Jonathan Arkush expresses community’s dismay and anger over UCL extremist meeting

Board of Deputies President Jonathan Arkush has sent a strongly worded letter to Professor Michael Arthur, the Provost of University College London in which he expresses the Jewish community’s “dismay and anger” over a meeting which took place at the university last Friday night featuring Azzam Tamimi and Miko Peled.  Tamimi has openly expressed support for Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad while Peled has stated antisemitic views, as detailed in the letter.  Events at Friday’s meeting have been widely reported and as might have been and was indeed predicted, the speakers were given a platform to repeat their extreme views, which the Board of Deputies considers to be hate speech and in clear contravention of UCL’s own rules.

Jonathan, who is scheduled to speak to Professor Arthur on Wednesday immediately after the Provost returns from China, said: “I will be telling him that the Board of Deputies has very serious concerns which I intend to pursue with determination. I am simply unable to fathom out how UCL could have acted with such a lack of wisdom and commonsense in permitting this meeting, despite concerns put to them by their own students, academics and UJS.  It is even more surprising that UCL appears to have no concerns about the further reputational damage it is suffering after the totally unacceptable violence and hostility exhibited to Jewish students on its campus just a year ago.”