IHR Director Mark Weber Banned From Britain

P.O. Box 2739, Newport Beach, CA 92659 Tel. 714 -593 9725 E-mail: weber@ihr.org

January 9, 2018
Ref.: W1993505

Home Office
P. O. Box 1922
Croydon, Surrey CR90 9DD
England – UK

Dear Sir or Madam,

Thank you for your recently-received letter of Dec. 22, 2017 (copy enclosed) in response to my letters to the Home Office of October 5 and November 6, 2017. I also appreciate that you enclosed a copy of your letter or notice of April 29, 2015 (copy enclosed), which explains how and on what basis the decision was made to exclude me from the UK.

In your April 2015 letter, three statements attributed to me are cited as reason or grounds for the decision. You then write: “The Home Secretary considers that should you be allowed to enter the UK you would continue to espouse such views. In doing so, you would be committing listed behaviours and would therefore be behaving in a way that is not conducive to the public good.”

My main purpose in writing today is to explain that the decision to exclude me from the UK was based on second-hand information that is, at least in part, inaccurate, untrue or distorted.

The first of the three statements attributed to me in your April 2015 letter is this: “The Holocaust is a religion. Its underpinnings in the realm of historical fact are non-existent – no Hitler order, no plan, no budget, no gas chambers, no autopsies of gassed victims, no bones, no ashes, no skulls, no nothing.”

In fact, I never wrote or uttered those words, and I do not agree with them.

No source, or even a date, is given for this statement. To the best of my knowledge, it was first (inaccurately) attributed to me some years ago by the “Anti-Defamation League,” an influential US-based Jewish-Zionist organization.

The second of the three statements attributed to me in your April 2015 letter is this: “The Jewish connection covers all areas and reaches every level. Most Americans may not even sense this gigantic effort, but there is scarcely a Jew who is not touched by its tentacles. In reality, the Jewish hold on American life is far more dangerous. Why? Jews in America have a strong loyalty to a foreign country – Israel. Secondly, because of the distrustful and sometimes adversarial way in which Jews view the rest of us. This `chosen people’ mindset, this `Us vs Them’ attitude, is anchored in centuries of Jewish history and heritage.”

As your April 2015 letter makes clear, this statement, as well as the third one you cite, were attributed to me in an item, headlined “Nazi Invasion of London Exposed,” that appeared in the Mail on Sunday of April 18, 2015, which sensationally reported on a talk I gave at a meeting in London one week earlier. As your April 2015 letter notes, this item is posted online at
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3045115/Nazi-invasion-London-EXPOSED-World-s-Holocaust-deniers-filmed-secret-race-hate-Jews-referred-enemy.html

The first two sentences of the second statement are actually not by me. As I made clear in my London talk, those two sentences were quotations from The Zionist Connection, a detailed study by Jewish-American scholar Alfred M. Lilienthal, issued by Dodd, Mead, a respected New York publisher.

The remainder of that second statement, as well as the third statement attributed to me in your April 2015 letter, are likewise distortions of remarks I made in my address at that London meeting.

The full text of my London talk is posted at: https://ihr.org/journal/jewishzionistpower2015

A video of my April 2015 London address is posted online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEJ0UUIaxF0

I was so concerned by the errors and distortions in that Mail on Sunday report, on which you have relied, that in April 2015 I sent an e-mail message to managing editor John Wellington to ask him to correct at least the most blatant errors. I also met in person with Peter Sheridan, the Mail on Sunday correspondent in California, to gain his help in correcting errors about me in his paper.

After several exchanges of e-mail communications with both Wellington and Sheridan, and some delay, the Mail on Sunday in late May or early June added a “correction” footnote to its posted report acknowledging that it had inaccurately attributed to me at least two quotations – quotations cited by the Home Office as grounds for its exclusion decision. Of course, that online Mail on Sunday correction was made after the decision had already been made to exclude me from the UK.

Although you mention that there is no “statutory right of appeal against the Home Secretary’s decision,” I urge you to inform the appropriate authorities that the April 2015 decision to exclude me from the UK is based on second-hand information that is, at least in part, inaccurate, untrue or distorted. I further respectfully ask the appropriate authorities to reconsider and rescind the decision to exclude me from the UK.

Sincerely,

Mark Weber

May 20, 2019
Ref.: W1993505

Home Office
P. O. Box 1922
Croydon, Surrey CR90 9DD
England – UK

Dear Sir or Madam,

Thank you for your three-page letter of December 11, 2018 (copy enclosed), in which you respond to several letters by me, and to my request that your agency reconsider and revoke the Home Office directive of April 2015 to exclude me from the United Kingdom.

Naturally I am disappointed that your Office has decided to continue to exclude me from the UK.

I am pleased that you now accept that the first of the three quotes attributed by your Office to justify the original exclusion order of April 2015 was, in fact, never made by me. You also note that the second of the three quotes attributed to me to justify the 2015 exclusion order is, at least in part, actually not by me, but was rather a remark by a Jewish-American author, whom I was quoting.

Rather than continue to try to justify your exclusion of me from the UK on the basis of the grounds cited in 2015, you now present – in your letter of December 11 – new examples of allegedly “unacceptable behavior” as reasons to exclude me from the UK.

For one thing, you suggest that I should be excluded because I am connected with “Holocaust denial.” While acknowledging that I do not myself actually embrace “Holocaust denial,” you nonetheless write: “You have made comments which lead us to question the sincerity of your Holocaust acceptance as you have continued to make anti-Semitic statements …”

Frankly, this is an irrelevant point, because an “anti-Semite” does not necessarily “deny the Holocaust,” and a “Holocaust denier” can also be Jewish or pro-Jewish.

More importantly, the single statement by me that you cite to show that I am “anti-Semitic” does not support your claim. It is this: “[T]he Jewish community … has demonstrated a pronounced sense of separateness from the rest of humanity … this ‘chosen people’ mindset, this ‘us vs them’ attitude is anchored in centuries of Jewish history and heritage, and is deeply rooted in the collective Jewish psyche.”

It is absurd to call this remark “anti-Semitic,” given that many prominent and well-regarded Jewish writers have made this very same point, sometimes in even more emphatic language. How can any reasonable person consider as anti-Jewish a view that influential Jews themselves proudly proclaim?

In fact, the “separateness” of the Jewish people is repeatedly stressed in the Jewish scriptures (“Old Testament”). In one passage Jews are described as “a people dwelling alone, and not reckoning itself among the nations.” (Numbers 23:9) In another, Jews are described as a people “distinct … from all other people that are upon the face of the earth.” (Exodus 33:16)

Jewish “separateness” is also central to Zionism, the ideology of Jewish nationalism embraced by most Jews today in the UK and the US. Modern Jewish-Zionist writers accordingly proclaim the “chosenness” and “sense of separateness” of Jews. Consider, for example, the words of Elliot Abrams, currently a high-level US State Department official in the administration of President Trump. (He was also a senior advisor for “global democratic strategy” for President George W. Bush, and in 2006 was a key advisor on Middle East affairs to the US Secretary of State.) In his 1997 book Faith or Fear: How Jews Can Survive in Christian America, Abrams wrote: “Outside the land of Israel, there can be no doubt that Jews, faithful to the covenant between God and Abraham, are to stand apart from the nations in which they live. It is the very nature of being Jewish to be apart – except in Israel – from the rest of the population.”

If the Home Office sincerely regards my statement about Jewish “separateness” as grounds for exclusion from the UK, the Office should exclude Elliot Abrams, along with any number of other prominent Jewish figures, for similar statements.

If the Home Office does not act to exclude such individuals from the UK, a reasonable person might understandably conclude that the Home Office decision to exclude me is arbitrary and unfair. Or does the Home Office consider remarks about Jewish “separateness” objectionable only when they are made by non-Jews?

To support your decision to continue to exclude me from the UK, you also cite two allegedly “anti-immigrant” statements attributed to me. These statements, your letter goes on to explain, are “deemed unacceptable behavior” that “fosters hatred which might lead to inter-community tension in the UK.”

The first statement is: “At the base of the Statue of Liberty is a famous poem (The New Colossus reading ‘Give me your tired, your poor’”) … Sounds noble, we’re gonna (sic) let people here, even people that are despised and no good … The wretched refuse, that is very poor, uneducated, people from Bangladesh or Nigeria or Thailand or Peru or Mexico.”

Your portrayal of this quote is a complete misrepresentation of the point I was making. Anyone carefully listening to what I actually said during the interview in which I made that remark understands that I was not myself referring to immigrants as “wretched refuse.” That’s what Emma Lazarus – not me – called them in her famous poem. My point was not to disparage immigrants. It was instead to underscore the hypocrisy of those who applaud that poem, including the disparaging reference to “wretched refuse,” and then complain when poor or uneducated immigrants move into their neighborhoods and towns. I scorn the labelling of immigrants, or of anyone, as “wretched refuse,” particularly given that my mother’s mother was herself a poor, uneducated immigrant to the United States.

The second statement you cite as an example of my supposed anti-immigrant attitude is this:

“The majority of people [in Sweden] charged with murder, rape and robbery are either first or second generation immigrants.” Your letter then explains that “we have found no basis of fact for the second of the statements and therefore consider this to be a false accusation created with the intention of fostering hatred toward immigrants.”

Actually, even minimal research can quickly discern that there certainly is a “basis in fact” for this statement, which is accepted as factual by reputable writers and researchers. For example, the Israeli news service, Arutz Sheva 7, informs the public that “… most of the people accused [in Sweden] of murder, rape and robbery are first or second generation immigrants …”
( https://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/22766 )

Robert G. Evans, PhD, who for years was a professor at the University of British Columbia, writes: “The majority of people charged [in Sweden] with murder, rape and robbery are either first- or second-generation immigrants.”
( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4729279/ )

This same point is made by Margaret Wente in an article published in The Globe and Mail, a premier Canadian daily newspaper.
( https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/swedens-ugly-immigration-problem/article26338254/ )

If the Home Office seriously regards that remark as legitimate grounds, at least in part, for excluding someone from the UK, the Office should impose a ban on Canadian scholar Robert G. Evans, Canadian writer Margaret Wente, and directors or journalists of Israel’s Arutz Sheva 7 news service. Indeed, the Home Office should be even more eager to exclude those persons, given that they have given much more prominent publicity than I to an “unacceptable” remark that, you contend, “fosters hatred.”

If the Home Office takes no action against those individuals, a reasonable person might understandably conclude that the Home Office has acted arbitrarily and unfairly in citing that remark by me to justify excluding me from the UK.

You also write that “we have taken into account your representations and noted corrections made to sources where relevant, but we consider that there is no evidence to suggest you have renounced the views which were considered at the time of your exclusion.”

How, in the name of common sense, can you expect me to “renounce” views that I never held in the first place, and which I have explicitly told you I do not accept? Given that I have consistently distanced myself from the sentiment expressed in a quote that was wrongly attributed to me, it follows that I have – in fact – renounced at least that view.

There is no reasonable basis whatsoever for your conjectural assertion that “any comments” I might make in the UK “could incite violence and hatred against Jewish immigrant communities,” or “might lead to inter-community tension.”

In justifying your exclusion directive, you further charge that remarks appear on the IHR website that might reasonably be considered “racist.” That’s an absurd standard by which to exclude me, or anyone, because remarks that can be considered “racist” appear in countless websites – without objection from any British agency.

The websites of the British daily newspapers The Independent and the Daily Mail, for example, carry quotations by Winston Churchill that disparage people on the basis of race, and which – by the standards cited to exclude me from the UK – should be considered as “fostering hated toward immigrants” or which “might lead to inter-community tension” in Britain.
( https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2114950/Cameron-Churchill-Race–historical-howler.html ; https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/not-his-finest-hour-the-dark-side-of-winston-churchill-2118317.html )

While you claim to have given consideration to what you explain is my “fundamental right” of “Freedom of Expression,” the arguments you give to exclude me from the UK show only a nominal regard for that principle.

While acknowledging – at least implicitly – that the grounds cited for the 2015 exclusion decision are not substantive, the Home Office has made an effort to find new reasons to justify excluding me from the UK. But these new reasons are no more valid or substantial than those cited to justify the original 2015 exclusion directive.

You conclude by telling me that “For these reasons” the decision to exclude me from the UK remains in place, and that there is no right of appeal against this decision.

For any clear-eyed and open-minded person, the justifications given in your December 2018 letter to exclude me from the UK are weak, unconvincing or irrelevant, and are applied in an arbitrary way. In short, the grounds given in your letter of Dec. 11, 2018, to justify the decision to exclude me are unfair and lack any reasonable basis in fact, and thus susceptible to judicial review.

Sincerely,

Mark Weber