversion and could be regarded as antisemitic.

UKLFI wrote to Ravinder Gopal Chaddha, director of Punk’d Image Limited, on 17 August 2026 after receiving complaints about merchandise being sold and promoted by Punk’d Image at Afflecks in Manchester.

A teenage customer had complained to the shop saying: “As a Jewish person who had always felt safe in Afflecks until this point, I find the sale of such imagery deeply appalling.  Regardless of any views on the current situation in the Middle East, what your business has done is mocking the trauma of my people. You are turning a profit from selling imagery supporting the horrific genocide against a race of people and that is unacceptable.”

UKLFI explained to Mr Chaddha that the imagery visually equated Netanyahu with Adolf Hitler and fell within the IHRA Working Definition example of “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis”. UKLFI also pointed out that it was an example of Holocaust Inversion – the deliberate appropriation of the extreme suffering of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust – and characterised Jews, or the Jewish state, as the perpetrator of a new Holocaust on the Gazans.  Equating Israelis or Jews with the Nazis is grossly offensive to Jews, scratching deep wounds by invoking painful collective memory of the Holocaust and is also potentially the most significant component in the incitement of racial hatred against Jews because Nazism is considered to be the epitome of evil.

UKLFI also raised potential public-order and professional-regulatory concerns. Mr Chaddha is a registered pharmacist, and UKLFI pointed out that the General Pharmaceutical Council’s professional standards can extend to conduct outside direct pharmacy practice where it may affect professionalism or public confidence.

UKLFI asked Mr Chaddha to cease displaying, advertising and selling the merchandise, to remove associated promotional material, to review other stock for similar imagery, and to provide written confirmation of the action taken.

Mr Chaddha responded the same night. He said that the design had been intended as political satire directed at Netanyahu rather than at Jewish people, Judaism or Jewish identity. However, after considering UKLFI’s concerns about Holocaust inversion and the IHRA guidance, he said he had developed “a fuller understanding” of the issue and acknowledged that Hitler-associated imagery was unnecessary and could cause serious offence and distress. He added: “I sincerely apologise for the offence caused.”

He confirmed that the merchandise had been permanently withdrawn from sale and public display, that related social-media posts and promotional material under his control had been removed, and that he had reviewed the company’s wider merchandise. He said he had found no other merchandise or promotional material involving a Jewish or Israeli individual together with Nazi-associated imagery.

Mr Chaddha also said that the merchandise arose entirely within Punk’d Image Limited and was unrelated to his provision of pharmacy services or patient care.

A UKLFI spokesperson said:

“Holocaust inversion is not an ordinary form of political criticism. Depicting the Prime Minister of the Jewish state as Hitler invokes the perpetrator of the genocide of six million Jews and turns the imagery of the Holocaust against Jews and Israelis.

“We welcome Mr Chaddha’s prompt response, his apology and his decision permanently to withdraw the merchandise and remove the associated promotional material. This demonstrates that concerns of this kind can be resolved constructively when they are taken seriously.”