Tag Archives: Jewish

Labour faces legal action over alleged mistreatment of Jews

Keir Starmer: too much support for Israel and not enough for Jews?

A group of Jewish Labour Party members is calling on Keir Starmer to make amends for what they describe as “discriminatory treatment”.

Here‘s Jewish Voice for Labour:

Labour leader Keir Starmer is facing calls to acknowledge and make amends for discriminatory treatment of Jewish party members.

A legal letter to the party from Bindmans LLP on behalf of Jewish Voice for Labour sets out compelling evidence that Jews who disagree with the current leadership about Israel, Palestine, Zionism and antisemitism suffer disproportionately from the Party’s harsh disciplinary regime. Jewish members are 6 times more likely to be investigated and 9.5 times more likely to be expelled from the Labour Party for antisemitism than non-Jewish members (see Annex B).

The letter, copied to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, says the Party has failed to understand the diversity of opinion among British Jews and misconstrued criticism of Israel as antisemitism, illegitimately restricting the free expression of Jewish views on Israel and on Zionism. Associated restrictions on the rights of ­all party members are contrary to Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and to the Party’s own rules.

Such practices undermine the Party’s commitment to eliminating antisemitism and are in conflict with Labour’s history as the party that pioneered laws against racial discrimination such as the Race Relations Acts of 1965, 1968 and 1976 and the Equality Acts of 2006 and 2010.

The letter notes the exclusion of non-Zionist Jews from consultation on and implementation of Labour’s complaints and disciplinary procedures, as referenced by Martin Forde KC in his report (pp. 110-12) on these matters.

The letter invites the Party to acknowledge that it: “is in breach of the Equality Act 2010 by discriminating unlawfully against its Jewish members and unlawfully harassing them in (a) the manner in which it investigates complaints made against them and (b) its failure to investigate complaints made by them.”

Details are summarised in a new update to the ongoing Crowd Justice appeal set up by Labour Activists 4 Justice.

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Lies that won’t die: Look who’s afraid of this former Labour candidate winning for the Greens!

Jo Bird: Bigoted witch-hunters are again conducting a hate campaign to sabotage her chances of winning a Parliamentary seat from Labour – but the facts are against them.

A woman who was unfairly expelled from the Labour Party while she was running for election to its ruling NEC is to stand as the Green Party’s candidate for Birkenhead in the next general election – and the false accusations against her have suddenly re-emerged.

Somebody must be terrified that Jo Bird will take the seat!

Ms Bird was originally suspended by Labour – for just nine days – after making a self-deprecating remark that their should be “Jew process” when considering allegations of anti-Semitism against party members.

She was suspended again when she was running for election to Labour’s ruling body, the NEC.

Much was made of this at the time, including by the Jewish Chronicle. Ms Bird complained to press regulator IPSO about inaccuracies in its article, and the eventual finding came back in her favour.

But we live in an age of despicable lies that won’t die – and, now that she has been announced as the Green Party’s Birkenhead candidate, they have resurfaced – to derision from those of us who know the facts:

Fortunately she has plenty of support. This is just one example:

We know why this is happening: the Green Party is in an excellent position to take Birkenhead from Labour right-winger Alison McGovern*, so Labour is wheeling out its old, false, accusations against that party’s candidate.

This is politics of the dirtiest kind. If you live in Birkenhead and you were thinking of Labour before, think again now.

*McGovern beat left-wing candidate Mick Whitley in a selection contest after boundary changes:

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Press regulator urged to act after continued failings in Jewish Chronicle reports

The press regulator has been – again – asked to launch a standards investigation over continued “serious and systemic” editorial problems causing “egregious” malpractice at the Jewish Chronicle.

IPSO has been contacted by 15 victims of inaccurate reporting by the newspaper – including This Writer – after eight further breaches of the editors’ code of conduct were made by the Jewish Chronicle following the regulator’s decision not to launch a standards investigation over an initial 33 such breaches and four admissions of libel.

In our letter, which is also signed by such famously-wronged individuals as Jo Bird, Audrey White and Marc Wadsworth, we say: “This was in our view a shocking level of non-compliance, equivalent to one breach in every four issues published over the period, yet the IPSO Board considered two training sessions to be sufficient remedy. For context, this would be the equivalent of a daily newspaper breaching the Code 91 times in one year.

“We found the decision of the IPSO board not to order such an investigation in December 2021 disappointing and based on spurious reasoning.

“Your letter of 23 December 2021 explained that your refusal was in part because of a ‘change of ownership’ in 2020, and ‘new editorial leadership’ in 2021. As you are no doubt aware, that change of ownership appears to have been driven by financial losses largely occasioned by libel payouts resulting from poor journalism. The change of editor in fact took place when its editor of 13 years resigned only 72 hours before IPSO’s meeting to discuss this issue on 14 December 2021.

“We read in the recent review of IPSO by Sir Bill Jeffrey that, in February of this year, IPSO declared that ‘sufficient improvements had occurred in both complaints handling and editorial standards to allow the cessation of active monitoring of standards’ at the Jewish Chronicle. This conclusion is surprising to us given that, between December 2021 and the publication of that report, IPSO had upheld three further complaints against the Jewish Chronicle and
the paper had also (to our knowledge) been obliged to take down one further article.

“Only two months after the IPSO board decided to take no further action against the Jewish Chronicle, and three weeks before the publication of Sir Bill Jeffrey’s report, yet another complaint against that publication was upheld, involving three separate breaches of the code of conduct and a finding that it had behaved unacceptably.

“To quote paragraph 19 of that adjudication: ‘The committee expressed significant concerns about the newspaper’s conduct prior to the publication and the absence of a published apology as part of the remedial action which had been taken. The committee considered that the publication’s conduct was unacceptable, and their concerns were drawn to the attention of IPSO’s standards department.’”

We wrote: “We hope that IPSO will now recognise that the mere provision of training failed to resolve the serious and systemic journalistic and editorial problems at the Jewish Chronicle. Sir Bill Jeffrey wrote that an IPSO standards investigation is only likely to happen if malpractice is egregious and comes out of the blue or if ‘IPSO conclude that their engagement is getting nowhere and a stronger response is needed’. It is surely obvious now that IPSO is getting nowhere with the Jewish Chronicle and that a stronger response is needed.

“The Jewish Chronicle shows no signs whatsoever of improvement. Every one of the post-2021 adjudications includes reference to one or more of ‘significant inaccuracy’, ‘significantly misleading’ reporting, and ‘unacceptable’ conduct. If this continuing record of journalistic failure and malpractice does not amount to a ‘serious and systemic’ breach of IPSO’s code of conduct, we would welcome your comments and clear explanation of what exactly would be required to amount to such a breach.

“We urge you to recommend a standards investigation to your board, and to do so urgently – in weeks rather than months – before more bad journalism is published, more falsehoods are disseminated among readers and more harm is done to innocent people.”

My upheld complaint that the Jewish Chronicle had falsely stated that I had made “antisemitic” comments is the first item on the list of that organisation’s breaches.

A series of articles against Audrey White had falsely alleged that she had lied in order to be readmitted to the Labour Party when Jeremy Corbyn became leader, after having been expelled in the 1980s (all untrue); that she had received multiple warnings about bullying other party members (she had not); that she had falsely claimed to have complained to the police about a Labour councillor and a disabled pensioner (it was not a false claim); and that she had been a member of the Socialist Party (she had not).

The newspaper had to publish an apology to Marc Wadsworth after, in its own words, “We reported that Marc Wadsworth had spoken at the launch event for the ‘Labour in Exile Network’ (LIEN), a group that aimed to discover the addresses of Jewish Labour activists to “take care” of them, and that he was thereby complicit in a conspiracy to intimidate, threaten or harass Jewish activists into silence. We also suggested that there were reasonable grounds to suspect that such activities were criminal.” None of this was true.

It also had to publish a correction after stating that Jo Bird’s Labour membership had been suspended for a third time.

The letter has been sent to Lord Faulks, IPSO’s current chairman, and we await his response.

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Jewish representative group stands up for Ken Loach

Ken Loach: he has been maligned with false allegations by a group that claims to represent all Jews in the Labour Party – but doesn’t.

How shaming for the Jewish Labour Movement, whose members don’t have to be either Jewish or Labour Party members, to be undermined by an organisation in which members must be both.

The JLM wrote to MPs and councillors in northeast England, trying to drum up sentiment against North of Tyne Mayor Jamie Driscoll, and support for the decision to leave him off the long list of candidates for the new North East Mayoralty.

The reason for this exhortation? Mr Driscoll and Mr Loach once attended an event and shared a platform together. By the same token, Keir Starmer should be barred from seeking re-election, having shared a Question Time panel with Mr Loach.

The celebrated British movie director has been expelled from Labour – but nobody seems to know the reason. Claims of anti-Semitism have been demonstrated to be false, so the party is unable to use them.

And now Jewish Voice for Labour has also written to MPs and councillors in northeast England, offering a more balanced perspective than that of the JLM.

But read it for yourself. The organisation’s letter states:

We are saddened and angry at the Jewish Labour Movement’s letter sent to MPs and Councillors in northeast England about the mayoral candidates’ selection process in the region. The JLM has no right to claim that it represents all Jews in the Labour Party and our organisation, Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL), was set up precisely because it did not.

We note Martin Forde KC’s comment that antisemitism has been weaponised in the Labour Party and used in factional disputes.

The decision to deprive Party members in the North East of the opportunity to consider Jamie Driscoll as a candidate for the forthcoming Mayoral election, with no reason given and no right of appeal, is anti-democratic. It is the very opposite of “defending the integrity of our party” as JLM suggests.

The JLM and others have loudly denounced Driscoll for sharing a platform with Ken Loach on the grounds that he had been expelled by the Party, insinuating that the expulsion was for antisemitism, recycling a catalogue of old allegations against him. Driscoll’s alleged crime was to have taken part with Loach in a discussion about his three latest films. Not only does this take “guilt by association” to an absurd level. It also accepts without challenge a ragbag of allegations against Loach. This conforms to the repeated pattern of attacks on vociferous supporters or Palestinian rights which appear designed to silence them.

Ken Loach is a man known across the globe for an unparalleled body of radical, campaigning work in film over more than half a century.

Instead of looking into this background, those attacking Ken Loach have presented the passionately held opinions of this committed, lifelong antiracist as if they were expressions of antisemitism.

JVL has provided short responses to each of the allegations against one of the UK’s most prestigious film makers, which can be found in this article (from which the above is extracted): In Support of Ken Loach, Free Speech and Democracy | Jewish Voice for Labour

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Jewish Labour chief called out over false claims about Keir Starmer and racism

Mike Katz is a fine one to criticise others about the way they handle “cranks”, “racists” and “extremists”.

When he was vice-chair of the Jewish Labour Movement (a misnomer as you don’t have to be either Jewish or in the Labour Party to be a member), he ran a “training” session on anti-Semitism at a Labour conference that deliberately linked criticism of the policies of the Israeli government with anti-Semitism.

At that same session – billed as a “safe space” for attendees to discuss their understanding of anti-Semitism without fear of criticism – people speaking up were recorded. One of this recordings was then leaked to the press, to tar then-Momentum vice-chair Jackie Walker as an anti-Semite.

She had criticised the definitiion of anti-Semitism that Katz had put forward.

After Katz became chair of the organisation, the Jewish Labour Movement has run at least one more training session on anti-Semitism (in 2021). Before it happened, Ms Walker commented: “Undertaking AS training led by the JLM? Ask for assurance you won’t be filmed, reported to the Party or the media.”

Katz was also among those who accused then-Labour MP Chris Williamson of anti-Semitism after he made a speech in which he said the party had been “too apologetic” over the mere accusation of anti-Semtism.

Mr Williamson’s point had been that the party should have collected evidence and made a decision on whether any anti-Semitism had taken place, rather than automatically apologising as if it had, without any evidence at all.

Katz suggested that a decision to reinstate Mr Williamson’s Labour membership after he had been suspended for making the statements was because he represented a marginal constituency and there might be a snap election (this was in 2019).

He was quoted as follows: “It’s good to know that a party of anti-racists, led by an avowed anti-racist decides it’s OK to ignore anti-Jewish racism if there’s a vote to be won.”

But of course there was no anti-Jewish racism in what Mr Williamson had said.

And when Ken Loach announced that he had been expelled from Labour in 2021, for refusing to disown people who had already been expelled under false pretences, Katz accused him of “Holocaust inversion; tropes about a lobby controlling media & politics; claims Jews exploit the Holocaust for political ends.” None of these were in Mr Loach’s statement as reported in The Guardian (Katz’s source).

Katz has also attacked Jeremy Corbyn after The Guardian ran an editorial in support of him. In a letter to that paper, he claimed: “Your assertion that he had “a formidable record fighting against racism” will elicit a hollow laugh from the many Jewish Labour Movement members who suffered racist bullying and harassment – let alone the Jewish MPs hounded out of the party – all under his watch.

“His reluctance to show any remorse and his continual denial and downplaying of the problem makes him the author of his own demise and negates any claim he can make to actually being anti-racist.”

Jeremy Corbyn has been, and remains, probably the most committed anti-racist in Parliament, with a formidable record of support for those suffering racism that spans more than 40 years:

How pleasant it is, then, to see Katz’s latest attempt to spread falsehoods about anti-Semitism and racism trashed by members of the public!

On Twitter yesterday (May 19), he published the tweet you see at the top of this article, in which he praises comments made at last week’s National Conservatives conference.

“Keir Starmer has stood up to the cranks and racists in Labour. Rishi Sunak is happy to indulge the extremists in his party,” he tweeted.

Referring to a link in the tweet, he added: “Me for @timesredbox today on the lessons Sunak should learn from this week’s National Conservatism conference.”

Perhaps it would be best to skirt around the issues raised by a man claiming to support Jewish people endorsing comments made by the organisation This Writer describes as the Nat-Cs (think about it).

But his comments about what Keir Starmer has done are certainly fair game – especially considering his own poor record as described above – and Twitter now provides what it describes as “context” added by readers, that absolutely shreds Katz’s credibility.

“Labour’s own Forde Report details how anti-black and anti-GRT racism, and Islamophobia have been allowed to flourish unchecked within the party,” states one such addition.

The other seals it by pointing out: “Labour have not engaged with Martin Forde KC about the report.”

So not only has Katz allied himself with people who might as well call themselves fascists, but he has done it for the sake of a very large falsehood. This Writer thinks he should apologise and resign his position at the JLM. Does anybody agree?

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Wimborne-Idrissi expulsion shows Starmer’s contempt for democracy

Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi with Mick Lynch, general secretary of the RMT Union, who is currently doing sterling work countering the anti-strike rhetoric being pushed by the UK’s right-wing national media: you can see why the current Labour leadership would want to remove her.

Keir Starmer’s right-wing ‘Labour’ Party has expelled the only elected Jewish member of its National Executive Committee in an act that shows contempt for internal party democracy and has been described as anti-Semitic.

In an act of psychological warfare that is typical of the Labour Party under its current administration, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi was only informed of her expulsion after it had been leaked to a client journalist who tweeted it out to the public… on her birthday.

One really has to wonder at the sick, psychotic mindset of people who deliberately time these blows against a person’s reputation and self-esteem to take place at moments when they would normally be celebrating.

Ms Wimborne-Idrissi’s party membership was suspended shortly after she was elected to the party’s ruling National Executive Committee – in another move with suspicious timing, that happened right before Labour held its 2022 party conference.

It came amid a series of smears by right-wing organisations within the party like the Jewish Labour Movement, which claimed she denied the “scale and severity” of anti-Semitism within the party.

Well, this expulsion clearly shows active discrimination by colleagues of these right wingers against Jewish members, proving anti-Semitism is alive, thriving and actively encouraged in Keir Starmer’s Labour.

But I doubt that those who have been howling about it have any interest in punishing the real culprits.

The charge on which Ms Wimborne-Idrissi was expelled was one of association with now-proscribed groups that weren’t proscribed at the time – and, according to Skwawkbox, “the party spread false claims that she had associated with one after expulsion, when in fact she had merely attended a separate one-off event with a similar name”.

She has announced that she intends to appeal the expulsion in the following Twitter thread, explaining also its circumstances:

This Writer is reminded of my own brush with Labour’s disciplinary procedures, in which false claims about me were leaked to Gabriel Pogrund of The Sunday Times. That newspaper – and others including the Jewish Chronicle – were later forced to retract and correct their statements after I made a formal complaint to the regulator IPSO.

I was still expelled from the Labour Party, but a lawsuit I took out against the party later revealed that the breach of its rules for which I was removed was nothing to do with anti-Semitism (as had been widely touted) but was in fact for accurately reporting on subjects that the right wing of the party wanted to keep quiet.

“It disenfranchises thousands of members who voted to put me on the NEC.”

There you have it in a nutshell.

Labour’s decision to expel Jewish members is unreasonable, anti-Semitic, and anti-democratic.

Background information is available in Vox Political articles:

here

and here.

 

Jewish NEC member suspended by Labour on eve of party conference

Suspended: Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi with the RMT Union’s Mick Lynch.

This is unfortunate timing – for the Labour Party.

It has suspended Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, recently elected to the party’s National Executive Committee, on suspicion of having broken party rules nearly a year ago.

Why wait so long – until a significant event in the party calendar – if it’s a serious allegation? Doesn’t this correspond with the claims in the Al Jazeera documentary series The Labour Files about the party’s factional use of the disciplinary system?

Members of Jewish Voice for Labour, for whom Ms Wimborne-Idrissi is media officer, seem to think so:

This suspension along with a flurry of other eve of conference expulsions and suspensions bears out the evidence presented in the Forde  Report and the Al Jazeera programme, The Labour Files: The Purge, about the Party’s factional abuse of the disciplinary system.

Furthermore, the notion that the Action Plan, introduced in response to the EHRC investigation, has solved all problems has been shown to be travesty.

On Thursday afternoon Naomi received a Notice of Allegation and Administrative Suspension which charged her with having “spoken at an event run by proscribed organisations”. That event took place almost a year ago at the 2021 party conference. Why has this moment been chosen to suspend her from membership?

Naomi’s NEC candidature was backed by 13 different groups and many individuals who came together to campaign for the #Grassroots5 slate. Other members who have been charged with the same offence have not been suspended pending investigation. Why has Naomi been singled out for suspension? This action and its timing seem calculated to prevent her taking up her role as an NEC member representing constituency party members at the NEC AGM scheduled for Tuesday Sept 27.

We note that extraordinary numbers of other members, included elected CLP delegates, have been suspended or expelled just in time to prevent their participation in conference.

Naomi and JVL have campaigned powerfully and consistently against the misuse of allegations of antisemitism against the pro-Palestinian left. Naomi is the only directly elected Jewish member on the NEC. Approaching 60 Jewish party members have been investigated for “antisemitism”. Many Jewish members have resigned feeling that Labour is an unsafe place for non-Zionists.

How does this disproportionate targeting of Jews fit in with Keir Starmer’s talk of ‘”tearing out antisemitism”?

Could there be another factor in this carefully planned timing? Naomi’s suspension came hours before the airing of the first in a series of #LabourFiles documentary programmes revealing the extent to which staff and politicians on the right of the party worked behind the scenes to undermine and defeat those on the left. Programme Two on Saturday 24 September will include evidence of the abuse experienced by “the wrong sort of Jews”.

We deplore the misuse of disciplinary procedures to purge the party of left-wing activists who have always represented a strong strand in Labour.

We call for

  • the immediate lifting of Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi’s suspension
  • an end to the arbitrary and factional interventions by the party apparatus
  • implementation of the recommendations in the Forde Report including effective action against the racism and Islamophobia exposed so graphically
  • the restoration of the whip to Jeremy Corbyn.
  • Conference to review all decisions to ban proscribed groups.

Of course, there has been a fuss on the social media. Here’s Ms Wimborne-Idrissi herself:

And others have also chimed in:

That last tweet is pretty damning all by itself!

Expect absolutely no comment from Keir Starmer’s Labour and no effort to offer justice to all the Jewish people his party has wronged.

Source: On the suspension of Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi | Jewish Voice for Labour

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Jewish Voice for Labour’s Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi elected to Labour’s NEC

Elected: Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi

A co-founder of the much-maligned organisation for Jewish people in the Labour Party, Jewish Voice for Labour, has been elected to the party’s National Executive Committee.

Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi’s achievement is all the more remarkable because she had once been suspended from the party altogether, for allegedly supporting claims that accusations of anti-Semitism had been “weaponised”.

Here’s JVL’s press release:

We are delighted that our Media Officer, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, has been elected to Labour’s National Executive Committee.

Naomi stood on the GrassRoots5 slate, backed by 13 left organisations including JVL. We congratulate the three other members of the slate, Jess Barnard, Gemma Bolton and Yasmine Dar on their election, but regret that Mish Rahman sadly didn’t get re-elected. We thank everyone who voted for the GrassRoots5. The coalition of 13 groups worked very well together and we hope there is scope for more collaboration in the future.

Naomi’s phenomenal campaigning activities, focusing on the issues facing working class people, and her solid support for striking workers, filled social media with energy and enthusiasm. JVL’s reputation for defending members’ rights and for opposing all forms of racism will also have been a factor in her favour for many of those members who have not been expelled or suspended or left in despair.

The hard work begins now. Naomi and her CLP and trade union comrades on the NEC will have a fight on their hands defending the left wing policies that had won so much support. As she argued throughout the campaign, radical measures are needed to end the cost of living crisis and defend workers’ rights and living standards. There’s also a job of work to be done to resist the divisions that are being propagated by the Tories and, regrettably, by some amongst the Leadership of the Labour Party. That will mean continuing to make the case for a democratic party that values its members and respects their right to freedom of expression.

And here’s a video clip in which she discusses herself and her views:

Source: Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi is elected to Labour’s NEC | Jewish Voice for Labour

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No rule for them: #NeilCoyle avoids #antisemitism inquiry – because he’s #KeirStarmer’s crony?

Neil Coyle: why is Keir Starmer’s Labour bureaucracy protecting him from an anti-Semitism complaint? Isn’t the party supposed to be tough on Jew-haters nowadays?

Far-right Labour MP Neil Coyle is (apparently) not being investigated for anti-Semitism – despite complaints from prominent Jewish members of the community.

The complaint arises from a tweet Coyle posted about the main organisation of left-wing Jews in the party, Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL).

The Bermondsey and Old Southwark MP said JVL members were “outright Communists who have their own political party/ies they can ruin”.

Accusing Jews of Communism is a long-standing anti-Semitic trope, often paired with the phrase ‘Judaeo-Bolshevism’ or the far-right crypto-version ‘cultural Marxism’.

Sir Geoffrey Bindman QC, Oxford Professor Avi Shlaim and solicitor Harold Immanuel – all Jews – wrote to Labour leader Keir Starmer.

Their complaint, sent in July last year, accused Coyle of ‘outrageous hate speech’ and said it was a clear breach of Labour rules against comments that ‘might reasonably be seen to demonstrate hostility or prejudice based on race, religion or belief’ meriting the ‘severest censure’: Expulsion from the Labour Party.

The only response was auto-acknowledgement and a promise that, if they were victims, investigators would maintain contact as the case progressed.

A request for an update in October was greeted merely with auto-acknowledgement.

Meanwhile Skwawkbox, reporting on the complaint, has demonstrated the apparent double-standard being operated by Labour:

Labour has or is conducting at least 46 investigations against left-wing Jews accused of antisemitism by the right for their defence of Palestinians and their comments on the conduct of Israel. It does not appear to be conducting even one against Neil Coyle – and according to the three complainants, Keir Starmer has completely ignored a request to do so, even though it came from one of the country’s leading lawyers whom he knows personally.

Labour’s activities against left-wing Jewish members are accelerating. While last year a JVL committee member was a staggering 224 times more likely to be targeted for investigation than a non-Jewish member, the latest data show that this has risen to almost 300 times.

This episode demonstrates that Starmer seems to share Boris Johnson’s apparent belief that rules for the general public (or, in this case, Labour Party members) don’t apply to him or his cronies.

It seems clear that he thinks it’s one rule for JVL members – and no rules at all for Neil Coyle.

Source: Exclusive: Starmer ignored antisemitism complaints vs Coyle by prominent Jews incl knighted barrister and professor – SKWAWKBOX

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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#Amnesty falsely labelled #antisemitic over report on #IsraeliApartheid

Israeli apartheid: this barrier separates Israelis from Palestinians, who are treated as a lower class of human being by the government of Israel.

There is no way that Amnesty International is an anti-Semitic organisation. It simply is not possible when one considers the composition and purpose of that organisation.

The world’s largest human rights organisation, it has just published a report labelling Israel as an apartheid nation and demanding change:

You can read the full report by following the link at the bottom of this article. It is sensible and balanced.

But when UK-based organisations that claim to represent British Jews caught sight of it, they made fools of themselves by denouncing Amnesty:

The joint statement says:

“The report is completely biased and applies standards to Israel that are not applied to any other country.”

A lie.

“The emotive term “apartheid” against Israel is a preposterous slur.”

Another lie. Israeli apartheid is well-documented – not least in the Amnesty video that appears above.

“Despite AI UK’s claim to recognise the Jewish claim to self-determination… it does not support that right.”

A lie. Amnesty does not suggest that Jews should not have that right.

“It chooses to focus on demonising the one Jewish state, holding it to clear double standards.”

A lie. Amnesty’s report attempts to hold Israel to the same standards as any other nation.

“The situation for the Palestinian people is indeed distressing; this will not be alleviated by destroying Israel.”

There is nothing in the Amnesty report that even remotely suggests dismantling Israel.

“This is a bad faith report hostile to the very concept of Israel.”

I think we can all see who is acting in bad faith!

Like all controversial acts, the Amnesty report has attracted detractors (who follow the BoD/JLC attack line) and supporters. Let’s focus on the supporters because they are right:

 

And if it is right to support Amnesty, then it is also right to criticise the BoD and the JLC:

 

The response by the Bod and the JLC has also led to another conclusion:

It’s a fair point, which leads to a further issue: Keir Starmer’s support for apartheid Israel.

We shouldn’t hold our collective breath waiting for a response. Starmer is a coward and will run away from a challenge like this.

While we do wait, we can all read the Amnesty report.

 

Here it is: Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: a cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity – Amnesty International