UK Home Office Cancels Palestinian-American Designer's Travel Permit After Pro-Israel Lobby Group Flags His T-Shirts

Mo Hamzeh was two days from boarding a flight to London when the message appeared on the UK government's website: "We are satisfied that your presence in the UK is not conducive to the public good."

Hamzeh, vice-chair and trustee of the Gaza charity Sun of Freedom, was scheduled to speak Friday at a fundraiser in London titled "Palestine: A Journey Through Heritage and Hope." His Electronic Travel Authorisation had been approved weeks earlier. It was cancelled without a hearing, he says, and without the chance to respond.

"I am the latest victim of the UK's targeting of Palestinian advocates and human rights defenders," Hamzeh told Middle East Eye, adding that he is pursuing a legal challenge.

The paper trail

The ban did not come out of nowhere. UK Lawyers for Israel says it submitted a report to the Home Office on October 19 calling for Hamzeh to be barred. The group later called the cancellation "a welcome step in protecting the public from extremist rhetoric and antisemitic hatred."

Eleven days after that submission, on October 30, Conservative MP and shadow home secretary Chris Philp wrote to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood urging the same outcome. Philp cited two items from Hamzeh's clothing line, sold to benefit Sun of Freedom: a T-shirt bearing a lengthy slogan that calls Israel a "genociding, holocausting" state that "outshames" the Nazis, and another featuring an inverted red triangle, which Philp described as "closely associated with Hamas."

"These statements are wholly incompatible with the values of the United Kingdom," Philp wrote to Mahmood.

Hamzeh disputes the symbol's meaning, saying the triangle represents Palestinian statehood, not Hamas. He does not dispute designing the shirts.

A Home Office spokesperson, asked about the case before the cancellation, said the department does not comment on individual cases but has "no tolerance for those who seek to spread hatred, incite violence or threaten communities." The department has not responded to MEE's request for comment on the ban itself.

A pattern

Sun of Freedom has publicly stated it "unequivocally rejects antisemitism and the targeting of Jewish people, as well as terrorism and violence against civilians." Hamzeh, whose family was expelled from Palestine during the 1948 Nakba and who is based in New Jersey, framed the ban as selective: "Israeli soldiers who have participated in genocide are free to roam the streets of London," he said, while he is barred from attending a fundraiser that provides food and water to Gaza.

UK Lawyers for Israel, founded in 2011, appears 128 times in the European Legal Support Centre's Britain Index of Repression database, which tracks what it calls the systematic repression of Palestine solidarity activism in Britain. The centre's analysis describes the group as repeatedly initiating or escalating complaints that push institutions to cancel events or open disciplinary proceedings against critics of Israeli policy, producing what it terms a chilling effect. Earlier this year, the British government barred American commentators Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur from entering the country, reportedly over their criticism of Israel.