Former Hamas chief ‘behind pro-Palestine Armistice Day protests’
Former Hamas chief ‘behind pro-Palestine Armistice Day protests’
Muhammad Kathem Sawalha is a founder of the Muslim Association of Britain, one of six groups organising the London march on Nov 11
THE TELEGRAPH
ByEwan Somerville and Daniel Martin, DEPUTY POLITICAL EDITOR6 November 2023
A former Hamas chief is behind one of the groups organising the pro-Palestine Armistice Day protests, The Telegraph can disclose.
Muhammad Kathem Sawalha led the proscribed terrorist group in the West Bank in the late 1980s and is alleged to have “masterminded” its military strategy with involvement as recently as 2019, before moving to Britain where he lives in a London council house.
He is a founder of the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), one of six groups behind the under-fire march in London on November 11, and Israeli authorities claim his son, Obada Sawalha, is now its vice-president.
The revelation comes as The Telegraph has discovered that half of the groups organising the march - who are still defying calls from the Metropolitan Police to call it off - have links to Hamas.
It has fuelled further pressure for it to be cancelled, with the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on anti-Semitism saying that it “proves that these marches are not about peace” and the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism describing this newspaper’s findings as “extremely serious”.
Sawalha, 62, worked as a director for MAB between 1999 and 2007 and helped found it, after being granted British citizenship in the early 2000s. BBC’s Panorama claimed in 2006 that he was “said to have masterminded much of Hamas’ political and military strategy”.
He now lives in a council house in Barnet, north London, but in 2004 he was named as a co-conspirator in a US indictment for having allegedly helped bankroll Hamas and he reportedly took part in an official Hamas delegation to Moscow in 2019 and served on the Hamas politburo between 2013 and 2017.
Another of the Muslim Association of Britain’s three directors, Dr Anas Altikriti, co-founded a group called the British Muslim Initiative with a senior commander in Hamas, Mohammed Sawalha, and Azzam Tamimi who has been described as a Hamas “special envoy” in Britain.
Dr Altikriti, who has lectured at Leeds University, has written columns for The Guardian defending how “Hamas supports democracy” and insisting that “the Palestinian people have chosen” Hamas “to represent them”.
A British Government review in 2015 claimed that the MAB, founded in 1997, had been “dominated” by the Muslim Brotherhood, a controversial group that the report found had made “support for Hamas” an “important priority”. Hamas’ founding charter says that it is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Government has said association with the group is a “possible indicator of extremism”.
Meanwhile, Zaher Birawi, a leader of the Palestinian Forum in Britain - another group organising the Armistice Day march - was described in Parliament in October by Labour MP Christian Wakeford as having been “designated by Israel in 2013 as a senior Hamas operative in Europe”, currently living in Barnet, north London, not far from Sawalhi, posing what the MP described as “a serious national security risk”.
He also allegedly met Hamas’ senior political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza in 2012 and was pictured with him.
A third group organising the protest, the Friends of al-Aqsa is founded and chaired by Leicester-based optician Ismael Patel who has also visited Haniyeh in Gaza and has joined the Gaza flotilla. According to the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, the Friends of al-Aqsa is “harbouring an intense hatred for Israel, campaigning for its elimination, denying its Jewish character, and supporting Hamas”.
According to the Jewish Chronicle, he was filmed at a rally in 2009 saying: “Hamas is no terrorist organisation. The reason they hate Hamas is because they refuse to be subjugated, to be occupied by the Israeli state, and we salute Hamas for standing up to Israel.”
Responding to The Telegraph’s findings, Andrew Percy, APPG on anti-Semitism, said: “The involvement of these people proves that these marches are not about peace, they are about stirring up Jew-hate and a hatred of Western values.
“They are organised to celebrate the murder of innocent civilians in the most grotesque ways, including ripping out babies from pregnant mothers, cutting off limbs of children and worse still. These people have no interest in peace and it is time the UK stopped indulging their hateful ideology.”
Calling on the police to step in and ban the march, Mr Percy added: “The Met need to prove that they are here to defend the values of the majority in this country - not pander to a perverted ideology - by banning this hate march.”
The Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “These findings are extremely serious, and demand investigation by the authorities. Is it any wonder at the level of anti-Semitic hatred and calls for violence that we have seen at these marches if these are the organisers?
“These revelations are all the more reason for the Met Police to heed our call and ban this weekend’s march. London cannot become a no-go zone for British Jews, yet again, on Armistice Day. What a disgrace that would be to the heroes who fought for our freedom to leave without fear.”
The Community Security Trust told The Telegraph: “On October 7, Hamas finally achieved its long-stated intention to kill as many Jews as possible.
“This barbarism did not cause any change or hesitation in the actions of anti-Israel hate groups, which continue now, exactly as they always do: with calls that most Jews regard as demands for the destruction of Israel, even if they are couched in ways that just about remain within the law.”
The Muslim Association of Britain, the Palestinian Forum in Britain and the Friends of al-Aqsa have been contacted for comment.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/06/former-hamas-chief-behind-pro-palestine-armistice-day-march/