UK welcomes Hezbollah man

By Marc Shoffman - Thursday 6th December 2007


Community leaders have urged the Home Office to explain why the editor of a ‘viciously anti-semitic’ Hezbollah channel was allowed into the UK.

Sources close to communal leaders have told TJ that they had been informed that both the Department of Communities and Local Government and the Foreign Office advised against allowing Ibrahim Mousawi, a former Hezbollah spokesperson, into the country to speak at a Stop the War Coalition Rally on Saturday.

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But the Home Office allowed him to attend despite the advice and the station Al-Manar being banned in the US and France.

The channel began rumours that the 9/11 terror attacks were a Zionist conspiracy. In 2005 it broadcasted a soap opera titled Al-Shatat portraying Jews killing a Christian child to use its blood for matzah and orchestrating wars and stock market crashes.

Conservative leader David Cameron described it as “viciously anti-semitic” earlier this month.

Jewish leaders met with Community Cohesion Minister Parmjit Dhanda ahead of the conference last week where he acknowledged the visit may have an affect on community cohesion but his office said it was a matter for the Home Office to make those decisions.

In the wake of Mousawi’s visit, President of the Board of Deputies, Henry Grunwald, has written to Home Secretary Jacqui Smith to express his concern.
He said: “Al-Manar exists to promote Hezbollah’s jihadist ideology and virulent anti-semitism. It is hard to understand how a senior official from this channel can be considered an appropriate person to enter the country, never mind to speak at a so-called ‘peace conference’.

The Mousawi case seemed to us to represent a clear example of when exclusion would be warranted and this view appears to have been shared by some in government. Critically, however, the Home Office has come to a different view and they need to explain why, and how their decision sits with a declared intention to fight extremism and incitement."

A Home Office spokesperson said “We cannot comment on individual cases but the decision would have been based on all the available evidence.”

Speaking at the World Against War Conference in Westminster on Saturday, Mousawi said: “I don’t occupy anybody’s land, don’t attack anybody, steal anybody’s water, steal their soil, but this is what the Israeli occupation is doing.”

He criticised the Irish government for recently refusing him entry into the country, he said: “If I’m going to say something rubbish it’s your opportunity to undermine me.”

Mousawi later described Hezbollah as a ‘social network that helps children and the elderly.’


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