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Request from Telegraph on Holocaust Memorial Day letter and IHRC’s response

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Request from Telegraph on Holocaust Memorial Day letter and IHRC’s response

10 January 2025

Hi,

I am writing an article for the Telegraph about your letter to councils and universities calling for a boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day:

https://www.ihrc.org.uk/letter-re-holocaust-memorial-day-to-councils-and-universities/

https://www.ihrc.org.uk/press-releases/57677/

The article will note that the IHRC has been linked to Iran.

It will note that:

– The IHRC has been criticised in the 2023 independent review of Prevent by Sir William Shawcross. He described it as an “Islamist group ideologically aligned with the Iranian regime, that has a history of extremist links and terrorist sympathies”.

The report notes says:

Several senior figures within IHRC have espoused support for violent jihad, expressed sympathy for convicted terrorists, and advocated for the extraction and eradication of ‘Zionists’. Campaigns have supported high-profile associates of a number of terrorist or extremist groups such as al-Qa’ida and the Taliban. By way of example, in their 2017 obituary for “blind sheikh” Omar Abdul Rehman, the mastermind of numerous bomb plots in New York in the early 1990s, IHRC described him as “a rare man of principle…[whose] death will only make him a martyr and more of an inspiration.”

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/63e26968d3bf7f17385a3421/Independent_Review_of_Prevent.pdf

– Massoud Shadjareh, the chair of IHRC, took part in a vigil in 2020 for the late Qassim Soleimani held by the Islamic Centre for England (which is the subject of a charity commission investigation). Shadjareh told the crowds in a video posted on Twitter: “We hope and we pray and we work hard to make sure that there will be many many more Qassim Soleimanis. We inspire to become like him. We inspire and we are jealous of his Shahadah [faith] and we want the same thing for ourselves and for our loved ones, because that’s the best thing that could happen to us.”

– Saied Reza Ameli – who was a director at IHRC from 2006 until 2022 – is secretary of Iran’s Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution.

– IHRC organises the annual Al Quds rally, at which many attendees have waved the Hezbollah flag in the past

– In August 2024, the IHRC was accused of anti-Semitism after writing an open letter to the home secretary stating that “far-right elements” had been “enabled by their Zionist financiers abroad” and then weaponised the Southport killings to “incite the country into pogroms against Muslims”.

The article is due to be published on Saturday (tomorrow), please could you get back to me by the end of today, 5pm at the latest.

Many thanks

Camilla

—

Camilla Turner

Political Editor

The Sunday Telegraph

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Dear Camilla,

It’s always a pleasant surprise to hear from you as you plan yet another attack piece against us in your newspaper.

Here is a quote for your article: “No amount of rehashed false accusations and demonisation of our organisation will undermine our steadfast concern that Holocaust and genocide memorials, founded on the principle of ‘never again,’ are being rendered meaningless when the genocide of our time, unfolding before our very eyes, is deliberately ignored.”

You seem to suffer from a short memory, as we have corresponded previously on some of the issues you raise. We assume the plan is to keep asking in case we say something different so you can catch us out. For reference, here’s the link to our previous response to you:

https://www.ihrc.org.uk/response-to-camila-turner/

Our views on William Shawcross and his disturbed commentary on Muslims in Britain and Europe are not secrets. For your reference, here’s our response to your friends at The Times:

“You quote Shawcross and the Henry Jackson Society, whose animosity towards Muslims is so overt and unhinged, they are less poster boys for Islamophobia and more a grotesque caricature.”

Like yourself, your friends at the Times also raised the spectre of Iranian links. It is lazy and boring journalism at this stage. However, at least The Times had the decency to bluff that they may have an “intelligence source” for their asinine claim. This was our response to them:

“As for the unnamed intelligence officials, we can only assume it’s some guy down the pub you heard raving about extremists. No serious intelligence official with knowledge of our work and our management team could reach such conclusions, presumably why you will not be naming your sources.”

We can only presume that your sources are equally dubious: unnamed figures or think tanks that froth at the mouth with anger and hatred at the sight of Muslims in Europe.

You can review our position on Shawcross and our previous responses on the points you raise here:

https://www.ihrc.org.uk/case-study-in-demonisation-the-times-accusation-of-exxtremism-and-ihrc/

https://www.ihrc.org.uk/revent-review-underlines-need-to-scrap-islamophobic-antiterror-programme/

If you’re genuinely interested in journalistic integrity, we recommend quoting from our actual work regarding the Holocaust Memorial Day issue. Here are some key resources:

Our Letter to HMD Trust: https://www.ihrc.org.uk/letter-to-holocaust-memorial-day-trust-re-gaza-genocide/

Our call for organisations to take a consistent ethical and moral position on genocide commemorations: https://www.ihrc.org.uk/letter-re-holocaust-memorial-day-to-councils-and-universities/

As a matter of policy, IHRC publishes all media correspondence in full. This ensures there is an accurate public record of the exchange, should our comments be misquoted or omitted entirely.