A spokesperson from the Leeds Jewish Representative Council said the organisation had been “trying to alert Leeds Minster to this issue for over a week”.
“We were told they had done that due diligence – they had not. What they had done was check for the 12 names we had been able to submit.
“They did not dispute that those names were included in the tapestry. But, worryingly, they decided that because those particular names were not on the panels exhibited at Leeds, it did not matter.
“When we tried to take photographs of the panels they had decided to put on public display, they refused to allow us to do so.”
The spokesperson said a total of 25 names of Hamas fighters had now been found on the tapestry.
“This debacle has set community relations back by years,” they said.
“At a time where we have seen a rising antisemitism that goes beyond living memory in this city, it is simply astonishing that clergy and trustees of an important church should behave in this way.
“We obviously welcome the immediate cancellation of the exhibition, because even late is better than never.”
They said it was “thoroughly upsetting and disheartening to find major institutions who appear not to care enough to even check their own work.”
Canon Paul Maybury, on behalf of Leeds Minster, said the names featured in the exhibition were “from the published list from the Gaza Health Authority”.
Maybury said that, before the exhibition opened, the Leeds Jewish Representative Council had expressed concerns that the wider project was likely to contain the names of 12 Hamas fighters.
The minster then reviewed the 90 panels selected for the church exhibition and established that the 12 names were not among them, and the exhibition proceeded.
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.”
He added: “Leeds Minster categorically condemns all violence and in particular the killing of civilians and the taking of hostages, by Hamas, on October 7th 2023.”
