LONDON (JTA) — University College London offered a Jewish group its apologies and compensation over the cancellation of an Israel Independence Day event.
The Zionist Federation in April had to find an alternative venue for its annual Independence Day event after the college-owned Bloomsbury Theatre in central London bowed to pressure and canceled the event.
Anti-Israel activists had complained to the theater following the publication of the event’s promotional material, which included pictures of the Israel Defense Forces’ entertainment troupe in uniform. But even after the Zionist Federation offered to exclude the group from the program, the protests continued and the theater canceled the event.
The theater claimed that the use of the picture of the soldiers in uniform constituted a breach of the contract, which specified that the event was cultural and not political.
However, the same theater hosted an event in April 2006 to commemorate the killing of residents of Dir Yasin in 1948. The event was titled “How Palestine Became Israel.”
University College London agreed this week that the theater was “not contractually” entitled to cancel the event and posted on its Internet site an apology to the Zionist Federation.
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