The Tory leadership front-runner wore a hooded top emblazoned with ‘Hamas are terrorists’ on a jog through central London.
Robert Jenrick, 42, posed for a photo in the sweatshirt, printed in the colours of the Palestinian flag, alongside his parliamentary researcher, Dov Forman.
A campaign source for the Newark MP told the Telegraph: ‘Anyone who thinks Hamas aren’t terrorists needs to give their head a wobble.’
Hamas, the de facto governing authority in Gaza, is designated a terrorist group in the United Kingdom.
The group has been embroiled in a deadly war since October 7, when gunmen stormed into Israel, killing 1,170 people and taking some 250 hostage. Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza has killed 41,455 people, per the Gaza health ministry.
Dov Forman posed with Robert Jenrick wearing the jumpers on a jog through central London
Robert Jenrick campaigns at an event in Westminster on September 1
Israeli soldiers inspect the burnt cars of festival-goers at the site of the Hamas-led attack on the Nova Festival days prior on October 13
Mr Jenrick is not Jewish himself, but is married to Michal Berkner, the daughter of Holocaust survivors.
During a visit to Auschwitz concentration camp in 2019 he said his connection to the Jewish community was a ‘very important and integral part of my life’.
Ms Berkner was born in Israel and educated in the USA. The couple are raising their three children in the Jewish faith, per the Jewish Chronicle.
Dov Forman, pictured running alongside Mr Jenrick, has been his senior parliamentary researcher since last year.
Mr Forman helped author Lily’s Promise, a moving memoir of surviving Auschwitz written by his great-grandmother.
He re-shared a photo of the two on their London run on Twitter/X, posted on Sunday.
Mr Jenrick, who launched his campaign to be the next Tory leader at the start of August, has consistently bashed support for Hamas and hit out at the BBC for refusing to call them terrorists.
A BBC spokesperson said last October, just days into the conflict, that it was a long-standing position for its reporters not to use the term unless attributing it to someone else.
‘Anyone watching or listening to our coverage will hear the word “terrorist” used many times – we attribute it to those who are using it, for example, the UK Government.
‘This is an approach that has been used for decades, and is in line with that of other broadcasters.
‘The BBC is an editorially independent broadcaster whose job is to explain precisely what is happening ‘on the ground’ so our audiences can make their own judgement.’
The United Kingdom has proscribed Hamas’ military wing as a terrorist organisation since 2001, extending the proscription to in November 2021 to the group as a whole.
The aftermath of Hamas’ attack on Be’eri kibbutz in Israel, where members of the village were murdered or abducted and taken back into Gaza
A man pushes an injured boy in a wheelchair past the destroyed al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on September 17
A Palestinian boy weeps after an Israeli air strike hit a school sheltering displaced people in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, on September 23
According to the government: ‘At the time it was HM government’s assessment that there was a sufficient distinction between the so called political and military wings of Hamas, such that they should be treated as different organisations, and that only the military wing was concerned in terrorism.
‘The government now assess that the approach of distinguishing between the various parts of Hamas is artificial. Hamas is a complex but single terrorist organisation.’
The government’s own policy paper on proscribed terrorist groups observes that ‘Hamas commits and participates in terrorism. Hamas has used indiscriminate rocket or mortar attacks, and raids against Israeli targets.’
It also describes Hamas as ‘a militant Islamist movement that was established in 1987’.
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