Clwyd West MS Darren Millar has called on the Welsh Government to urgently explain why people in Israel are blocked from accessing the website of Cadw, the Welsh Government’s historic environment service which promotes Welsh heritage sites such as castles and other visitor attractions.

Speaking in yesterday’s meeting of the Welsh Parliament, Darren said that currently people attempting to access the Cadw website from Israel appear to be blocked from doing so.

Raising the issue in the Business Statement, he said:

“I've been contacted by a member of the Welsh Jewish community with regard to access to the Cadw website. It appears that people who are attempting to access the website from Israel appear to be blocked from doing so.

“Now, using a virtual private network, I tried to take a look at this myself, and it seemed to me that the Cadw website was perfectly accessible from France, the United States, Spain and many other countries, yet not from an Israeli internet provider address.

“It’s my understanding that this has been raised with Cadw as far back as September but, as of yet, no action has been taken to address the problem.

“I'd be very grateful if we could have the Minister responsible for Cadw to take an urgent look at this to try and address it, and provide an explanation to the Senedd as to the reason for this issue.”

The Trefnydd, Lesley Griffiths MS, agreed to ask the Minister to look into and report back to Darren “as soon as she possibly can.”

Speaking after the exchange, Darren said:

“Understandably, people are concerned that this block may be down to discrimination or anti-Semitism; I very much hope that this isn’t the case.”