UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Participates in Online Event by British Group Close to Hamas

On 11 May 2022, Michael Lynk, then out­go­ing UN Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on Pales­tine, par­tic­i­pat­ed in a vir­tu­al speak­ing event host­ed by the  Pales­tin­ian Return Cen­tre (PRC). Accord­ing to the Face­book page invit­ing to the event:

The con­ver­sa­tion will be exclu­sive­ly delv­ing into the life, work and recent report on Israeli apartheid by Dr Michael Lynk as the end of his term as UN Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on Pales­tine draws to a close.

Read the rest here.

The debate, which was live-streamed via the PRC Face­book page, was mod­er­at­ed by Nasim Ahmed, a con­trib­u­tor to the Mid­dle East Mon­i­tor (MEMO), a UK-based Islamist news por­tal close to the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (GMB) and Hamas.

Michael Lynk is an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor at the Fac­ul­ty of Law at the West­ern Uni­ver­si­ty in Ontario, Cana­da. From 2016 to 2022, he served as ‘Unit­ed Nations Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on the Sit­u­a­tion of Human Rights in the Pales­tin­ian Ter­ri­to­ry occu­pied since 1967.” Sev­er­al Jew­ish advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tions have crit­i­cized Lynk’s work for “incit­ing lan­guage” and claims of Israeli “apartheid.” In his last UN report,  pub­lished in March 2022, Lynk accused the Jew­ish state of being a “cov­etous alien power.”

The Pales­tin­ian Return Cen­tre is a UK-based Pales­tine advo­ca­cy group close to Hamas and the GMB. The PRC is also an affil­i­ate of the Mus­lim Coun­cil of Britain, which fre­quent­ly acts in con­cert with GMB groups in the UK. Pri­or report­ing by the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) on the inter­na­tion­al Hamas sup­port net­work has included:

• A May 2021 report that an Irish MP and a mem­ber of the Israeli Par­lia­ment were among the pan­elists dur­ing an event on Jerusalem orga­nized by a coali­tion of British GMB and pro-Hamas groups.

• An Octo­ber 2021 report that a Euro­pean pro-Pales­tine con­fer­ence fea­tured speak­ing appear­ances by Hamas and Euro­pean Mus­lim Broth­er­hood lead­ers and left-wing par­lia­men­tar­i­ans from sev­er­al Euro­pean countries.

• A May 2022 report that Demo­c­ra­t­ic US Con­gress­woman Marie New­man had spo­ken at a Chica­go pro-Pales­tine ral­ly orga­nized by a coali­tion of Pales­tine advo­ca­cy groups that includ­ed Hamas sup­port organizations.

• A May 2022 report that two Dutch politi­cians and a promi­nent pro-Hamas activist had addressed a pro-Pales­tine protest in the Hague where anti-Semit­ic slo­gans were shouted.

The Hamas char­ter says 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.