Dear Redress Information & Analysis readers,

The Zionist lobby group, UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), has called upon Home Secretary Suella Braverman to exclude Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss from the UK.

It wants to prevent him from speaking at the “Muslim and Jew: Beyond Israel” tour, due to begin on 24 April, where he would accompany author and broadcaster Dr Azzam Tamimi visiting 15 cities around the UK. He is scheduled to explain why many Orthodox Jews don’t recognise Israel and what should stand in its place. One state, a Palestine for all its peoples, Muslims, Christians and Jews?

UKLFI is notorious for getting textbooks rewritten, people fired or exhibitions closed for having the temerity to support Palestinian voices – it recently forced a London hospital to remove Gaza children’s artwork on the pretext that some Jewish patients felt “vulnerable, harassed and victimised” by the display at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital!

These rabid lawyers got the director of the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester fired for daring to put on an exhibition which included a statement of solidarity with Palestine’s “liberation struggle”.

However, they failed to prevent Edinburgh City Council from discussing what it can do to help Gaza (see Edinburgh Council to Explore Support for Gaza) after Police Scotland and Michael Mansfield KC gave assurances that, contrary to UKLFI threats, there was nothing illegal about twinning with Gaza.

So, UKLFI can be stopped, but only by our action.

Excluding Rabbi Weiss would be ipso facto anti-Semitic as he would be being targeted because of his Judaic faith. Other anti-Zionists are allowed into the UK, after all. To prevent him coming would be an attack on freedom of speech. There are many Jewish people who share his religious views, and we foresee his visit will bring these Jews and Muslims together. On his previous visits there were no difficulties.

Please write a letter to Home Secretary Suella Braverman explaining that Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss must be allowed in the UK for there are no grounds to exclude him. Rabbi Weiss believes he can reduce anti-Semitism in the UK as a Jew who has a sympathetic perspective on the Palestinians. Rabbi Weiss is a peaceful, devoutly religious man who knows too well about anti-Semitism – his grandparents died in Auschwitz. 

To write to the home secretary, please click here.