UK Hamas Support Group Features Irish Far-Left MP on Israel “Apartheid” Panel

A vir­tu­al pan­el debate on “Israeli Apartheid” host­ed by the Pales­tin­ian Return Cen­tre (PRC) is set to fea­ture an appear­ance by Irish far-left MP Richard Boyd Bar­rett. Accord­ing to the Face­book event page, the event is sched­uled for  28 March 2022:

The Pales­tin­ian Return Cen­tre warm­ly invites you to attend ‘Israeli Apartheid: A Crime Against Human­i­ty’. This event will be an online pan­el dis­cus­sion address­ing the recent damn­ing Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al report on Israeli apartheid.

Read the post here.

Richard Boyd Bar­rett is an MP for Ire­land’s Peo­ple Before Prof­it-Sol­i­dar­i­ty, an elec­toral 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. He has recent­ly accused the Jew­ish state of “oper­at­ing a sys­tem of Apartheid” and com­mit­ting crimes against human­i­ty. In ear­ly March 2022, Bar­rett also crit­i­cized the Irish gov­ern­ment of “dou­ble stan­dards” for impos­ing sanc­tions on Rus­sia for its actions in Ukraine but not doing the same for Israel.

Groups in the inter­na­tion­al Hamas sup­port infra­struc­ture and the wider Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (GMB) have a his­to­ry of coop­er­a­tion and friend­ly rela­tion­ships with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of far-left polit­i­cal move­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the UK. This coop­er­a­tion dates back to at least Feb­ru­ary 2003 when the UK Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the Cam­paign for Nuclear Dis­ar­ma­ment were the spon­sors of the Feb­ru­ary 2003 anti-Iraq war demon­stra­tion in Lon­don, report­ed by police as the largest demon­stra­tion ever held in the UK. Both the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) and its pre­de­ces­sor, Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Dai­ly Watch (GMBDW), have long report­ed on such cooperation.

Far-left activists also play a key role in the Boy­cott, Divest­ment, and Sanc­tions (BDS) move­ment, which seeks to eco­nom­i­cal­ly and social­ly pres­sure Israel over its treat­ment of Pales­tini­ans. The BDS Ramal­lah-based Nation­al Com­mit­tee counts sev­er­al US-des­ig­nat­ed ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions among its mem­bers, includ­ing Hamas, the Pop­u­lar Front for the Lib­er­a­tion of Pales­tine, and Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad.

The Pales­tin­ian Return Cen­tre is a UK-based Pales­tine advo­ca­cy group tied to Hamas and the GMB. The PRC is also an affil­i­ate of the  Mus­lim Coun­cil of Britain, among Britain’s most influ­en­tial Mus­lim orga­ni­za­tions that his­tor­i­cal­ly has act­ed in con­cert with the GMB.

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.