Suspended UK Student Union President Given Award by Hamas Support Group

On 22 Octo­ber 2022, UK Nation­al Union of Stu­dents Pres­i­dent-elect Shaima Dal­lali, cur­rent­ly sus­pend­ed over alle­ga­tions of anti-Semi­tism, was giv­en an award at a Lon­don Pales­tine advo­ca­cy event orga­nized by the Pales­tin­ian Forum in Britain (PFB). Accord­ing to a post about the event on the PFB Face­book page:

Thou­sands of mem­bers of the Pales­tin­ian and Arab com­mu­ni­ties, along with activists in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Pales­tine, were invit­ed by the Pales­tin­ian Forum in Britain to par­tic­i­pate in the 18th edi­tion of the “Annu­al Pales­tine Fes­ti­val” in Lon­don yes­ter­day, Sat­ur­day, Octo­ber 22 […]. [Trans­lat­ed from Ara­bic orig­i­nal using Google.]

Read the rest here.

Accord­ing to the post, the event includ­ed activ­i­ties for chil­dren, live per­for­mances, and award cer­e­monies for pro-Pales­tine activists. The fes­ti­val, which the PFB said aimed to “con­tribute to fur­ther­ing the Pales­tin­ian nar­ra­tive of the con­flict under the sea of lies pro­mot­ed by Israeli occu­pa­tion,” saw a total of five thou­sand par­tic­i­pants from the Pales­tin­ian and var­i­ous oth­er Arab com­mu­ni­ties. In a pho­to tak­en at the event, NUS Pres­i­dent-elect Shaima Dal­lali can be seen hold­ing an award and stand­ing next to for­mer Mus­lim Coun­cil of Britain (MCB) Deputy Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Daud Abdul­lah. Also depict­ed is Pales­tin­ian Forum in Britain Chair Zaher Birawi, who heads the Pales­tin­ian Return Cen­tre (PRC), described by Israel as “Hamas’s orga­ni­za­tion­al branch in Europe” and des­ig­nat­ed as an ille­gal asso­ci­a­tion by the Israeli gov­ern­ment. Oth­er award recip­i­ents includ­ed Richard Boyd Bar­rett, an MP for Ireland’s Peo­ple Before Prof­it-Sol­i­dar­i­ty, an alliance of sev­er­al left-wing par­ties sup­port­ing anti-cap­i­tal­ism and pro­mot­ing Irish reuni­fi­ca­tion through a social­ist Euro­pean fed­er­a­tion. Bar­rett has fought for Ireland’s Israeli ambas­sador to be expelled and is known for his harsh anti-Israeli rhetoric. In March 2022, Bar­rett par­tic­i­pat­ed in a vir­tu­al pan­el debate on “Israeli Apartheid” that was host­ed by the PRC.

Shaima Dal­lali has been under inves­ti­ga­tion since March 2022 over alle­ga­tions of anti-Semit­ic social media posts, includ­ing label­ing a Jor­dan­ian cler­ic crit­i­cal of Hamas  a “dirty Zion­ist” and pen­ning an arti­cle that called Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (GMB) spir­i­tu­al leader Youssef Qaradawi the “moral com­pass for the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty at large.” In April 2022, a Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) inves­ti­ga­tion showed that Dal­lali has had addi­tion­al prob­lem­at­ic ties, includ­ing serv­ing as Project Man­ag­er for the pro-Pales­tin­ian advo­ca­cy group Europal Forum, a group whose lead­ers have his­tor­i­cal­ly been close to the GMB and the Euro­pean Hamas sup­port infra­struc­ture. In Sep­tem­ber 2022, the GIOR report­ed that the Fed­er­a­tion of Stu­dent Islam­ic Soci­eties (FOSIS) had pub­lished a press release threat­en­ing to lead “dis­af­fil­i­a­tion cam­paigns” against the British Nation­al Stu­dent Union over the sus­pen­sion of Dallali.

The Hamas char­ter says that it is “one of the wings of the Mus­lim Broth­ers in Pales­tine,” and a Hamas jour­nal­ist has acknowl­edged the role that the “inter­na­tion­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood” has played in pro­vid­ing funds for the pur­chase of weapons. Hamas is known to be sup­port­ed finan­cial­ly and polit­i­cal­ly by the GMB.