Doubts surface over anti-IHRA joint letter
A LETTER purporting to have been written by 84 organisations representing Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities in the UK opposing the internationally recognised definition of antisemitism includes a number of organisations allied to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.
Some groups are so closely linked they appear to be, in effect, the same people under different guises, and others have been associated with spreading Islamist and anti-Zionist propaganda, the JC can reveal.
At least three other groups which signed the letter, which was published in the Independent, have close links to Lee Jasper
– the controversial
Close: links: Lee Jasper black rights activist who served as former London Mayor Ken Livingstone’s Senior Policy Adviser on Equalities, and who was forced to resign after allegations of impropriety and cronyism. The letter said that “BAME groups in Britain” have united to oppose the adoption of the IHRA definition of Jew-hate because it would “silence a public discussion of what happened in Palestine and to the Palestinians in 1948, when the majority of its people were forcibly expelled”. In a further paragraph, the letter compares the suffering of the Palestinians with “the fatal fire at Grenfell Tower and the shameful Windrush scandal [which] have shown the active legacies of British colonialism, where racism forms an integral part of British policies, and renders our communities invisible”.
But many signatories to the letter – including the British Muslim Initiative (BMI), the Cordoba Foundation, Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), and the Palestinian Forum in the UK – are aligned to the Muslim Brotherhood or supporters of the militant Islamist Hamas group.
In 2013, the British Muslim Initiative showed a series of antisemitic images on its Facebook site – including a cartoon which showed a demonic octopus-like creature with a Star of David on its face attempting to surround the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.
The BMI was formed in 2007 by former leaders of the Muslim Association of Britain, Muhammed Sawalha, Azzam Tamimi and Anas Altikriti. Mr Altikriti is also the founder of the Cordoba Foundation. The Foundation has been openly criticised for its links to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood
I believe if you are occupied you need to fight back’