It is understood that when Jenrick acted, Matar was out of the country on a short trip. He has been placed on a watch list and will not be allowed to re-enter Britain.
Matar responded to the news by doubling down on his support for Hamas, posting another broadcast in which he stated it was “not terrorist” and vowing to fight the loss of his visa in court - claiming he would be represented by a law firm run by “Jews who reject Zionism and what has happened in Palestine”.
He said he had lost his visa because “I, from the first instance, sided with the righteousness, the Palestinians, the cause, against the crimes, the criminals, the horrific deeds which happen by the hour not the day.”
He accused Britain and the west of double standards, saying that in their eyes, “the resistance of the Ukrainians against the Russian invasion is halal [sanctified]” but “the resistance of the Palestinians against the Israeli criminality is haram [condemned]” .
Ex-sports reporter turned Islamist presenter Moataz Matar (YouTube)
The JC first exposed Matar in April, revealing that he had voiced support for Hamas on numerous occasions and had celebrated the murders of the wife and daughters of Rabbi Leo Dee in the West Bank earlier this year as an “operation by the resistance”.
After the JC published its investigation, Arabic-speaking researcher Khaled Hassan submitted a dossier containing details and translations of Matar’s broadcasts and posts issued while he has lived in Britain to counter-terror police, but did not receive an acknowledgement. The JC asked for comment on this but was not given a reply.
Hassan said that he had first reported Matar to the Home Office when he first arrived in 2021, and that he had been presenting the authorities with evidence about him ever since. He told the JC: “To suggest that he could overturn the British Government's decision in a British court of law shows that he is not only desperate but potentially also delusional. He shouldn't have been allowed in Britain in the first place."
Earlier this month the JC revealed Matar’s response to the October 7 atrocities, which he described as a day “filled with pride and glory” and “a heroic act that our Muslim and Arab world has never seen before, and the enemy has never seen before since the Holocaust of Hitler.”
He followed this with a livestreamed interview with Abdelhakim Hanini, a convicted terrorist who co-founded Hamas’s murderous Al Qassam brigade in the West Bank in the 1990s.
In the 15-minute interview, Hanini said those who “neo-Nazi Zionist enemy” should be made to feel there is “no safety for them”.
Asked by Matar if he had a message for his viewers while “the hyenas of the world have their claws around Gaza”, Hanini replied in terms that explicitly encouraged violence, saying they should “carry out jihad” so that “those allies and occupiers feel that there’s no safety for them, and that there’s no safety for their interests, no safety for their trade, no safety for anything that belongs to them, as long as they are supporting this neo-Nazi new Holocaust”.
Jenrick warned that anyone emulating Mater would be treated in similar fashion: “To any individuals considering following suit in the coming days and weeks, be in no doubt that we will continue to revoke visas wherever required. We will not tolerate extremism on our streets.”
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