Evidence, eyewitnesses challenge Falter’s claims he was stopped for just crossing road

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Published by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 22/04/2024 - 11:18pm in

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Apartheid, Children, Civilians, Featured, Gaza, genocide, Human rights, London, Palestine, peace, Police, Racism, right-wing, Video, War Crimes, Women

Apparent campaign to discredit pro-Palestine marchers – and remove police commissioner who won’t ban marches – undermined by evidence and eyewitness accounts, including one from before Falter complained

Gideon Falter, pro-Israel chief executive of the so-called ‘Campaign Against Antisemitism’ (CAA), made headlines last week when he posted a video claiming that he had been stopped by the Met Police for simply trying to cross a road, on his way back from synagogue, during a pro-Palestine protest on the grounds that he was visibly Jewish.

Falter and his supporters have used the claim to demonise peace protesters as a threat to Jews – and to demand the resignation of Met Police Commissioner Mark Rowley. Coincidentally, Rowley has refused calls by right-wingers to ban pro-Palestine marches.

But eyewitnesses – including Jewish bystanders – and photographic evidence appear to contradict Falter’s claim. Importantly, one account of the actions of Falter and an entourage with him was posted before the ‘scandal’ became a thing – and describes Falter with a security detail clearly creating an incident:

Other bystanders saw the same – and added that the group had been around for a while, trying to disrupt the protest:

The bodyguard can be seen in video footage of the incident shot by photographer Tom Bowles:

A group consisting of a Holocaust survivor and descendants of Holocaust survivors, who were on Aldwych Road only a few metres away from Falter’s stunt, contacted Skwawkbox with their account of events and their significance:

It has been widely reported that Gideon Falter, chief executive of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, was threatened with arrest when he approached a pro-Palestine demonstration on 13 April in the Aldwych area of London.

Mr. Falter is reported to have said that his interactions with police officers “show that the Met believes that being openly Jewish will antagonise the anti-Israel marchers and that Jews need protection, which the police cannot guarantee. Instead of addressing that threat of antisemitic violence, the Met’s policy instead seems to be that law-abiding Jewish Londoners should not be in the parts of London where these marches are taking place. In other words, that they are no-go zones for Jews.

We are writing to disagree strongly with these claims. This is because throughout his interactions with the police we were standing only a few yards away from him, yet we experienced nothing but warmth and solidarity from the pro-Palestine demonstrators and not a hint of antisemitism.

Our group was “openly Jewish” in that we all wore placards saying that, as descendants of Holocaust survivors, we oppose the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Indeed, one of us, Stephen Kapos, is a child survivor of the Holocaust who was interviewed by Sky News at the time.

Every major pro-Palestine demonstration in London has included a large Jewish bloc which has received nothing but support and warmth from their fellow demonstrators. Claims that these protests are no-go zones for Jews are completely untrue.

Yours Sincerely,

Haim Bresheeth (son of two survivors of Auschwitz)
Mark Etkind (son of a survivor of the Lodz ghetto and Buchenwald)
Stephen Kapos (survivor of the Holocaust in Budapest)
Peter Kapos (son of a Holocaust survivor)
Yosefa Loshitzky (daughter of survivors of the Holocaust in Poland)

A Holocaust survivor and descendants of Holocaust survivors, photographed during Falter’s altercation with police

An image of the entrance to Bush House on Aldwych Road shows how close the group (red) were to Falter (blue) during the incident

A set of photos posted by another bystander shows the Holocaust group and Falter, confirming how close the ‘openly Jewish’ peace demonstrators were to Falter’s supposed ‘no-go zone’:

Falter had told the Times that he simply ‘came across’ the Palestine protest and tried to cross the road ‘as the front of the march got to us’:

At Aldwych, we came across the pro-Palestine protest and we started to cross the road as the front of the march got to us. Suddenly I felt hands on me. I looked around to see a police officer who was shoving me onto the pavement.

This was contradicted by the photos taken of him and his group before the march got there – and by subsequent responses and video clips from others who were there, including a Jewish police officer:

Few if any UK ‘mainstream’ media outlets have covered the contradictory evidence, of which the above is only a small selection.

Gideon Falter has been found at least once to have made untrue accusations of antisemitic conduct. In 2009 he accused Rowan Laxton, a Foreign Office official of shouting ‘F***ing Jews’ in response to incidents in Palestine, leading to Laxton being convicted of ‘racially aggravated public disorder’. The appeal court judges, however, unanimously agreed that Laxton had not said any such thing:

Last year, he was also filmed driving a van ‘very close’ to pro-Palestine protesters and tried to get police to force them to move because ‘they are obstructing the highway’ – as the footage showed other vehicles moving freely past:

According to Electronic Intifada last year, the CAA – which has taken ‘credit’ for forcing the Unite union to ban book talks and film showings exposing the weaponisation of antisemitism to attack the pro-Palestine left – is or has been funded by an Israeli ‘quasi-governmental’ group:

the CAA has been given almost half a million dollars by the UK partner of the Jewish National Fund, Israel’s quasi-governmental settler-colonial agency.

The donations were hidden in obscure Charity Commission documents uncovered by our research. In an email to The Electronic Intifada, the CAA confirmed it had been in “past receipt of donations from JNF UK” but denied current JNF funding.

“JNF UK has never exercised or sought to exercise any influence over our activities,” the CAA claimed…

…In 2018, the CAA declared in its accounts disclosed to the Charity Commission that a donation of almost $220,000 had come from a “related party.”

This amounted to nearly half of its income for that year.

Funding a “crisis”

The following year, the CAA declared that $230,000 had come from a similarly undisclosed “related party.”

The 2019 figure amounted to 20 percent of its income but 60 percent of its expenditure.

In 2019, JNF UK declared expenditure of the exact same amount as the donation declared by the CAA that same year.

JNF UK paid $230,000 “for grants provided to a UK charity, which has a trustee who is also a trustee of JNF Charitable Trust.”

According to its website, “JNF Charitable Trust” is simply the official name of the JNF UK charity and they “are the same” group.

The 2019 JNF UK accounts also stated that in 2018 it had made a donation of almost $220,000 to the same unnamed “UK charity.”

Skwawkbox approached the CAA for comment, providing examples of the above counter-evidence and details of the Rowan Laxton incident. The group had not responded by the time of writing.

Update: Sky News has now published a 13-minute video of the entire interaction between Falter and the police – and, unlike Falter’s edited version, it shows the officer telling Falter that he had already observed him trying to provoke the pro-Palestine protesters and was not falling for Falter’s ‘disingenuousness’:

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