Welcoming the Home Secretary’s announcement of a long-awaited extension of the UK’s proscription of the military wing of terror group Hamas to its political wing, Director of campaign group We Believe in Israel Luke Akehurst said:

“It is very important that this ridiculous and dangerous loophole is being closed. We have campaigned for many years for the entirety of the terrorist organisation Hamas to be banned in the UK so that it cannot propagandise and spread its antisemitic message of hatred of Israel and Jews here. Thousands of our grassroots supporters emailed their MPs to call for this action in recent months. We welcome the Government’s decision to listen to this concern and act on it. We call on all MPs of all parties to support this move.”

We Believe in Israel welcomes today’s announcement that all of Hezbollah will be banned in UK law because the Home Secretary is “no longer able to distinguish between their already banned military wing and the political party”.

Luke Akehurst, Director of We Believe in Israel said:

“We are delighted that the absurd anomaly is being scrapped whereby a false distinction was drawn by the UK between Hezbollah’s murderous terrorists and the political leaders controlling them.

Hezbollah have carried out numerous terror attacks against Jews and Israelis around the world. They are responsible for the deaths of British soldiers in Iraq and they have played a key role in the horrors of the Syrian civil war. Hezbollah’s arsenal of missiles in Southern Lebanon is a serious threat to peace and security in Israel and Lebanon

This complete ban was long overdue - we have campaigned for it repeatedly. Grassroots activists deserve credit for years of hard work raising this issue with their MPs and the Government to achieve this.

We urge all MPs to support the draft order implementing the ban.”

Earlier this month, We Believe in Israel set up a petition to protest against the disgraceful ban on Israeli athletes from competing in the qualifiers for the 2020 Tokyo Paralympic Games that were due to be held in Malaysia from 29 July to 4 August. 

View the news story here: http://www.bicom.org.uk/news/malaysia-bans-israelis/

As we outlined, this clearly contravened the International Paralympic Committee’s Mission “To promote Paralympic sport without discrimination for political, religious, economic, disability, gender, sexual orientation, or race reasons.”

Our petition gathered over 3,200 signatures - an amazing total. Our petition was even reported in the Jewish News: https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/malaysias-blatant-discrimination-of-israeli-swimmers-blasted-by-uk-groups/

We are delighted to announce that as of Sunday, Malaysia have now had the qualifiers stripped from them by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC). View the IPC statement here: https://www.paralympic.org/news/ipc-strip-malaysia-2019-world-para-swimming-championships 

We would like to thank all those who signed the petition for their contribution to this important victory. We would also like to praise the IPC for this correct, but brave, decision.

On Tuesday 27 March we went with the Israel Britain Alliance and a cross-party group of supportive MPs to hand in a petition of 10,541 signatures to 10 Downing Street calling on the Prime Minister to condemn "Israel Apartheid Week" and enshrine the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism into UK law.