UK PM Burnham’s new solicitor general met with Hamas in 2010
Times of Israel · LC · trust 28/100
Zev Stub is the Times of Israel's Diaspora Affairs correspondent.
One of the first appointments by new UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham is already under fire after resurfaced pictures showed him in a meeting with Hamas members in Jerusalem in 2010.
Andy Slaughter, who was appointed solicitor general soon after Burnham took office as the country’s seventh prime minister in a decade on Monday, joined then-Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn on a fact-finding trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories in November 2010, sponsored by Friends of Al-Aqsa and the pro-Palestinian nonprofit Middle East Monitor.
Pictures of the meeting, originally posted and since deleted by the Monitor, were published late Saturday by The Telegraph newspaper, which quoted the Monitor report as noting that the delegation met with Palestinian representatives of both Hamas and the rival Palestinian Authority’s Fatah party.
In his new position, Slaughter would wield significant power over decisions related to the prosecution of proscribed terrorist organizations, including Hamas, the Telegraph noted. The UK solicitor general serves as deputy attorney general, provides legal advice to the government, and helps oversee major legal and prosecution departments.
His appointment to that post was “an absolute disgrace,” shadow justice secretary Nick Timothy told The Telegraph, accusing Slaughter of showing “sympathy for Hamas.”
The photograph from the visit shows Slaughter and Corbyn alongside Mohammed Totah, Ahmed Attoun and Khaled Abu-Arafeh, all of whom held positions associated with Hamas.
Attoun was arrested by Israeli authorities and deported from Jerusalem to the West Bank in 2011. Totah and Abu-Arafeh were later arrested after spending 18 months inside an International Committee of the Red Cross compound in East Jerusalem to avoid detention and deportation by Israeli authorities for their involvement with the terror group.
Slaughter was a Labour MP at the time of the visit.
The MEMO description of the visit details the many accounts of “crimes” of the “Israeli occupation” including home demolitions, “ethnic cleansing,” and “apartheid” that the MPs heard at every stop they made. They also learned about the importance of the BDS boycott against Israel and were urged to support it.
From the detailed 47-page MEMO report of the visit, it appears that the delegation did not meet with any Jewish Israelis during the four days.
The report also noted that Slaughter traveled to Gaza in March 2010 on a separate trip with the Britain-Palestine All-Party Parliamentary Group. During that visit, he said he met Faraj al-Ghoul, then Hamas’s justice minister, and Ahmed Yousef, Hamas’ deputy foreign minister and a senior adviser to Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh.
Shortly after that visit, he wrote an article in The Guardian arguing that negotiations with Hamas should take place “without preconditions.”
According to The Telegraph, Slaughter was also one of four MPs who voted against the Labour Party adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism in 2018. Now, he will be one of just two UK officers with a say in prosecutions related to Hamas, the report said.
“Andy Slaughter should have no place in government,” Timothy said following Slaughter’s appointment to the position. “It beggars belief that Labour have handed him the final say on proscription decisions and command of the government legal department.”
In a statement to The Telegraph, the Attorney General’s Office rejected criticism of Slaughter’s appointment, saying that Slaughter has consistently condemned Hamas, supports a two-state solution, and will carry out his duties with political impartiality and adherence to the rule of law.
Slaughter did not respond to a request by The Telegraph for comment.
Britain declared the military wing of Hamas, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, a terrorist organization in 2001. in November 2021, it expanded its proscription to the entire organization.
Under UK law, membership in or support for Hamas is a criminal offense carrying penalties of up to 14 years in prison.
Earlier this month, Burnham caused alarm among Jewish organizations when he said Britain must do more to pressure Israel over its treatment of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and that it must bar the sale of weapons that Israel will use in the West Bank and Gaza.
“It’s completely unacceptable that innocent Palestinians, including children, continue to be killed,” he said. “That there’s still a humanitarian crisis with too little aid getting in, and that the Israeli military continues to expand the area it controls in Gaza. We’ve got to do more to put pressure on the Israeli government.”
Burnham succeeded Keir Starmer, who had boasted that one of his main achievements was ridding Labor of the antisemitism that had infested the party under previous leader Corbyn, who was seen in the same photo with Slaughter.
Corbyn also faced criticism for calling terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah “friends” when inviting members for a parliamentary meeting in 2009. He later downplayed the comment and said he regretted using the term.
He was also pictured standing next to Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine chief Maher al-Taher, at a commemoration ceremony for the Black September terrorists who took part in the 1972 massacre of 11 Israelis at the Munich Olympics.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
The war with Iran has been draining for all of us in Israel. But when I heard about a high casualty incident – ballistic missile impacts in Arad and Dimona that left nearly 200 people wounded – I drank a cup of coffee, packed a bag, and headed south.
There, I spoke with Shilgit, the head of an after-school program for underprivileged youth. Standing outside her destroyed center, Shilgit said it was a miracle that no children were hurt and spoke about the community coming together in the hours since.
As a Times of Israel…
Read the original at Times of Israel →
Open in TruthVane →