Holly Passmore said two Durham Constabulary officers arrived at her home at 11 a.m. in July and began asking about her trip to Israel.
By Shula Rosen
British police questioned a County Durham mother about her support for Israel and a recent visit to the country after an anonymous referral to the government’s Prevent counter-extremism program described her as vulnerable to manipulation, the Telegraph reported.
Holly Passmore said two Durham Constabulary officers arrived at her home at 11 a.m. in July and began asking about her trip to Israel.
“They said it was a safeguarding matter,” Passmore recalled. She initially believed the officers were concerned that she had taken her son into a war zone.
“I said, ‘Well, my son didn’t go to Israel. He stayed here with my mum and my daughter, who’s 20’,” she recalled. But the female officer replied: “No this is about you – because you may be at risk of manipulation.”
Passmore later obtained her records under data protection laws. A police intelligence report seen by The Telegraph said the Prevent referral alleged she “over-identified with the conflict between Israel and Palestine” and was “supportive of Israel to the point that she has travelled to Israel”.
The referral also described Passmore as having “MH” — meaning mental health — issues and being “vulnerable to negative influence.” Passmore, who has been diagnosed with ADHD and autism, said she has no mental health issues.
“They knew I’m not vulnerable but they wanted to monitor me because I was advocating for Israel,” she told The Telegraph. “When they came to the door they didn’t discuss my health. They only asked about Israel.”
The police report acknowledged that there “is no CT [counter-terror] concern with an individual being supportive of Israel as a democracy and it would not be a CT concern for a person to travel there”.
Passmore said officers questioned her about her connections to Israel, whether she intended to return and why she was interested in “Jewish issues” despite County Durham not being a Jewish area. They also asked whether she had visited Auschwitz.
Passmore is not Jewish but began speaking more frequently against anti-Semitism and expressing solidarity with Jewish people following the Oct. 7 massacre in 2023. She has more than 28,000 followers on X under the name “MummyisTired.”
She later accepted an invitation from the Israeli embassy to visit Israel.
The trip included Kfar Aza, the kibbutz attacked by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7 where British hostage Emily Damari was abducted. Passmore also enrolled in a Holocaust studies degree at the University of Haifa.
Three days after the police visit, on July 7, Passmore filed a complaint. Two additional officers, including a superintendent, subsequently visited her home and told her police did not consider her a terrorist, extremist or threat.
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