The sponsor of the British Museum’s Bayeux Tapestry exhibition has funded a community centre in Efrat, an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank that is now under UK sanctions.
Igor Tulchinsky, a Belarus-born billionaire who has backed the Bayeux Tapestry exhibition in a deal estimated to be worth £5m ($6.75m), unveiled a “therapy yurt” in Efrat’s Mondlak Center in November 2025 alongside the settlement’s mayor, Dovi Shefler.
The yurt is part of a “community resilience centre” serving Gush Etzion, a bloc of illegal Israeli settlements 12km southeast of Jerusalem, and Tulchinsky was identified as its primary sponsor.
Tulchinsky is reported to have dedicated the facility to “Israel's brave warriors and their families” during a visit to the settlement in November 2025, according to a post on the Efrat Development Foundation’s Instagram page.
Speaking at the opening, Tulchinsky described the yurt as “Israel’s inner Iron Dome”.
