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A CONTROVERSIAL South African sheikh who appeared at the Palestine Expo event in London has declined to express regret over quoting a Joseph Goebbels speech referring to Jews as “fleas” in one of his lectures.
Sheikh Ebrahim Bham was a keynote speaker on the second day of the event at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in Westminster, and was introduced to the audience by Expo organiser Ismail Patel, chair of the Friends of Al Aqsa organisation.
Mr Patel was behind a statement issued by his group last week after the JC revealed how Sheikh Bham had appeared to compare Jews to fleas in a sermon delivered in South Africa.
In a statement to media outlets, that attempted to stop widespread concern over the appearance of the South African at the Expo event, Mr Patel wrote: “Sheikh Bham clearly uses [the quote] to demonstrate how terrible the treatment of the Jews under Nazi persecution was.
“He then goes on to state that similar treatment is now being experienced by Palestinians under Israeli occupation — that of being sub-human.”
Introducing Sheikh Bham on Sunday, Mr Patel added that the Islamic scholar was “not an antisemite. But he can speak for himself.”
But after delivering a lecture on (right) Jerusalem’s importance to the three Abrahamic faiths to a sell-out audience, when asked if he regretted using the Goebbels quote, Sheikh Bham said only: “It is fair to say that people who had gone through such oppression should not be meting out oppression to others.”
But Mr Patel did later tell the JC: “He should not have compared the suffering of the Jews under the Nazis with the suffering of the Palestinians under the Israelis. It is not right to have a parity of scale — suffering is suffering.”
The two day Expo event, probed but eventually cleared to go ahead by the government following concern over Friends Of Al Aqsa’s links to proscribed terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah, saw around 10,000 people attend what organisers called the biggest celebration of Palestinian culture in Europe.
Away from the food stalls and T-shirt sellers, 24 speakers, some who hold extreme anti-Zionist views, addressed audiences.
Professor David Miller, from the University of Bath, and director of the Spinwatch organisation, gave a long speech on what he described as the “parastatal” role in Israel of Jewish charities which, he claimed, invested in “illegal Settlements” in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Reverend Chris Rose, a director of the Amos Trust, spoke of the “Judaification of Jerusalem”, claiming the city’s Christian population had declined as a result of the creation of Israel.
In an address on the “Zionist lobby”, Asa Winstanley, an anti-Zionist writer, said that “Friends of Israel” groups were far better funded than their Palestinian counterparts.
Mr Winstanley also expressed surprise that historically the Labour Party had been a firm supporter of the Zionist movement.
Other speakers at the event included journalist John Pilger and Israeli born anti-Zionist Illan Pappe.
While the JC encountered no hostility from the organisers, one Jewish attendee said he did experience problems.
Pro-Israel activist David Collier claimed he was evicted from the event along with his family.
In a blog, he wrote: “I am sitting eating lunch at a cultural event in a public building, I have several activists who claim to be upholders of ‘free speech’ come to the table and I am evicted
“I left in accordance with the requests of the security team. I told them I was a member of the press, who was being evicted on discriminatory grounds.
“They apologised, but insisted on politely doing the job they had been instructed to do. I behaved as I always do. I have no idea why I was evicted and I have no intention of accepting this type of discriminatory behaviour.”