The Al Quds Day March is scheduled to be held in London on 18 June 2017. Previous Al Quds Day marches have seen displays of support for Hezbollah, an illegal, proscribed, antisemitic terrorist organisation. This has caused great distress to the Jewish Community. Al Quds Day is an annual day chosen by the late Ayatollah Khomeini to call for Israel to be destroyed.

“The Quds Day is not merely a strategic solution for the Palestinian problem, …. any freedom lover and justice seeker in the world must do its best for the annihilation of the Zionist regime.”

Additionally, Hezbollah is currently massacring Syrian civilians on behalf of the Assad regime.

Last year, on Sunday 3 July 2016, Hezbollah flags were carried and waved by participants in the Al Quds Day March. There were also placards with the words “We Are All Hezbollah”.

Then Home Secretary, Theresa May, gave clear guidance on hate crime to all polices forces that makes specific mention of antisemitism and confirmed that holding Hezbollah flags is a criminal offence in accordance with Section 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The act states that people who ‘wear clothing or carry or display articles in public in such a way or in such circumstances as arouse reasonable suspicion that an individual is a member or supporter of the proscribed organisation are guilty of a criminal offence." Hezbollah’s External Security Organisation was proscribed in March 2001 and in 2008 the proscription was extended to Hezbollah’s Military apparatus including the Jihad Council.

Hezbollah is a deeply antisemitic organisation. Robert S. Wistrich devotes an entire chapter of his history of antisemitism, ‘A Lethal Obsession’, to Hezbollah.

After the terrible recent terrorist events in Manchester and London this display of extremism has no place on the streets of the UK.. Allowing this march to go ahead will send a worrying message to the UK's Jewish community and call into question the commitment of the Mayor of London to eradicate extremism and anti Semitism

We the undersigned urge you to ban this march showing that your words are backed up by your actions.