Here is an in-depth article about the kinds of people pushing this behaviour forward.
Twitter of the owner. At least they seem to not be backing down. From what I’ve seen there’s nothing in their history that is anti-Semitic, only pro-Palestine and anti-Israel. Yet the framing of the issue by news media is consistently calling them racist, anti-Semitic etc. Fuck Toronto Sun.
Here's the thing though, it seems like any and all criticism of israel eventually gets slapped with the antisemitism label, no matter how tepid it is. Burning an israeli flag, yeah, that's going to look bad and be red meat for zionists but what about getting called an antisemite for simply stating the plain facts about the government's treatment of palestinians? It's so tricky. Isn't this what happened to Corbyn?
Yeah I think that backing down from this hurts the Palestinian cause in the big picture. People live in total fear of being called an antisemite, as if this trait has nothing to do with their actual understanding and intention. We shouldn't be afraid to separate Israel from Judaism in our rhetoric. Maybe we can burn the word Zionism?
Combination of that and being physically at a number of events with Hamas and other groups that could be used as fodder for him "loving terrorists". This was mainly effective because of his IRA work and support. Regardless of our views on the IRA in the left they are viewed very negatively in the UK basically everyone except the extremely informed left, it was baggage easily leveraged against him.