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Owen Jones goes to the movies – and Israel’s cheerleaders scream

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Owen Jones: he has been slated by Israel’s cheerleaders and warmongers, for expressing views that should be held by all of us.

Last night – November 28 – This Writer was asked by a very young friend (she’s 21) which side I’m on in the Israel/Hamas conflict.

My answer surprised everyone who was there. I said I’m on the side of peace.

They had not considered that as an option. It won me applause all around – in contrast to what happened when a left-wing journalist said the same thing after watching Israel’s film that purportedly shows Hamas atrocities committed during the October 7 attack.

Owen Jones created a YouTube clip describing his feelings, which you can find below. I urge you to watch it before drawing any conclusions about the comments it attracted.

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In it, he says he was invited to a screening of the film, which the Israel Defence Forces specifically stated was intended to drum up support for their onslaught against civilians in the Gaza Strip.

He acknowledges from the start that the film confirms that Hamas committed war crimes (along with members of other groups who crossed the border on the same day, one assumes, although that isn’t actually made clear in the clip). He makes it clear that the taking of hostages is itself a grave war crime. It should be emphasised that he does not attempt to hide or minimise the fact that war crimes were committed. As I have mentioned several times in articles about Israel and Hamas (quoting Paul Newman in another – Hollywood – movie): “There are only murderers in this room.”

He emphasises the principle that “no cause on Earth justifies the killing of civilians”. This indicates that, no matter what Jones saw in the IDF film, it was never going to sway him into supporting the IDF’s operations in Gaza that are now said to have killed more than 14,800 people, including 6,000 children (Jones himself suggests more than 20,000 people – 20 times as many as the number of Israelis killed on October 7 and one per cent of Gaza’s population, including more than 8,000 children).

He makes the point that the 43-minute film is a selection of what the IDF says are thousands of hours of material, and concludes that it is likely to show the worst events the Israeli authorities were able to find. This is logical as they are trying to trigger outrage in their chosen audience of journalists and influencers, and support for ongoing slaughter in Gaza.

But it means the material is biased, and all footage gathered by the IDF should be submitted to independent inspection; this is basic journalistic practice – a genuinely independent journalist or historian would not be able to say they could accurately assess what happened on October 7, based only on this selection. For balance, Jones adds that some horrors may not have been recorded or be in the captured material.

The footage does not support some of the most serious claims made by Israel and the IDF in the weeks since October 7. So:

  • There is no material suggesting that babies were beheaded. There are beheadings – one of a dead soldier (therefore not an execution) and one attempt to behead a dying Thai migrant worker that fails.
  • There is no evidence of torture.
  • There is no evidence of rape and sexual violence. Bodies found without underwear do not constitute conclusive evidence of such crimes, as Jones states.
  • Some have claimed that there is material showing children being killed but Jones could find no evidence of this.

Jones makes it clear that this is not to say that none of these things happened. It simply doesn’t prove that they did.

The images are coupled with audio recordings, purportedly of Hamas communications that were intercepted. Jones questions their veracity. Other such clips have been released by Israel/the IDF in the past weeks, and have been dismissed as fake by experts. There is no reason for this material not to be passed on for independent assessment.

Some of the most shocking footage was of bodies burned beyond recognition – but we have learned that hundreds of them belonged to Hamas personnel, according to Israel spokesman Mark Regev. These people would not have been burned by their colleagues in Hamas – so Jones asks the obvious question: who burned them and how?

He also asks how many people were killed by reckless fire – from either side, although he does qualify this by saying evidence only suggests two incidents involved IDF forces allegedly killing Israelis – at Kibbutz Be’eri and at the Nova rave (and the rave claim is hotly disputed). This Writer would add the IDF’s Gaza Battalion headquarters, where the commanding officer, safe in a bunker, ordered an airstrike on the surface where his troops were engaged in combat with Hamas personnel.

Jones moves on to examine articles by other journalists, including one saying the film shows Hamas are worse than the Nazis – which he correctly describes as “insulting” and “ahistorical”, belittling the horrors of the Holocaust.

Then he tackles criticism of his own behaviour, and his words (found at around the 15-minute mark in the video clip) are worth quoting here: “The roots of my politics is a revulsion at human suffering. That is the entire point of all of my work. You might not believe it, you may have invented a perverse, bogeyman caricature in your head, of who I am, but that is the point of everything that I believe in.

“Watching this film of horrors – and they are horrors – does not lead me to want to support other horrors. Watching innocent civilians being killed in Israel does not make me more likely to support killing more innocent civilians in Gaza. Indeed, several times over more innocent civilians.

“The fact that this is controversial – and I know that … those who supported this screening and its purpose find this controversial – is absurd.

“Now, you have a choice, when you learn of the horrors that humans are capable of inflicting against each other. You either allow these horrors to deepen your humanity or you use those horrors to numb your humanity so that you can be complicit in even more, and indeed even greater horrors.

“This is a very basic and fundamental lesson from human history, which is never learned, with a grave human cost.”

He returns to this later in the clip: “It’s that point at which you either look at horror, you see horror, and you deepen your humanity – or you numb your humanity; you allow your humanity to be chipped away.

“And here’s how I understand the purpose of the screening can be used for just that, is that when attendees see what is happening in Gaza, the thousands of innocent civilians, many thousands of little kids among them, as well as maimed little toddlers, newborns suffocating to death, and feel horror and anguish – and then we are meant to think back to what we saw at those screenings, to remember those poor, injured little boys crying for their dead father, and then to wipe away the horror and anguish we feel about Gaza’s innocence, so that we continue – we can continue – to support a military onslaught which will take many more lives.

“This has happened throughout history, where you are encouraged to break down your empathy for the suffering of others by selectively focusing only on the suffering of some.

“I won’t do that.”

He continued: “Those behind the screening would rightfully regard even one of the killings of Israeli civilians which I saw as intolerable. I did.

“But 20,000 dead Palestinians, many thousands of them children – that’s entirely tolerable?

“Well, there we differ in our responses to the horrors that we saw.”

He concluded: “Throughout the tortured history of our species, horror at atrocities has long been used to build consent for yet more atrocities.

“I left that screening, yes… ashen-faced, horrified, disgusted, repulsed – and more determined than ever to spare innocent people from violent deaths and suffering. That should be your response too.

“No cause on Earth justified crimes committed against innocent civilians. And those crimes don’t justify collective punishment and the mass slaughter that the people of Gaza are now suffering.”

Here’s the clip:

The response Jones received for this display of humanity in the face of horror has been, itself, horrifying.

Here’s a selection, so you can see for yourself, and put names to those who have numbed their humanity and allowed themselves to become complicit in more and greater horrors:

I answered this one:

None of the people attacking Jones in the tweets above deserve any of your attention. They present as bloodthirsty warmongers intent on the annihilation – not of Hamas, but of Palestine and all Palestinians.

If you can remember all the way back to the beginning of this article, you may recall that when I was asked whose side I take in the Israel/Hamas conflict, I said I was on the side of peace.

You don’t get peace by invading somebody else’s country, subjugating them, stealing their land, walling in, oppressing and murdering them for 75 years – as Israel has discovered.

You don’t get peace by breaking through the walls and murdering your oppressors in a vain and (proportionately) tiny act of rebellion – as Hamas has discovered.

All you get is a perpetuation of the cycle of violence.

International law says Palestine has a right to resist the occupation of its land and the oppression of its people by Israel. But that does not give it a right to commit a single act of violence against a civilian.

Israel has a right to defend itself against acts of violence that are committed against its civilians. The issues are muddied here because it is questionable whether those acts of violence were committed on Israeli land or land that has been stolen from Palestine, in which case those civilians had no right to be there. But in any case, that does not give it a right to commit a single act of violence against a civilian.

Both sides are in the wrong. Both have committed war crimes. Both have committed atrocities.

In fairness, both have also been trying to whip up support for further atrocities. That’s why my friends were so surprised when I didn’t say I supported Israel or Hamas (or Gaza, or Palestine) but wanted peace instead.

The only way to get peace is to put the weapons away, sit down with the people you’ve been fighting and talk about how it can be achieved.

The longer that moment is delayed, they harder it will be to achieve that peace.

And yes, every one of us has a responsibility to seek that peace. You don’t get it by cheerleading for war and its atrocities.

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Has Rachel Riley libelled defenders of Michael Rosen? Will they sue?

Michael Rosen.

It seems Rachel Riley is playing her old games again – and this one appears to be in very poor taste.

She has responded to a piece of – journalism? – by someone called David Hirsh, raking over the behaviour of a person who is no longer alive and therefore unable to speak for himself. It is not clear to This Writer whether the deceased’s family were involved.

The piece about Peter Newbon, who was a leading figure in an organisation known as Labour Against Antisemitism (LAAS), appears to have made certain claims about the beloved children’s author and poet, Michael Rosen – on which Ms Riley commented as follows:

Note that she did not provide any information explaining the reason her “stomach turns” at the mention of Mr Rosen. This is familiar behaviour; by allowing others to draw their own conclusions, it may be possible to deny those conclusions later.

But is it possible to work out what one may reasonably deduce is the reason Mr Rosen has such an effect on Ms Riley’s digestive system? I have not read the Hirsh article – but I believe I have enough information from the following exchange between him and Mr Rosen:

(I’m not going to refer here to the Jamie Wilson court case, in which Newbon was also involved. If you want more information on that, details are available here.)

So the claim is that the late Mr Newbon was bullied by people including Mr Rosen, and that this led to his suicide.

In that case, we need to examine how Michael Rosen knew Peter Newbon. And we find this:

The image, tweeted by Newbon, shows former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn apparently reading the anti-Semitic book The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to children.

In fact, he had been reading Mr Rosen’s book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, and the words with which Newbon accompanied the image paraphrase that work: “Oh no! A J-…er, I mean a ZIONIST! A nasty, horrible Zionist! We can’t go over him, we can’t go under him, we’ll have to make an effigy…” instead of: “We can’t go over it, we can’t under it. Oh no! We have to go through it”.

Hirsh has said Newbon did not create the image; he merely shared it. But every share is a new publication of the image and any message it conveys. Furthermore, the words above the image appear to have been typed in by Newbon. Were they his words, or those of whoever created the meme? Either way, if he typed them into his tweet, we may infer that he agreed with the message that they convey.

Mr Rosen had contacted Newbon’s employer, Northumbria University, to complain about its lecturer sharing the image, which he described as “loathesome and antisemitic” – and he was not alone; the university received around 4,000 complaints in total.

I think we may reasonably infer that this is the “bullying” to which Hirsh referred. How he can describe Mr Rosen’s complaint in that manner, or as “antisemitic”, is a mystery as Mr Rosen, being Jewish, may quite clearly be seen as the victim of anti-Semitism here; the tweeted image links him – a Jew – with an anti-Semitic book which was once said to have been written by Jews and which makes claims calculated to provoke hatred against Jews.

I have no information on Newbon’s own ethnicity. If he was Jewish himself, then for Mr Rosen to have been anti-Semitic towards him, Mr Rosen’s complaint would have to have exhibited hatred towards him because he was a Jew – and we have no evidence of this.

And a complaint about a tweet that may clearly be taken as an attack on Mr Rosen may not be described as bullying in any way. Or so it seems to This Writer. It seems to me, based on the evidence, that he is the victim:

So I can find no clear basis for Ms Riley’s apparent comment that the Hirsh article reminds her of any reason her “stomach turns” at the mention of Mr Rosen.

Her tweet certainly appears to have turned the stomachs of people who enjoy his work or have personal experience of him. A few hours after her initial tweet, Ms Riley followed it up with this:

To This Writer, the comment is very strange – firstly because I can only find two responses to her previous tweet on the subject, that criticise her. Is that really enough for her to pass comment as though there was a large backlash?

Secondly, it does not make grammatical sense – and this leads me to suggest that it may be taken to mean something else: not that she isn’t bothered by people she claims are antisemites being upset at her comment about Mr Rosen, but that if people do criticise her for that comment, she is not bothered because they are all antisemites.

Again, there appears to be no evidence to support a claim that every respondent is an anti-Semite.

It strikes This Writer that these tweets may create something of a difficulty for Ms Riley, in legal terms, because anyone defending Mr Rosen in response to her comments – either before or after her “Antisemites upset again” tweet – may reasonably infer that tweet to refer to them. And they may consider it to be libellous against them.

So not only is it possible that she and her employers at Channel 4 may receive a complaint about her behaviour from Mr Rosen – they already have from at least one other person…

… but she may also receive a “letter before action”, either individually or as a group, from a large number of people, some of them celebrities in their own right.

Oh, and Jeremy Corbyn might also consider getting involved, considering the fact that he was also attacked in that doctored image, that an innocent person has suffered harm because of it, because of the Hirsh article and because of the Riley tweets, and that Hirsh himself has challenged him to take such action:

It seems clear that this kind of behaviour – that may harm the reputations and ruin the lives of good people – may continue until somebody with the wherewithal finally puts a stop to it.

Is it forlorn to hope that this could be the catalyst for that to happen?

While we wait to find out, please remember that I am one of those whose reputation and life has been harmed – and I’m still trying to pay my legal team after my own four-year battle with Ms Riley. If you have been moved by the story above, then please help in any of the following ways:

Make a donation via the CrowdJustice page. Keep donating regularly until you see the total pass the amount I need.

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On Twitter, tweet in support, quoting the address of the appeal.

And don’t forget that if you’re having trouble, or simply don’t like donating via CrowdJustice, you can always donate direct to me via the Vox Political PayPal button, where it appears on that website. But please remember to include a message telling me it’s for the crowdfund!

ADDITIONAL NOTE: a few people on Facebook have suggested that people could not sue Ms Riley because “in order for a libel action to stand, the court has to be convinced that it could be interpreted as referring to a specific individual”. This is not true.

From my copy of Essential Law for Journalists:

“The test of whether the words identified the person suing is whether they would reasonably lead people acquainted with him to believe that he was the person referred to.” So, for example, Robin Ince (of The Infinite Monkey Cage on Radio 4) may have a prime facie case because he published a popular tweet defending Michael Rosen and Ms Riley tweeted words that may be taken as meaning anyone supporting him is an anti-Semite.

To continue: “During the late 1980s and 1990s the Police Federation, representing junior police officers, made good use of this aspect of the libel law in many actions against newspapers on behalf of their members… Many of the officers were not named… The test of identification is not whether the general reader knew who was referred to, but whether some individuals… did.”

Also, the person suing doesn’t even have to prove that the words they’re complaining about actually refer to them: “A journalist sued successfully over an article… which neither named nor described him. A person reading the article carefully would have noted various details which were inconsistent with a reference to [him]. However, the court said ordinary people often skimmed through such articles casually, not expecting a high degree of accuracy. If, as a result of such reading, they reached the conclusion that the article referred to the plaintiff, then identification was proved.”

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Sunak refuses to apologise for turmoil caused by Truss

Rishi Sunak has refused to apologise for the economic turmoil Liz Truss’s government caused.

Speaking in Bali at the G20 summit, refused to apologise six times for the decisions his forerunner made, which caused severe financial turbulence that continues at the time of writing.

But he did acknowledge that “mistakes were made,” and said: “What I want to do now is fix them.”

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.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/

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Foiled! Lords veto Coalition bid to make being ‘annoying’ an arrestable offence

140108ipna

The Conservative-led Coalition government has suffered a major setback in its plan for an oppressive law to criminalise any behaviour that may be deemed a nuisance or annoyance.

The Antisocial Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill was intended to allow police the power to arrest any group in a public place who constables believe may upset someone. It was rejected by 306 votes to 178, after peers on all sides of the House condemned the proposal as one that would eliminate carol-singing and street preaching, bell-ringing and – of course – political protests.

It seems the Lords are more interested than our would-be tyrants in the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Cabinet in the basic assumption of British law – that a person is innocent until proven guilty.

The politics.co.uk website, reporting the government’s defeat, said the new law would have introduced Injunctions to Prevent Nuisance and Annoyance (IPNAs) to replace Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs).

It explained: “Whereas an Asbo can only be granted if a person or group is causing or threatening to cause ‘harassment, alarm or distress’ to someone else, an Ipna could be approved merely if a judge believes the behaviour in question is ‘capable of causing nuisance or annoyance to any person’.

“Opinion could have been swayed by a mistake from Lord Faulks, the Tory peer widely expected to shortly become a minister who was asked to give an example of the sort of behaviour which might be captured by the bill.

“He described a group of youths who repeatedly gathered at a specific location, smoking cannabis and playing loud music in a way representing ‘a day-by-day harassment of individuals’.

“That triggered consternation in the chamber as peers challenged him over the word ‘harassment’ – a higher bar than the ‘nuisance or annoyance’ threshold he was arguing in favour of.

“‘I find it difficult to accept a Conservative-led government is prepared to introduce this lower threshold in the bill,’ Tory backbencher Patrick Cormack said.

“‘We are sinking to a lower threshold and in the process many people may have their civil liberties taken away from them.'”

It is the judgement of the general public that this is precisely the intention.

Peers repeatedly quoted Lord Justice Sedley’s ruling in a 1997 high court case, when he declared: “Freedom to only speak inoffensively is not worth having.”

It is interesting to note that the government tried a well-used tactic – making a minor concession over the definition of ‘annoyance’ before the debate took place, in order to win the day. This has served the Coalition well in the past, particularly during the fight over the Health and Social Care Act, in which claims were made about GPs’ role in commissioning services, about the future role of the Health Secretary, and about the promotion of private health organisations over NHS providers.

But today the Lords were not fooled and dismissed the change in agreement with the claim of civil liberties group Liberty, which said – in words that may also be applied to the claims about the Health Act – that they were “a little bit of window dressing” and “nothing substantial has changed“.

A further concession, changing the proposal for an IPNA to be granted only if it is “just and convenient to do so” into one for it to be granted if it targets conduct which could be “reasonably expected to cause nuisance or annoyance” was torpedoed by Lord Dear, who rightly dismissed it as “vague and imprecise“.

That is a criticism that has also been levelled at that other instrument of repression, the Transparency of Lobbying Bill. Lord Blair, the former Metropolitan police commissioner, invited comparison between the two when he described the Antisocial Behaviour Bill in the same terms previously applied to the Lobbying Bill: “This is a piece of absolutely awful legislation.”

The defeat means the Bill will return to the House of Commons, where MPs will have to reconsider their approach to freedom of speech, under the scrutiny of a general public that is now much more aware of the threat to it than when the Bill was first passed by our allegedly democratic representatives.

With a general election only 16 months away, every MP must know that every decision they make could affect their chances in 2015.

We must judge them on their actions.

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Police State Britain: Tories would arrest you for looking at them in a funny way

Antisocial: Under the new legislation, the role of the police as the strong arm of the state will increase; law and order will have increasingly less to do with their job.

Antisocial: Under the new legislation, the role of the police as the strong arm of the state will increase; law and order will have increasingly less to do with their job.

Isn’t it nice for our police that they seem to have had a long time to prepare for the new Antisocial Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill’s passage into law – as long ago as 2010 they were warning a 12-year-old boy, who wanted to save his youth centre, that they could arrest him.

The Mirror reported at the time that Nicky Wishart was removed from class – by anti-terror police – after he used Facebook to organise a protest outside David Cameron’s constituency office. His innocent request for people to “save our youth centre” was used as evidence against him.

Nicky lives in Cameron’s Witney, Oxfordshire constituency. The paper reported him as saying, “All this is because Mr Cameron is our local MP and it’s a bit embarrassing for him.”

On a personal note, this story bears a strong resemblance to what happened when I submitted my Freedom of Information request on mortality rates for people claiming Employment and Support Allowance/Incapacity Benefit. My own request for anyone else who believes the facts should be known to follow my example was held up as an excuse to dismiss the request as “vexatious” and refuse to answer it – and it is clear that this site continues to be monitored by the Department for Work and Pensions.

Nicky’s story could be repeated many times every day if the Antisocial Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill becomes law.

As Jayne Linney has pointed out in an article I reblogged here today, it criminalises “any behaviour that may be deemed as “nuisance”, or liable to cause annoyance… it actually allows the police to arrest any group in a public place they think may upset someone!”

Peaceful protest will become a criminal offence.

The basic assumption of British law – that a person is innocent until proven guilty – will be swept away and forgotten.

Not only does this link in with the aims of the so-called Transparency of Lobbying Bill – to gag anyone who would inform the public of the ever-more harmful transgressions committed by our ever-more despotic right-wing rulers – it also provides an easy way of filling all the privately-run prisons they have been building.

Of course, some might argue that this would be no hardship, since the new private prisons are run appallingly badly. However, Justice Secretary Chris Grayling has praised the failing Oakwood, mismanaged by G4S, as his favourite prison and anyone saying differently after the Lobbying Bill is passed, or campaigning to make it less easy to get drugs and more easy to get soap there after the Antisocial Behaviour bill is passed, will face the possibility of a term inside.

And consider this: The Conservative-led government has hundreds of millions of pounds for projects like Oakwood, run by their favourite firms like G4S – but if you want help getting a business going you’re pretty much on your own. They will change the law to ensure that their version of events and opinion on issues can be broadcast to the masses, while opposing views are gagged. Yet they describe all their actions as “fair”.

How would you describe their behaviour?

Get your answers in quickly; they’ll soon be illegal.

(Thanks, as ever, to the ‘Constable Savage’ sketch from Not The Nine O’clock News for help with the headline.)

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