Activists Protest Bayeux Tapestry Sponsor’s Ties to Israeli Settlements
Demonstrators at the British Museum decried billionaire Igor Tulchinsky’s financing of a community center in an illegal Israeli settlement in the Occupied West Bank.
Following reports that hedge-fund billionaire Igor Tulchinsky financed a community center in an illegal Israeli settlement in the Occupied West Bank, pro-Palestine activists took to the British Museum this Saturday, September 12, to protest Tulchinsky's financial backing of the new Bayeux Tapestry exhibit.
Activists from Energy Embargo for Palestine, who also denounced the British Museum's ongoing partnership with the oil giant BP, unfurled their own “People's Tapestry” in the museum's Great Court.
“We will continue to push for a Museum that is led by the interests of its workers and the general public,” the climate emergency group wrote in an Instagram post about the weekend action, specifying its call for an “end to collaboration and sponsorships by billionaires fueling climate breakdown and invested in 'Israel’s' settler-colonial occupation.”
The demonstration comes in light of last week's Middle East Eye report on Tulchinsky's “therapy yurt” for Israeli residents of Efrat — the de facto capital of a settlement bloc just south of Jerusalem within the Occupied West Bank called Gush Etzion. Tulchinsky's ties to the settlement may violate the United Kingdom's recently adopted sanctions and import ban on illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.
The yurt, which hosts group therapy and movement programs for Israeli militants and civilians experiencing PTSD from “October 7, the ongoing war, and repeated reservist call-ups,” is part of a larger community center in Efrat that provides individual and family therapy for residents across Gush Etzion. As reported by the Jerusalem News Syndicate, Tulchinsky was present for the yurt's unveiling last November and dedicated it to “Israel's heroes,” referring to the new tent as “Israel's inner Iron Dome.”
Following the Middle East Eye's report, British politician and Green Party leader Zack Polanski has called on the UK government to investigate whether Tulchinsky's sponsorship with the British Museum violates the new sanctions. Earlier this month, British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband outlined that the government will take action against “specific companies and individuals who provide services such as construction, infrastructure, financing, or real estate for settlement expansion.”
