Anti-Israel protesters have targeted Leonardo Hotels with demonstrations. In May last year, the Belfast BDS wing staged a protest handing out leaflets with an image comparing the hotel to a concentration camp.
Demonstrators said: “Boycott Leonardo Hotels - another block in the Apartheid wall” and protested Fattal for “giving his accommodation out to the IDF”.
Demonstrators call Leonardo a 'genocide hotel' (Instagram/BelfastBDS)[Missing Credit]
Williamson stayed at the hotel and was spotted in the restaurant tucking into breakfast and speaking with a pro-Palestine protester wearing a top emblazoned with the red, green and black Palestinians flag.
Speaking to the JC, Williamson confirmed he had stayed at and paid for the hotel.
“I subsequently discovered that it is [Israeli-owned], I didn’t know until the day after.”
Williamson said he continued to stay at the hotel after he realised it was on the BDS list: “I had already paid”.
He was in Brighton for the Green Party conference to observe the Zionism is racism motion, which passed on Sunday, sparking widespread condemnation by mainstream politicians and Jewish leaders.
The motion defining Zionism as a “racist ideology” also called for the abolition of the state of Israel, to be replaced by a “single democratic Palestinian state in all of historic Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital,” and expressed support for what it called “the right of the Palestinian people to resistance and liberation from Israeli occupation, domination and subjugation” by “all available means”.
A “Jewish safeguarding” amendment to the motion that said it would not be used to “pressure, proscribe or discipline members based on affiliation with Jewish community institutions” was voted down 1,026 votes to 648.
Williamson, who has a show called Palestine Declassified on Press TV, said he was “pleased with the outcome of the Zionism is racism vote... it was good to see a major political party taking that stand”.
In posts on X, he called allegations of antisemitism levelled “preposterous attacks”.
“You can't appease bad faith actors. So my advice is, get on the front foot and face down these bad-faith actors.”
A demonstration against the hotel group in May 2025 (Instagram/BelfastBDS)[Missing Credit]
When the JC revealed that the chair of Amnesty International UK and longtime Green, Sandy Ruthven, had left the party over the motion, Williamson accused the charity leader of “failing to confront his own prejudice”.
“How on earth did he become the chair of Amnesty International when he's sympathetic to an ideology that tramples on the human rights of Palestinians?” he added.
And today, Williamson confronted Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband over his offering condolences on the anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attack
“Many of those killed on 7 October 2023 were killed by Israel's military after the Hannibal Directive was invoked,” Williamson claimed.
