Middle East Monitor

The Middle East Monitor (MEMO) is a not-for-profit press monitoring organisation and lobbying group that emerged in mid 2009. MEMO is largely focused on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, but writes about other issues in the Middle East as well. MEMO is pro-Palestinian in orientation  and supports Islamist causes. MEMO is regarded as an outlet for the Muslim Brotherhood and its website strongly promotes pro-Hamas related content.

MEMO is financed by the State of Qatar. It is led by Daud Abdullah, former assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain and the current director of British Muslim Initiative.

Events
In June 2011, MEMO organized a speaking tour for Raed Salah, leader of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel. Salah, who was banned from entering the UK by the home secretary, was held in custody pending deportation until April 2012 when an immigration tribunal ruled that the home secretary had been misled.

In 2011, MEMO co-organized an event with Amnesty International and Palestine Solidarity Campaign titled "Complicity in oppression: Do the media aid Israel?" featuring Abdel Bari Atwan.

On 22 August 2015, MEMO organized an event titled "Palestine & Latin America: Building solidarity for national rights", featuring alleged antisemitic cartoonist Carlos Latuff and British Palestinian activist Azzam Tamimi. Jeremy Corbyn was scheduled to appear as well, but pulled out.

In November 2017, MEMO organized an event titled "Crisis in Saudi Arabia: War, Succession and the Future" discussion Saudi Arabia's future monarchy succession and regional rivalries with Iran and war in Yemen.

Staff
The staff and contributors of MEMO include Daud Abdullah, Ibrahim Hewitt and Ben White.

Criticism
In 2011, John Ware of BBC News described MEMO as a pro-Hamas publication.

In 2015, Labour Party leadership candidate Liz Kendall said "It seems deeply unwise for Jeremy [Corbyn] to appear on at a conference organised by MEMO, an organisation that the Community Security Trust has said is infamous for repeated negative conspiracy theories about Israel and Jewish people in public life." The Trust desctibe MEMO as an anti-Israel organisation and as promoting conspiracy theories and myths about Jews, Zionists, money and power. It said that MEMO had "questioned the suitability of Matthew Gould for the post of UK ambassador to Israel simply because he was Jewish".

The same year, the Sunday Telegraph's Andrew Gilligan described it as "a news site which promotes a strongly pro-[Muslim] Brotherhood and pro-Hamas view of the region", its director Daud Abdullah as "also a leader of the Brotherhood-linked British Muslim Initiative, set up and run by the Brotherhood activist Anas al-Tikriti and two senior figures in Hamas", and its senior editor, Ibrahim Hewitt, as chairman of Interpal, which he said was also linked to Hamas and the Brotherhood. Gilligan noted its location at Crown House, which he described as a "hub" of the Muslim Brotherhood's European activities.

Palestine Book Awards
Since 2012, MEMO sponsors and organizes the annual Palestine Book Awards. The award is intended for books in English on various Palestinian topics.