Samuel Westrop

Samuel Westrop (also known as Sam Westrop) is a British activist, co-founder and director of the Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy, and the organisation Stand for Peace. He is also a former director of the British Israel Coalition and a fellow of the New York-based Gatestone Institute.
Westrop has written for a wide range of publications, including the Algemeiner Journal and International Business Times, in particular with regards to the alliance between far-Left, anti-Israeli and Islamist groups. He has participated in BBC's show "The Big Questions" and interviewed by the Sun News Network. He He has appeared on British radio and television to discuss extremism and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Westrop is also the editor of the organization "The Atheist Conservative".
Early life and career
Westrop was born in the United Kingdom in 1990. His mother is Jewish, and his maternal grandmother lived and worked in Israel for its government. His family is not religiously or communally involved. Westrop has stated that he is "still not a member of the Jewish community. There had always been a family interest in Israel, not from a communal or religious perspective but more from a moral perspective."<ref name=Sam-JT/>
Before spending his gap year in Israel, Westrop visited Jordan and Syria and then went there as an 18-year-old on Kibbutz Yiftah, near Kiryat Shmona.
Then, Westrop moved to the Canada to study music at York University, where he was shocked by the "hateful, bigoted anti-Israel propaganda, combined with the growth of extremism on campus, which was challenging the western values of liberty and equality."
Westrop became active on the university political scene, and was perceived as right-wing, to which he says "As soon as you don't fall in line with certain modish views like the delegitimisation of Israel or apologism for terror, you're suddenly right-wing."<ref name=Sam-JT/>
Westrop began by running the Freedom Society, which discussed topics like immigration to the EU and the delegitimisation of Israel. Full of enthusiasm, he approached the Union of Jewish Students, but was told to go away.<ref name=Sam-JT/> In that year, was a part of the the intimidation incident at the university.
Sam continued his activity in the new organization, which counteracted Islamist extremism and anti-Israel propaganda, especially on campus, exposing "anti-Israel agitprop and Arab funding of British universities", and prevented extremists from speaking on campus. Dissatisfied with what was being done on campus, in 2009 Sam set up - in conjunction with other-like minded people, many of them not Jewish - the Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy. By time he finished university this summer, the instititute, which "seeks to challenge the far left and Islamic ideologies and educate about the actual reality of human rights", already had 500 students working across the country, Jews and non-Jews, with a large number of Muslims.<ref name=Sam-JT/>

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