Leeds Minster removes tapestry featuring 18 Hamas terrorists

Leeds Minster has pulled a Gaza tapestry after receiving evidence indicating at least 18 Hamas fighters were named on panels displayed inside the church.

The Stitch Their Names Together exhibition was due to run until Sunday, but the Minster announced on Friday morning that it had closed with immediate effect.

The decision follows days of controversy over the exhibition and comments by the Minster’s rector, Canon Paul Maybury, who said the “history is complex” when questioned about the murdered Bibas children and replied “no comment” when asked for his view of Hamas.

In a statement sent to Jewish News, Maybury said the Leeds Jewish Representative Council had raised concerns before the exhibition opened that the wider project was likely to contain the names of 12 Hamas fighters.

The Minster then checked the 90 panels selected for display in the church and confirmed those 12 names were not among them. The exhibition subsequently went ahead.

But the church said it received new evidence from the Jewish representative body on Friday concerning names that were on display.

Maybury said: “Today we received further information from the Leeds Jewish Representative Council indicating that they had evidence suggesting that there are the names of at least 18 known Hamas fighters contained in the exhibition in the Minster. Having received this information, we immediately decided to close the exhibition to the public.”

The Minster also issued an explicit condemnation of Hamas following criticism of Maybury’s comments earlier this week.

It said: “Leeds Minster categorically condemns all violence and in particular the killing of civilians and the taking of hostages, by Hamas, on 7 October 2023.”

The church acknowledged that hosting the exhibition had damaged its relationship with parts of the Jewish community and apologised.

Maybury said: “Leeds Minster seeks to work with all faith groups within the city and acknowledges that by hosting this exhibition we have harmed our relationship with some in the Jewish community for which we apologise and now seek to rebuild trust.”

The exhibition features names stitched onto fabric in memory of Palestinians reported killed in Gaza since October 2023. According to the Minster, the names were taken from a list published by the Gaza Health Authority.

The closure comes after The Times reported last week that the wider Stitch Their Names Together project appeared to include the names of at least 12 members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad and one member of Hamas. Both are proscribed terrorist organisations in the UK.

Project organiser Mary Evers told the newspaper that the panels containing the names it had identified were not among those selected for display at Leeds Minster because the complete work was too large for the venue.

She said: “The complete body of work is too large to be accommodated in any single venue. Leeds Minster will therefore display only part of it.

“The absence of these names from the Leeds display is a consequence of those practical limitations; no deselection of individual names has taken place.”

Evers said at the time that the appearance of a name recorded a reported death and did not endorse a person’s conduct, beliefs or any alleged affiliation.

The latest evidence supplied by the Leeds Jewish Representative Council concerns other names said to have appeared among the 90 panels actually displayed at the Minster.

Stitch Their Names Together opened to the public on 11 September and had been scheduled to remain at Leeds Minster until Sunday, 20 September.

Jewish News has approached the Stitch Their Names Together project for comment on the closure.