“What’s happening in America’s college campuses is horrific… This is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s.”
— Benjamin Netanyahu
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Stephen Kapos’ reply to Netanyahu:
As a Holocaust survivor my message to the brave student protesters in America is just keep doing it. Don’t give up. We are doing exactly the same and in the long term we’re going to prevail.
I’m out from the beginning at every march. A small group of survivors and descendants of survivors demonstrate disagreement with the use of the Holocaust experience as a cover by the Zionists and the state of Israel.
The way that the Israeli government is using the memory of the Holocaust in order to justify what they’re doing to the Gazans is a complete insult to the memory of the Holocaust.
And we stand repeatedly in the last few demos carrying placards hanging from the neck saying: “This Survivor of the Holocaust is against the genocide in Gaza.” And we also demonstrate against the conflating of Jewishness with Zionism, which is what the Israeli state is trying to do [and] which does nothing else but increases anti-Semitism. So we are trying to counter that by demonstrating that Jews and Holocaust survivors are against that.
We have tremendously warm reception and appreciation from the typical members of the march. We get handshakes and hugs, and some people stand, and some women cry seeing the placards. It’s a great and warm experience.
When the right-wing section of the present government is trying to press for the banning of these marches on the ground that they create no-go areas for Jews, and they are anti-semitic, we know that this is complete rubbish, and the very opposite is true.
Today’s marches are having a very hopeful aspect that it is so large, so persistent, so global, that eventually the Western leadership, which are trying to deny what is actually going on, will be forced to face up to it. And I think we are not far from that.
I think there was no parallel to that in the Jewish Holocaust experience. In fact, there was great abandonment certainly from the leadership of the country. There were some very few, very brave people, who risked everything to be on the right side of history, and to rescue as many as possible, but the majority of people were too afraid and looked the other way.
There is a question of historic responsibility towards injustice, genocide and fascism. If you are just indifferent, if you do not take a stand, you acquire a degree of guilt without any doubt, and I think it is imperative to assert opposition and even at some degree of disadvantage and risk, if you want to be guilt free when history judges what’s happening.
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Additional:
Stephen Kapos also recently spoke to host of Not the Andrew Marr Show, Crispin Flintoff, about his experiences as a boy, how this resonates with the situation in Gaza, why he has attended every Palestine demonstration since October, and how he has been invited to speak at the big national demonstration on Saturday 27th April:
In 2017, with the support of an extraordinary grassroots movement, British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn came close to becoming prime minister. The establishment trembled. Britain stood on the threshold of huge political change. But within three years all, it seemed, was lost. What happened and why?
Produced by award-winning radical film-maker Platform Films, with contributions from Jackie Walker, Ken Loach, Andrew Murray, Graham Bash and Moshé Machover, and narrated by Alexei Sayle, this feature-length documentary film explores a dark and murky story of political deceit and outrageous antisemitic smears. It also uncovers the critical role played by current Labour leader, Keir Starmer and asks if the movement which backed Corbyn could rise again.
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Additional: Cancel culture
Screenings of the documentary “Oh Jeremy Corbyn: The Big Lie” have been repeatedly blocked ever since its release and so embedded below are some of the instances of cancel culture that have dogged the organisers of events:
Above, Chris Jury of the Tolpuddle Radical Film Festival speaks with Crispin Flintoff about the failed attempt to stop the film being shown last June and how people rallied to make sure it was put on.
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Although cleared of anti-Semitism by lawyer working for the festival, the film was likewise blocked at last year’s Glastonbury. Damien Willey explains how the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Marie van der Zyl, was extolling how pleased she was that the Eavis family who run the festival had decided to drop it, and how this caused uproar because it was only back in 2017 that Michael Eavis invited Corbyn to speak on the main stage. Well, look no further than the commercial sponsors to understand how the ban came about:
But due to popular demand, it was finally screened at Glastonbury anyway, albeit in a separate zone.
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Finally, Crispin Flintoff speaks to other organisers across the country including Gill McCall who had by then screened the film three times in Wimbledon; John Kingston who organised five screenings in Bournemouth (of which two were cancelled); and Peter Doyle in Carlisle who managed to organise a screening but only after two cancellations. Predictably, all of the bans and attempts at censorship backfired and simply helped to spark more interest and expand the audience:
“[Israel] is a colonial enterprise that has decided willingly to desecrate and exploit Jewish symbols in favour of its settler project and we are supposed to distance ourselves from that. If you are using the Star of David as a military symbol, as an icon of conquest, how is that my fault? If you are levelling neighbourhoods to the ground then planting the Star of David in the middle of the neighbourhood; if you are literally carving the Star of David in the faces of young Palestinian men; how are we supposed to distance ourselves from this conflation? When this government is intentionally explicitly and institutionally conflating Judaism, the religion, with Zionism, a racist ideology, the burden and the responsibility of making the distinction does not fall on the oppressed. It does not fall on the colonised when they are exploiting that conflation in their favour. This falls on them.”
— Mohammed Al-Kurd [from 8:35 mins]
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In the world today, there is just one overtly racist regime left standing and that is the one existing in Israel. Ever since its formation in 1948, when the Zionists came to power, it has periodically ethnically cleansed the land of its indigenous Palestinian population while it also maintains a strict and ever-tightening apartheid system. In consequence, Israel is an anachronism, because racism of this full-blown kind has otherwise been totally eradicated across the world.
Historically being racist has always equated to the false belief that your own ‘race’ or people should dominate others. Thus, as a racist you acted to ensure this happened by means of both the segregation and subjugation of those others. This is why in the past (as now) true racism always results in apartheid, expulsion and/or murder. It is why all true racism is so horrific.
Moreover, racism has traditionally followed from a parallel false belief that your own ‘race’ is inherently superior to others. And seventy-plus years ago, a great many people (especially European people) held on very tightly to this belief, buttressing their opinions with the popular science of the day. However, with the discovery of DNA and advent of real genetics, such pseudoscientific foundations were slowly dismantled altogether.
There is no race science today. In consequence, bigotry relies on cultural distinctions between peoples, which alone maintain falsehoods of racial superiority. Hence, today’s racist pretence is not that the others are genetically inferior, but that their upbringing, their lifestyle, and most importantly their religio-political beliefs, are second-rate at best, and at worst reprehensible. “Islamophobia” is a deeply problematic label, but it is also an illuminating one.
Stepping back from this, we should now recognise that the very definition of racism has been shifted in response to these changes of outlook. Indeed, the very concept of ‘racism’ has been steadily redefined and purposefully weaponised to ensure in its new formulation, the label better attaches to words and opinions than to actions and deeds.
Today, anyone who fails to stick within the bounds of acceptable thought and language on issues of ‘identity’, and in this specific case of ethnicity, is most likely to be deemed then castigated and marginalised as ‘a racist’. Meanwhile, the Western establishment effectively maintains a global hegemony – an empire – by means of subjugating the majority of the world’s population just as it did historically; by using all the well-honed tools of the old-school racists, but as it does so, there is nowadays a softer language that neoimperialism fosters.
The “war on terror” has been the single standout example of the new racism, because you can only legitimately “shock and awe” a lesser people. This campaign of slaughter of people of darker skin colour was done on the pretext that they represented an immediate danger or (without irony) these same people need saving and so we later came to their rescue in “humanitarian interventions”. In short, the entire western establishment is racist to its core. Or to paraphrase Josep Borrell, we are the garden, they are the jungle:
Yet, Israel still stands apart in this regard, since, to reiterate, it is the last remaining island of European settler colonial racism. So racism, the very word itself, has had to been reinvented to defend Israel in particular. And our new definition of “anti-Semitism” then enables the West to put aside the origins of this obscene ideology, and reattach it. To forget the rapacious imperialism of the western powers, and to look past the real-time murder of women and children whose only crime was to be born with the wrong ethnicity. To fixate instead upon a misplaced word or any word that calls back our attention to the real horrors of actual racism that still remain an everyday Twenty-first Century reality most especially in Palestine today.
Why are slogans worse than genocide? To permit genocide, of course.
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Additional:
When I posted this article I noticed that the original version of Josep Borrell’s notorious speech has restricted viewing. Incredible isn’t it? Anyway, here’s a different version uploaded by MME that you are still permitted to view without clicking away to the Youtube link:
“I don’t know what to say to be honest. There’s no tears left to shed. There’s no pleas left to make. What else is needed to happen? Are they are they waiting for our complete annihilation, because they are annihilating Gaza as we as we speak.” — Shahd Abusalama
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Shahd Abusalama is a Palestinian academic who was born and raised in Jabalia refugee camp on the Gaza Strip. Her grandparents were among the first wave of Palestinian refugees to be forcibly expelled from their home village of Beit Jerja during the Nakba in 1948. Today her entire extended family is resettled behind the illegally blockaded prison fences of Gaza.
On November 6th, Shahd wrote:
What is happening in Gaza is not a war. It is a genocide, accompanied by an ethnic cleansing campaign against the mostly refugee population in that besieged enclave.
The process is targeting other Palestinian communities surviving under Israeli settler-colonial and military domination between the river and the sea.
No one is spared from Israel’s killing machines: children, women, elderly people, journalists, doctors, paramedics, fire fighters. Nowhere in Gaza is safe: residential buildings have been levelled, UNRWA schools sheltering the displaced have been hit.
Hospitals, churches, mosques, bakeries, universities, ambulances, too. My parents and extended family are amongst over a million people who have been forcibly displaced – nearly half of Gaza’s entire population.
They have fled to Al-Nusairat refugee camp, which is “south of Gaza river” according to Israel’s criminal military order, but they are at close encounters with death every day amid relentless Israeli bombardment.
There is no time to process all the horrors of the past four weeks, but my family survivors keep stressing that “time passing means more bloodshed”.
On 23 October, my cousins and their little angels were amongst 23 relatives killed while asleep at their own homes in Jabalia refugee camp.
Click here to read Shahd Abusalama’s full article entitled “I was born and raised in Jabalia refugee camp where Israel killed 23 of my relatives” published on November 6th 2023 by Declassified UK.
Speaking to Electronic Intifada on Wednesday 17th [embedded above], she says:
“Every day for everyone in Gaza, every day they survive by chance and every day is about struggling to find the basics to feed the little ones, the children, to find enough water and food. And they go through great ordeals to even find wood to make fire, so they can cook or do laundry. Everything is such a great struggle.”
Adding: “The great majority of Gaza population they have no place to go to, even if the war ends today. So like what is the world is waiting for?”
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In truth, I don’t know what the world is waiting for either. What more can be said or done to halt this ongoing genocide?
In solidarity I recently sent another letter to my constituency Labour MP Paul Blomfield after he’d replied to me over the “Anti-Boycott Bill” [more formally: Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill] that will make it unlawful for public bodies to consider ethical and human rights issues in procurement and investment decisions.
He wished to remind me that he had opposed the bill at its Second Reading back in July [you can read Paul Blomfield’s speech here] and in his letter highlighted further actions along with fellow Sheffield Labour MPs, who are collectively helping to raise money for Medical Aid for Palestinians “to support their work providing food, medical supplies and hygiene kits to Gaza. You can find out more and, if you’re able, donate here.”
I do not wish to belittle these initiatives or downplay the importance of supplying aid to desperate people in Gaza. And in the letter I express my sincere thanks for voting against a “dangerous and draconian” bill that Amnesty Internationalreports will provide “special status for Israel [that] will shield it from accountability for human rights violations and breaching international law.”
But none of this is enough. Not nearly enough. Treating the Palestinians as if they are merely unfortunate victims of an unavoidable disaster involves playing along with an outrageous lie. It denies the intentional agency of Netanyahu’s murderous Israeli regime in its policy of scorched earth destruction, population displacement and indiscriminate killing.
Members of Parliament not only have the power but also the duty to call for an immediate ceasefire to end the killing in Gaza and to demand a complete withdrawal of British support from Israel, but few show any real commitment to upholding international law or bringing justice to the Palestinians. In the end, there is no defence for those who enable ethnic cleansing and genocide, however passive their involvement.
Exasperated but respectfully, I replied as follows:
Dear Paul,
Thank you for voting against this bill. That much is greatly appreciated.
However, I feel it is necessary to be frank with you. Although I have previously delivered leaflets and canvassed on your behalf, due to the stance Keir Starmer has taken regarding Palestine I will certainly not vote for Labour again next election. In truth, I may never vote for Labour again. And I am not alone.
As you know, Israel is facing genocide charges at the ICJ. Whether the international court finally judges Israel guilty is largely a question of politics, since the case against them is essentially open and shut. The aim to ethnically cleanse Gaza of its native population has been repeatedly stated and backed up by the relentless aerial bombardment of the largely civilian population of mainly women and children who are forced to flee and then bombed again.
Israel has now been carpet bombing the terrified people of Gaza for over three months. A unremitting murder spree. They are still flattening hospitals, residential blocks, schools, refugee camps, even attacking ambulances, while simultaneously restricting access to food, energy and clean water. The spread of disease is already rife in Gaza. Further restrictions on medicines mean that hundreds of Palestinian children have faced amputations without anaesthesia. In the twenty-first century we can watch this horror show unfold on a daily basis, and yet still nothing is being done to stop it.
Gaza is already a death camp. As I said in my original email to you [read here] a holocaust is taking place. A collective punishment and a ‘burnt offering’ as revenge. This is no exaggeration, just an uncomfortable statement of the facts. Those in power in Israel also candidly say as much and talk about the full clearance of the land – a final solution to their Palestinian problem.
Meanwhile, the US and UK governments are enabling this genocide against the Palestinians whether by votes at the UN, or by arming the IDF and directly offering military support. In consequence, our nation is culpable too. Indeed, the entire western world must bear its share of responsibility for the worst atrocity in living memory (certainly of most people). And Keir Starmer has likewise done nothing at all to end the carnage. Instead, whether through calculated inaction or by his outspoken support for Israel, he too is complicit in this ongoing genocide.
Finally, there is no need to reply to this email. I shall not write again on the subject. In any case, the shame and sadness I feel is well beyond words. Nor can any words express the horrors or the sickness I feel whenever I fully reflect on the plight of the Gazans. Likewise, the underlying dread that what is happening to the Palestinians may come home to us. It is all completely beyond words. So please don’t reply. Just reflect.
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Shahd is currently based in London. After completing her masters with distinction at the School of Oriental and African Studies, she was given a scholarship to do a PhD at Sheffield Hallam University where she became an associate lecturer. However her academic rise soon stalled after she was targeted by a pro-Zionist smear campaign. Just a fortnight later, the university management having capitulated, she was suspended from her post.
The basis for the university action against her? Shahd explains:
“The Jewish Chronicle published two articles, one online and a shorter print version two days later, accusing me of anti-Semitism over a tweet I made in 2012 when I was barely twenty years old. The irrational wave of hate and racism kept flooding my way, despite deleting the tweet, recognizing its unintended offensive content, and clarifying that in my whole life in Gaza’s prison until September 2013, I had never interacted with any Israeli Jew outside the framework of the ongoing wars which cost us horrific human and material loss.”
Click here to read a full statement from the Sheffield Left Labour (SLL), one of the groups that had campaigned in support for Shahd.
Shahd first came to my attention in May 2020, when a 32-year-old autistic Palestinian, Eyad el-Hallaq, was shot dead by Israeli police officers in occupied East Jerusalem. In a call for justice, she had written to her constituency Labour MP, Louise Haigh, and shared her letter with the Sheffield Labour Friends of Palestine (SLFP). With her permission I afterwards republished Shahd’s letter on my blog.
My family’s survivors couldn’t give a goodbye or a proper funeral as Israel’s killing machines have haunted them. My auntie’s son Khalil is the only survivor of his family.
The lifeless bodies of his wife Heba (35) and children Leen (12), Jihad (10) and Sham (5) were pulled from under the rubble after six hours.
Heba, a skilled nurse at the Indonesian hospital, and her children had left their home and sought refuge at the home of another cousin Rana, who is married to Heba’s brother Jawad.
Jawad survived but Rana (40) was killed, alongside two of her five children, the little ones, Mohammed (5) and Naama (7), while the twin girls Jana and Jinan (12) and Husni (10), survived with wounds.
I would like to extend my heartfelt condolences to Shahd and her family who lost 23 relatives killed while asleep in their own homes in Jabalia refugee camp on October 23rd.
The following passages are taken from an article published by Tony Greenstein on January 2nd on his official website.
An Open Letter to Stephen Fry whose ‘Alternative’ Xmas Message on ‘Antisemitism’ Flew in the Face of Everything He Once Stood For
Dear Stephen,
As you are all too aware, ‘anti-Semitism’ is the standard defence, the only defence, that Israel has for its genocide and sadism in Gaza today. ‘Anti-Semitism’ is the stock response to torture, imprisonment and abuse of Palestinian children and the creation of a state which Netanyahu boasts is a state, not for all its citizens but only those who are Jewish.
When I refer to sadism I mean things like Israel’s removal of anaesthetics from aid lorries resulting in over 1,000 Palestinian children having to undergo amputations without anaesthetic. This is what your ‘Alternative’ Xmas Message was condoning.
Fortunately we were privileged to have a genuine Alternative to the Establishment’s Xmas that you delivered and it was by a fellow Jewish comedian, Alexei Sayle.
Alexei had a few choice words for you and it is this that I am pleased to publish. As an aside you mentioned how, as a Gay man attitudes in Britain, especially amongst those you hang out with, have improved immeasurably in the past 25 years. I wonder whether the radicalism that was engendered all those years ago led you to support the Palestinians whereas acceptance by the Establishment of your sexuality has resulted in you turning your back on the oppressed.
Stephen Fry’s Xmas Message on Behalf of the British Establishment:
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As Caitlin Johnson writes concerning the ‘anti-Semitism’ smear against those who oppose Israeli war crimes:
If I saw someone murdering a child, there are many things I might say and do, but the very last thing that would ever occur to me would be to wonder what religion he is. It’s the silliest, most nonsensical narrative in mainstream politics and media today.
Your ‘new’ anti-Semitism has nothing to do with traditional anti-Semitism. Its sole concern is about defending Israel – right or wrong.
Anti-Semitism historically was hostility, prejudice or discrimination against Jews. In 2005 a campaign was launched by Israeli and Zionist academics to redefine anti-Semitism as anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel. The resulting was the IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism, a definition which anti-Semites like Victor Orban of Hungary supports.
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Click here to read Tony Greenstein’s full article including references to the younger Stephen Fry who had in April 2008 signed a letter with 104 other Jews, including Tony Greenstein, headed We’re not celebrating Israel’s anniversary. The letter said:
We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state founded on terrorism, massacres and the dispossession of another people from their land. We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state that even now engages in ethnic cleansing, that violates international law, that is inflicting a monstrous collective punishment on the civilian population of Gaza and that continues to deny to Palestinians their human rights and national aspirations.
We will celebrate when Arab and Jew live as equals in a peaceful Middle East.
The following is based on the press statement published by the Stop Starmer campaign on their official website with additional notes and links included.
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Politics shouldn’t be about personalities.
It should be about principles on how we can build a better society.
But every so often in history, an individual emerges who is a danger to our democracy – someone who lacks any principle, is dishonest about their motives and who will say or do anything in pursuit of power.
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He is the most untrustworthy political leader this country has seen.
When he stood to be Labour Party leader he made 10 pledges. All of them have been shown to be false. How can we tell what Keir Starmer really believes?
Starmer’s views on every political issue change according to what he thinks will help his career: whether it is Brexit, anti-Semitism, the Royal family, foreign policy, austerity, outsourcing of the NHS to private companies, public ownership of utilities, climate change or gender self-identification.
Everything he says or does – including his flag waving and tedious family backstory – has been drawn up by PR companies.
Starmer’s campaign is well resourced and one of his donors (a beneficiary of apartheid in South Africa) has pledged over £5 million.
Starmer is not open to discussion and debate. It’s all PR.
Starmer’s campaign is the most cynical attempt to manipulate our opinion ever undertaken.
Under supervision from Jeffrey Epstein’s friend Lord Peter Mandelson, Starmer has won the support of media barons and faces hardly any scrutiny from press and TV.
But there is one thing we do know: he is against free speech; and eager for investigative journalist Julian Assange to be deported. He is also in favour of controls of what people can say online. And he has silenced people within his own party by perpetuating false claims of anti-Semitism:
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As Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) from 2008–13, Keir Starmer was in charge when the body was overseeing Julian Assange’s proposed extradition to Sweden to face questioning over subsequently retracted sexual assault allegations.
US records show Starmer met with Attorney General Eric Holder and a host of American and British national security officials in Washington in 2011. However, as former Financial Times journalist Matt Kennard revealed for Declassified, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), England and Wales’ public prosecutor, has deleted all records of its former head Keir Starmer’s trips to the US.
Musician and political activist Lowkey recently spoke to Matt Kennard about his investigations of Labour leader Keir Starmer for Mint Press News:
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As journalist Peter Oborne also revealed in his own concise analysis (embedded below), as a political leader Keir Starmer enjoys exceptionally close ties to UK intelligence services:
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What would a Keir Starmer government look like? He has said he would rather be at the World Economic Forum in Davos than in Westminster. On foreign policy, he says he will support the US on whatever military action it undertakes.
Once he is in power, we have no idea what he will do as he has never honoured his pledges.
This is why it is a massive mistake for people to think they can trust him or somehow control him if he gets into Number 10.
His chancellor, Rachel Reeves is a former employee of the Bank of England and has backed the bank’s increase in interest rates; his health secretary, Wes Streeting speaks about saving the NHS while receiving money from private health care providers.
Is a Starmer government better than a Conservative government? No, it will be worse. It will be the end of hope.
Most of the media are not challenging Starmer. It’s time we did.
Criticising Starmer is not enough, it’s time to stop him.
Stop Starmer is focused on protecting our democracy. Starmer does not believe in democracy.
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This is not a negative campaign, but one that seeks to stop the rot in politics.
We seek to educate people about the dangers of voting for Starmer’s Labour and to show that grassroots campaigns are stronger than manufactured campaigns designed in London.
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Our campaign includes:
– Leaflets for distribution in every city, town and village in the country.
– Stop Starmer street stalls across the country.
– T-shirts, badges and other material.
– Amplifying social media posts and videos that expose Starmer.
– Confronting Starmer at every opportunity.
– Stop Starmer rallies across the country.
We are 100% reliant on crowdfunding as we do not want sponsorship to compromise our campaign. We also have no allegiance to any political party. Our only aim is to Stop Starmer.
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Click here to visit the Stop Starmer website to add your name in support or simply to find out more.
Double Down News today offered Roger Waters their platform to set the record straight following the continuing media smears and in the aftermath of growing calls from politicians and other public figures demanding the cancellation of upcoming concerts on the European leg of his worldwide tour “This is not a drill”.
There is little point in adding further comments to this story since the facts speak very loudly for themselves and Roger Waters offers his own articulate and sincere rebuttal (with strong language throughout) in the upload embedded below. As he says:
“Why now? Well I know the answer… I can tell you the answer. The Israeli government sees me as an existential threat to their settler colonial racist apartheid regime. That is why now. And they’ve done everything that they can think of to discredit me and try and destroy my career, and if possible destroy me and my family. So that is why: it’s not rocket science. It’s not a mystery that it’s taken the Roger Waters haters to catch up with this piece of work [Pink Floyd’s The Wall] that I wrote and produced and directed 45 years ago.” [from 11:35 mins]
And finally, if you are really unable to distinguish a grotesque parody of Nazism from the glorification of fascism itself then how the hell are you actually sitting in parliament or writing for the Guardian?
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On yesterday’s Not the Andrew Marr Show, presenter Crispin Flintoff spoke to Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi of Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL). They discussed Jamie Driscoll being blocked from standing as a Labour candidate because he hosted a Q&A with Ken Loach as well as the ongoing smear campaign against Roger Waters:
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Additional:
Here is Roger Waters a week ago, explaining to an audience in Frankfurt why he has decided to adjust his act and make “a small but significant gesture” by not wearing the usual leather coat and quasi-Nazi regalia as on other occasions out of consideration for the circumstances and in respect for those attending as well as those protesting outside. The warmth of their appreciation leaves him overcome with emotion:
A different angle at the same event shows protesters first walking up to the stage with an Israeli flag as the music plays. We also hear Roger Waters’ full statement and this unedited footage puts his reaction into fuller context:
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Update:
On the same day, Novara Media released a report on how BBC Newsnight covered the same story:
Here’s the video that got Katie Halper censored, fired, and cancelled by Next Star media, which owns The Hill and Rising, a show she’d been a weekly contributor to for three years:
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Katie Halper thanks Breakthrough News “for making this video and actually being an independent and uncensored media outlet.” @BreakThrough News
In the third and final episode of The Labour Files (released yesterday and embedded below) entitled “The Hierarchy”, Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit discloses how Britain’s Labour Party created in the words of the subsequent Forde Report a “hierarchy of racism” that discriminates against its Black, Asian and Muslim members. Interviews, internal documents and social media messages shared by the most senior staff betray a racist culture where abuse was aimed at their own colleagues, councillors and political leaders.
The Labour Files exposes how a battle for the heart of the UK’s main opposition party led to combating anti-Semitism while creating secret dossiers to suspend Muslim members and shut down local democracy. Labour’s campaign to present a tough image on anti-Semitism while ignoring other forms of discrimination drove many staff to resign. One senior Labour staffer of Asian descent compared working in the Labour offices to be attacked by a racist thug.
Click here to read my earlier post with episodes 1 and 2 embedded.
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Just as Al Jazeera released its final part of The Labour Files, Novara Media’s Aaron Bastani conducted an extended interview with former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn (also embedded below).
Towards the end of their discussion, Aaron Bastani asked how Jeremy Corbyn had felt when he was falsely accused of anti-Semitism. Corbyn replies “disgusting, outrageous and disgraceful. Listen, I’m an anti-racist. That’s my life. That’s always been my life and will always be my life.”
Bastani then asks directly whether he feels the slur of racism “was leveraged by certain interests within the Labour Party in particular?”
Corbyn replies: “people use anything to attack me including that which is outrageous and disgusting. I was the one that clamped down on any racism in the party. Very hard. Clamped down on it with new processes, by investigations. So look, racism has no place. The 99% of Labour Party members are great people with no racist bones in their body whatsoever. People that practice any form of racism; use any racist language [is] not acceptable. Either educate them, which is what [Shami] Chakrabarti’s report said; crucially bringing education – or, if they are serious racists, then you don’t want them in a party at all. Of any sort, be it antisemitic, Islamophobic, anti-black anti-Asian, whatever it happens to be.” [from 57:15 mins]
More specifically, Aaron Bastani then asked whether he thought the Labour Party under Starmer’s leadership has embraced the Forde Report properly. Corbyn replies “No, they haven’t. Nobody seems to have embraced it properly within the ruling group in the Labour Party… they’ve had a discussion about it. I believe were they going to have a further discussion at conference. But I think the Forde Report is interesting. I don’t accept it all. Nobody would accept all of everything [in it], but I think the general tenor of the report indicates exactly what I was up against, and what was going on within the party…
“They commissioned it and promised it would be out in a short marching time and it took two years to come out, and it finally came out, and now has been discussed and analysed. I want action taken on it… against those people that did what they did over Ergon House, for example, during the 2017 election. I knew absolutely nothing about that whatsoever… Nobody thought fit to tell me, or any of my team. The whole thing was done as an act of subterfuge.”
Aaron Bastani then asks, “Did you not have an inkling of how they were referring to the [2017 Labour general election election] campaign?”
Corbyn replies: “I knew of the criticisms of people were making of the direction in which the campaign was taken and being run. Ian Lavery knew that. John McDonnell knew that. John Trickett knew that. And we obviously tried to push back against it. But remember, I had only been re-elected leader of the Labour Party in September 2016. The general election came, the announced of it was in April 2017; not that long later.
“When that leaked report came out, what shocked me was the racist remarks made against Diane Abbott, against Dawn Butler, and a number of other black women, particularly black women, that was made in those conversations that were released. Utterly disgusting and outrageous stuff. And so, the Afrophobia issue in the party is there as well… it’s got to be taken seriously and that’s why we’re holding this event at conference.” [from 59:30 mins]
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Earlier in the interview, Corbyn was asked “having been leader of the opposition did your view of say liberal media, the BBC, the Guardian diminish as a result of your experience?” Corbyn answered: “Totally, because there was more unsourced attacks on me from the Guardian and the BBC than anywhere else.” [from 42:15 mins]
The discussion then moved on to Corbyn’s disclosure of documents during the 2019 general election relating to the privatisation and future selloff of the NHS with Boris Johnson and Theresa May jointly involved in secret talks held with the Americans: “You showed the documents and much the media subsequently claimed you’re doing the Russians work for them [when] you were breaking a really important scoop: a story of huge public interest, which is about the national health system in this country and the British media totally failed to report it.”
Jeremy Corbyn replies: “Within half an hour of me revealing those documents… at a press event we put on and we had NHS workers with them at the time, and we gave copies of the documents – we copied the whole lot and handed it to a whole series of journalists who were there. Within a very short time I was accused of being a stooge of Putin spreading Russian propaganda about the future of our NHS. For the life of me I can’t understand how on Earth the Russians would be interested one way or the other in that… they didn’t challenge Johnson but they challenged me. That’s the pathetic nature of some of our so-called investigative journalists.” [from 46:20 mins]
Following on, Aaron Bastani asks more directly: How bad is the media in this country?”
To which Corbyn replies, “I think we live in a Fool’s Paradise [believing] that we have a genuinely free and effective media in this country. We have a media that spends less and less time on investigative work, more and more time on praise of celebrity and wealth and personal achievement; rather than on the ills of society as a whole. And I don’t think it’s a particularly informative media. I think what we need is a much stronger independent media: genuinely independent. And also to recognise that the whole business has changed into Facebook, etc, which actually are the main source of news for people, so we have to look at the manipulation that goes with all of that and the algorithms…
You get on a bus in the morning anywhere in the country: what are people doing? Scrolling through their phone; reading the news they think they want to read. They’re actually being told what to read by an algorithm that’s worked out what they like, or what they don’t like, or what their prejudices are. And so often much of our media is self-serving to preserve the views or prejudices we’ve already got.” [from 48:45 mins]
“If a small group of secretive people manipulate and control one of the two great parties in Great Britain. What will they do when they have control of MI5; when they have control of all the levers of the state; are they suddenly going to believe in Justice, in proper investigations, and fairness; or they’re going to be the same as they are now or even worse? [from the start]
“So we have no democracy. If you have an inner core six eight or ten people nationally with their tentacles spreading out to various regions, saying who can be a candidate, saying who can be a member, then you control the body politic of one of the major parties in this country. And I found that it’s undemocratic. Basically, it’s a coup by a group of people to take over one of the major political parties in Britain.” [from 23:25 mins]
— Paul Davies, former vice-chair of the Wallasey Constituency Labour Party (CLP)
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“The Labour Party now welcomes apartheid supporting racists and abusers of women and how that could possibly have happened is beyond me.” [from 1:07:30 mins]
— Anne Mitchell, former executive committee member of the Hove CLP
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“The Labour Party is a criminal conspiracy against its members. It acts unlawfully. It libels its members. It gives no natural justice to those accused of offences and it tears up the rule book, the constitution, on a whim.” [from 1:11:35 mins]
— Greg Hadfield, former secretary of the Brighton & Hove Labour Party
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“It’s no secret that quite a lot of papers had it in for Corbyn. They were open. They wanted to hear that Corbyn was a thug; or his supporters were thugs; and so they didn’t probably investigate these claims with the professionalism which we – I’m including myself in this – should have done… [from 5:05 mins]
“I think the British media has a lot to answer for including me. I remember reading this and thinking, ‘yeah, well that’s you know some of the Corbyn supporters are a rotten lot.’ The media should have done what the media is supposed to do, which is the question the official versions of the truth, or the Labour Party version of the truth, and answered: is it really what was really going on?” [17:40 mins]
— Peter Oborne, former chief political commentator of The Daily Telegraph
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The Labour Files is an Al Jazeera investigation series based on the largest leak of documents in British political history. It discloses how smear campaigns directed from the highest levels within the party were used to destroy the chances of Jeremy Corbyn becoming Britain’s prime minister. How candidates for key political roles were blocked and constituency groups suspended as the party’s central office sought to control the elected leadership.
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This latest Al Jazeera series examines thousands of internal documents, emails and social media messages that reveal how senior officials in one of the two parties of government in the UK ran a coup by stealth against the elected leader of the party.
The first part (embedded above) begins with Wallasey MP Angela Eagle’s decision to challenge Jeremy Corbyn to a second leadership contest in the immediate aftermath of the infamous “chicken coup” in which Labour MPs succeeded in amassing a vote of no confidence to topple Corbyn. The documentary discloses that behind the scenes Labour HQ officials then immediately set about silencing, excluding and expelling Labour members in a ruthless campaign to undermine and ultimately suspend the Wallasey CLP.
Following their successes in Wallasey, provably fabricated allegations were next levelled against a pro-Corbyn group within Brighton CLP as part of this coordinated smear campaign. In spite of evidence disproving the original claims of aggression (specifically of spitting), the Labour Party National Executive Committee (NEC) finally took the decision to suspend the Brighton, Hove and District Labour party, and to annul the results of the pro-Corbyn AGM elections.
Also in the crosshairs were the pro-Corbyn members of the Harrow West CLP after they arranged a private meeting in order to urgently discuss the fallout from “chicken coup” and the role played by their constituency MP Gareth Thomas who backed the coup by resigning from the shadow cabinet (the local branch of my own constituency did likewise for similar reasons). Councillor Pamela Fitzpatrick who attended that meeting was afterwards singled out and falsely accused in a disciplinary process the branch chair subsequently compared to methods used to suspend Soviet spies writing: “actions were done in a Draconian and secretive way which owed more to the style of the KGB than the Labour Party.”
Files reveal that Gareth Thomas MP was then directly involved in calling for the suspension of pro-Corbyn activists including Cllr Fitzpatrick, writing to the party’s General Secretary Iain McNicol “I am concerned that the party has decided to rescind their suspensions and allow them to continue their infiltration activities into Harrow West.” Back in Brighton, Peter Kyle MP for Hove was likewise involved in calling for the suspension of constituency member Rebecca Massey. Calls for her suspension were soon echoed by former Labour MP Ivor Caplin after Massey had been elected to chair the CLP. Attention was drawn to Rebecca Massey’s pro-Palestinian tweets that were then alleged to be evidence of antisemitism. This marked the first instance of the weaponisation of antisemitism in a smear campaign that would go on to significantly undermine Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership – a strategy that is carefully documented in a 2017 Al Jazeera investigative documentary series The Lobby. (Click here to read an extended article about the series with the episodes embedded.)
With the broadcast of The Lobby it was revealed that a former employee of the Israeli Embassy, Ella Rose, who worked with disgraced Israel operative Shai Masot, went on to become leader of Jewish Labour Movement (JLM). She was caught on film smugly discussing how ruthlessly she treats political opponents including Jewish party members. Specifically, she is recorded discussing how she wanted to deal with Jackie Walker saying how “I can take her” and how all pro-Corbyn activists can “go die in a hole.” On the basis of this evidence, Jewish Labour member Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi (recently elected on to the Labour NEC) joined others to write an official letter of complaint to Iain McNicol.
The Labour files reveal, however, that party officials treated Ella Rose’s case markedly differently to other Labour members who had been through discipline procedures. Following an informal chat at Labour HQ, the decision was quickly taken behind closed doors that no further action would be taken on the matter. Presented with the evidence of the case, Peter Oborne says, “It looks like an example of abuse and the sort of thing that ought to have gone to the NEC.” Adding: “it looks like there’s a set of double standards going on here. That Ella Rose is being treated in a different way, more friendly way, after abusive behaviour, which she acknowledges, than people in Brighton and in Wallasey.”
Another Labour member, Luke Stanger, who is also a member of Sussex Friends of Israel, has a historic record of aggression and intimidation against fellow Labour members including obnoxious tweets and harassment of pro-Palestinian activists on protests. Stanger has been suspended after multiple complaints of abuse were made against him. From the Labour files, it now transpires however, that correspondence purportedly written by Luke Stanger in his own defence was in fact authored by recently elected NEC member Luke Akehurst and a director of the campaign group We Believe in Israel.
Stanger, who is on the campaign team for Peter Kyle, Labour MP for Hove, is currently seeking to overturn his suspension. To these ends he is represented by an expensive City of London law firm and enjoys widespread support from senior politicians on the right of the party including 14 Labour MPs who have submitted character references. Gareth Thomas, Labour MP for Harrow West, writes: “I was very sad to hear of Luke’s recent suspension from the Labour Party. I hope his case can be concluded soon and he can continue to be a good friend to Harrow Labour in future years to come.” In response, former councillor Pamela Fitzpatrick says, “I think that people are actually quite dangerous, who are in with the Labour Party. The way that they’re behaving, it’s quite astonishing really.”
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Update:
In Part 2 of The Labour Files subtitled The Crisis, released today [Sunday 25th] and embedded below, Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit uncovers the true story behind the “crisis of anti-Semitism” that engulfed the British Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn. How it made him appear unfit to govern and led to a crushing electoral defeat.
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An analysis of internal party documents, social media data and covert recordings reveals how senior Labour officials used the party’s procedures to undermine support for Jeremy Corbyn and to silence debate about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. The files also show how pro-Israel groups ask the party to distance itself from the Boycott Divest and Sanctions campaign, a protest movement that seeks to end Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands, and how – in response – the Jewish Board of Deputies was assured that Labour would “never accept attempts to exceptionalise and deligitimise Israel.”
wall of controversy 