Comment
Israel supporters shamelessly smear Bushnell with ‘dead jews’ claim. It’s an outright lie
US serviceman whose self-immolation resonated around the world did not say ‘Palestine will be free when all the jews are dead’, as multiple pro-Israel accounts have claimed
Supporters of apartheid Israel’s genocidal assault on Palestinian civilians have begun spreading a claim that Aaron Bushnell, the US serviceman who died this week after setting himself on fire outside Israel’s embassy in Washington, posted a comment to his Reddit account that ‘Palestine will be free when all the jews [sic] are dead’.
The image has been touted by accounts well known for dismissive and often racist commentary about Palestinians as a means of trying to justify Israel’s war crimes. ‘Comedy’ writer Lee Kern was one of the most prominent:
Kern not only propagated the fake claim but described the whole of Palestine as a ‘racist hate movement’
Kern described the whole of Palestine, not just a resistance group, as a ‘suicide death cult’
Writer Kern’s 2021 comment appears to have been deleted but was commented on as early as 2021 and he does not appear to have made a denial to the many times it has been thrown at him
A careful examination of Bushnell’s Reddit account by fact-checker Snopes, over a wider period than the two months ago that the image shows – including using a service that records deleted posts – showed that no such post had ever been made by Bushnell and the image is completely fake. A reverse image search also revealed no other instances before the image began to be circulated by propagandists.
Bushnell’s shocking protest has focused even greater attention on Israel’s slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children. The attempt by supporters of the slaughter to divert from his aim in his terrible protest by posting an outright lie about him after his death is shameful and entirely unsurprising.
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Unite’s Graham slammed for silence over Gaza
GS silence and ongoing ban on Unite banners at Gaza demos infuriates officials and members as Unite Scotland passes ceasefire motion
A search of Sharon Graham’s Twitter account reveals no mention of anything related to Gaza
Unite members and officials are infuriated by union general secretary Sharon Graham’s continued silence over Gaza, with even previously ardent supporters demanding to know why she is completely absent from the fight for peace and justice for Palestinians.
Skwawkbox has previously reported an effective ban by the Unite management on the participation of the union’s officers, and the use of official union banners and paraphernalia, in marches and rallies. This ban appears to be ongoing. The ban is matched by a complete lack of comment from Graham on her social media or other appearances on the issue of Israel’s slaughter of Palestinian civilians, even after the International Court of Justice put Israel formally on trial for genocide and ordered the state to protect Palestinian lives, an order the regime has flouted.
Unite members are now demanding to know whose side Ms Graham is on, as in the example shown above. But even formerly entrenched supporters have lost patience, such as the activist behind this account – who has previously attacked Skwawkbox for scrutinising and exposing the general secretaries actions and alleged actions:
Original tweet and video here.
But the criticism is widespread, as the representative examples below demonstrate:
Where's your support for Palestine #GazaGenocide
— #EnoughisEnough #FreePalestine #FreeJulianAssange (@carolehope2) February 6, 2024
I too am a member of Unite but not for much longer @UniteSharon @unitetheunion I am appalled at your lack of Solidarity with the other unions and Palestine
— Jezzabeau C. #GazaGenocide (@JezzabeauC) February 3, 2024
@UniteSharon not one post on her feed about palestine in recent days. Disgusting.
— Traderboy (@Aminthegreat4) February 13, 2024
I too am a member of Unite but not for much longer @UniteSharon @unitetheunion I am appalled at your lack of Solidarity with the other unions and Palestine
— Jezzabeau C. #GazaGenocide (@JezzabeauC) February 3, 2024
Your silence on Palestine goes against Unite policy.
— Mike (@Fleabag2016) January 23, 2024
Unite’s democratically-decided policy is to support the international ‘Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions’ movement against Israel’s oppression, apartheid and illegal occupation. Yet members in Ireland have been forced to demonstrate against Unite’s use of Israeli-linked firms, entire regional groups have condemned the lack of support and solidarity for Palestinians, and members have accused Graham of using proxies to ban pro-Palestine events on union premises and even to try to cancel a solidarity event organised by union officials at Labour’s 2023 conference.
And while other unions have been clear in their solidarity with Palestinians facing the genocidal assault of the occupying Israeli regime, Unite – at least at an organisational level – appears determined to say nothing that will upset Keir Starmer’s Zionist apple cart.
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Right-wing candidate suspended for ‘antisemitic’ comments called ‘true ally’ by JLM’s Smeeth
Red Tories’ chaos deepens as second candidate dumped over Israel comments – and party’s Westminster polling falls
The second parliamentary candidate to be suspended by Labour in a matter of days for ‘antisemitic’ comments was given a gushing endorsement by a senior Jewish Labour Movement figure.
Graham Jones trumpeted the backing of Ruth Smeeth – now Anderson – last year while he was seeking selection to stand for Labour in Haslingden and Hyndburn. She referred to him as a ‘true ally’ in her fight against ‘antisemitism’:
Oops.
Anderson was one of the most prominent faces in the creation and propagation of the so-called ‘Labour antisemitism crisis’ after falsely accusing left activist Marc Wadsworth of claiming she was part of a ‘media conspiracy – video evidence showed he had said no such thing, but that didn’t stop her storming out of a meeting and marching with a ‘lynch mob‘ that to the party hearing that drove Wadsworth out of Labour:
Author and investigative journalist Asa Winstanley wrote last year:
Ruth Smeeth MP had good reason to delete the post [claiming Black activist Marc Wadsworth had used an antisemitic smear toward her at a Labour event] —the idea that Marc Wadsworth had said she was part of a “media conspiracy” was completely untrue. Importantly, he did not make any kind of anti-Jewish comment. In fact, he didn’t refer to Smeeth’s Jewishness in any way—he later clarified that he hadn’t even known she was Jewish. Wadsworth replied to Smeeth’s false allegations in a statement the same day, describing them as “poisonous slander.” He said her claims played “into a Jewish media conspiracy theory that I utterly reject and have never espoused.”
Wadsworth’s instincts about Smeeth “working hand in hand” with the right-wing press to overthrow Corbyn were totally correct. Only three days earlier Smeeth had played her own minor part in the coup attempt against Corbyn. She announced on Twitter “with a heavy heart” that she was resigning from a junior role in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet. It was timed to coincide with a series of resignations by dozens of hostile MPs, in a failed attempt to force him to resign. They came after the no-confidence vote tabled by Margaret Hodge and the firing of Hilary Benn, another right-wing shadow minister Corbyn had fruitlessly attempted to bring on board as part of his abortive “big church” approach.
But unlike Wadsworth and the others, as a journalist reporting on the UK’s pro-Israel lobby, I happened to be pretty well acquainted with Smeeth’s work.
I wrote a story about her in 2014, when she was selected as a Labour candidate. I did so because of two key facts, ignored by a media that would later pay her such close attention: she had worked as a spin doctor for the Israel lobby and had acted (wittingly or otherwise) as a secret Labour Party source for the US government.
Anderson, who was once described in a leaked US embassy communication as someone to ‘strictly protect’ who had provided inside information on then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s election strategy, has also smeared left-wing Jews who support Palestinian human rights – and said, at about the same time as she was endorsing Jones, that pro-Palestinian Jews should ignored by the UK media and if they didn’t like it, ‘tough’. She went on to smear left Jewish group JVL, forcing the BBC to publish a belated ‘correction’ for not challenging the accusation.
Other JLM activists similarly have egg on their faces after jumping in to try to get Rochdale voters to back Azhar Ali, the other suspended candidate – only a couple of weeks before the Rochdale by-election – despite his ‘antisemitic’ comments about Israel:
On the left, the JLM's timeline right now, with key figures explaining why it's right to have some tolerance when someone on your own side mucks up.
On the right, the distant past of… 2021, when the JLM said "serious" zero tolerance was expelling left groups. pic.twitter.com/HOaI4bfHDD— Alex Nunns (@alexnunns) February 12, 2024
Ali was set to lose the by-election badly even before being officially dumped last night, having featured in videos of him being told to leave by voters he tried to canvass because of his association with Keir Starmer’s support for Israel’s genocide, in stark contrast to the warm welcome widely given to pro-Palestinian candidate George Galloway.
For his part Jones, before he lost his seat, was one of two Labour MPs who sat drinking on the Commons terrace with disgraced right-wing activist Ian McKenzie, who had made comments about the rape and beheading of senior Labour MP Emily Thornberry. Jones was then taken to task by local members for his support for McKenzie.
The chaos of the Starmer regime and its propensity for shooting itself in the foot continues to grow – as well as its complicity in apartheid Israel’s genocidal slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Gaza. Starmer’s red Tory party has fallen three points in the polls, despite the Tories’ ongoing disaster, and has lost half or more of its support among Muslim voters, as well as being rejected by those opposed to Israel’s genocide.
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UNRWA nominated for Nobel Peace Prize – but Israel freezes its bank accounts
Israeli move likely to mean even faster starvation for hundreds of thousands
UNRWA, the United Nations relief agency for Palestine, has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The news comes as the assault on UNRWA’s funding intensifies.
A number of nations have, inexcusably, used Israel’s claims – that twelve of the agency’s more than 13,000 employees in Gaza took part in the 7 October raid – as a pretext for cutting off funding to UNRWA despite its central role in providing relief for the two million Palestinians in Gaza who are in starvation because of Israel’s blockade.
And Israeli bank Leumi has today locked all of UNRWA’s accounts, claiming UNRWA is unable to provide sufficient receipts to be able to prove no funds are going to ‘terrorists’. The UN has said it has no alternative mechanism to fund UNRWA if international donations are cut off and a number of nations – including Norway, home of the Nobel Peace Prize – have said they will continue to provide funds. But if UNRWA is unable to access them where it needs them, it will be even more severely hampered.
Norwegian Labour MP Asmund Aukrust told Dagbladet that he had nominated UNRWA,
for its long-term work to provide vital support to Palestine and the region in general.
Israel bombed the relief offices last week of Belgium, another country whose government has committed to funding UNRWA.
The nomination is an apt response to Israel’s smears against UNRWA and the collusion of some western nations, including the US and UK, in the genocide in Gaza. But it will not feed the starving – and despite being officially on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and ordered by the ICJ to protect Palestinian lives, the Israeli apartheid regime’s murderousness toward the millions of civilian Palestinians in Gaza appears to know no bounds.
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Labour trumpets endorsement by ‘leader’ who boasted of part in Truss disaster economics
40yr-Tory’s praise not the compliment Labour thinks it is…
Labour has put out a video trumpeting an endorsement by ‘former business champion and Cicero chair’ Iain Anderson for the austerity policies – disguised as the risible ‘fiscal discipline’ – of Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves.
But – as with almost everything the red Tory regime tries – it’s already backfired massively, with Twitter user ‘jrc1921‘ pointing out that in 2022 Anderson boasted of his ‘almost 4 decades’ of being a Tory and his part in the ‘economic reform’ of then-soon-to-be Tory PM Liz Truss. Truss went on to have the shortest tenure ever as British prime minister – just forty-five days – and was ousted by the Tories for crashing the pound to its lowest-ever rate against the dollar, doing colossal harm to the UK economy and being the most useless and unpopular PM ever.
Starmer and co are clowns – except clowns are trying to be funny and don’t usually support genocide or help build a police state.
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3 months after attacking Tories for scrapping bankers’ bonus cap, Reeves says Labour won’t put it back
‘It tells you everything you need to know’
On 31 October last year, Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves – the awful Keir Starmer’s equally awful right-hand woman – derided the Tories for scrapping the cap on bankers’ obscene bonuses in the middle of the cost of living ‘crisis’, which is in reality an engineered emergency fattening corporate profits at the expense of putting millions into hardship and often outright poverty.
Today, three months to the day later, she has announced that Labour will not restore the cap, because she considers the predatory capital machine of the City of London to be a solution to the UK’s problems and not a key driver of them – and has seemingly forgotten how Blair and Brown’s support for wild banking led to the 2008 financial crash. To quote Reeves’s own words back at her, ‘It tells you everything you need to know’.
Three months. On the one hand, it’s a pathetically short time to hold a policy – and on the other it’s a lot longer than Starmer’s hollowed-out corpse of the Labour party has held onto most other positions, except those involving support for apartheid and genocide, privatising and destroying the NHS, sucking up to the US, putting the police and army beyond justice and accountability and promising to do the same as the Tories only faster.
Labour is dead and there is no depth to which the ghouls animating its corpse will not stoop.
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Israel ‘runs sick AI propaganda ad’ on streaming service: ‘Come visit beautiful Gaza’
Israel has been running a sick AI-generated ‘ad’ on US streaming service Hulu, showing Gaza as a lush beach resort full of five-star hotels – a grim contrast with the reality of mass slaughter and levelled buildings inflicted by Israel on Gaza’s civilians.
The video, posted to social media platform TikTok by user ‘leftoftheprojectorpod’ and highlighted on Twitter by journalist Mario Nawfal, claims to show “what Gaza would look like without Hamas” – a complete inversion of a reality in which Israel has intentionally flattened most homes, hospitals and schools, killing around 35,000 people and wounding, often maiming, double that number:
The text of the video reads:
Come visit beautiful Gaza. With its stunning beaches and charming boardwalks, you can stay in one of our 5-star hotels and get a taste of the best in Middle Eastern food. Embrace the vibrant nightlife of the city. And experience a culture rich in tradition. This is what Gaza could have looked like without Hamas.
Other users of the service said that the video was really run on the streaming service:
It's real. Zionists made a bunch of AI clips of Gaza and blamed Hamas as the reason it's a leveled concentration camp instead of some tourist trap. Shame on Hulu. They would never do this for Russia which means they know what they're doing. pic.twitter.com/OpMIhCXuui
— Justin is tired! (@ThatGuyYus) January 27, 2024
The content of the propaganda video is as accurate as Israel’s claims that it is adhering to international law in its slaughter of innocents – and its attempts to pin the blame for the bombing of hospitals and the mass killing of its own citizens on Palestinian resistance.
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Starmer STILL silent on ICJ genocide judgment against Israel
Friend of war crimes just ignoring damning order against murderous regime
‘What judgment?’: Keir Starmer
Keir Starmer’s reaction to the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) damning judgment yesterday, which put Israel formally on trial for genocide – with even the Israeli judge agreeing on two of the points – and ordered the occupier regime to stop killing Palestinians in Gaza and take a list of measures to protect them, has been deafening silence.
Starmer, who has previously declared himself an unconditional Zionist, has supported Israel’s ‘right’ to commit war crimes and has helped the Tories (blue version) to defeat parliamentary efforts to call for a ceasefire. And as Israel ranted and raved and most of the world applauded South Africa’s stand for humanity and against mass murder, Starmer’s social media account hasn’t even acknowledged the existence of the court’s findings, some thirty hours after they were announced.
But he has found time, as Israel continued to slaughter and maim hundreds of civilian women and children, to tweet about Holocaust Memorial Day and blether repeatedly about anti-social behaviour (especially in ‘hotpots’):
Starmer’s latest nauseating post is a claim that it is a ‘privilege to reaffirm Labour’s commitment to “Never Again”’ – clearly that should end with ‘unless you’re Palestinian’. Coward and genocide enabler.
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Why does the ‘march against antisemitism’ look so much like a National Front rally?
Far right is a strong presence at both
A pro-Israel ‘march against antisemitism’ and a National Front march – but which is which?
The latest ‘march against antisemitism’ – code for a gathering of those who support Israel despite or because of its apartheid and its genocidal slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza – bears a strong resemblance to National Front marches and rallies.
Wonder why that might be – well there’s the pervasive presence of the far-right at both. At a recent such march, members of the demo protested against the removal of right-wing extremist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson – and the links between pro-Israel hardliners and the far right have long been well established, if largely ignored by the so-called ‘mainstream’ media.
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Video: Irish MEP Daly hammers ‘Butcher Biden’, ‘Frau Genocide’ von der Leyen over Gaza complicity
One of a number of outstanding Irish MEPs, Clare Daly tells Biden to take the name of Ireland out of his mouth
Clare Daly, an outspoken and courageous left-wing Irish MEP, has an outstanding track record of taking the right side of global issues – and she has let US president Joe Biden and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen have both truth-barrels for their complicity in Israel’s genocide and array of other war crimes against the innocent Palestinian civilians of Gaza.
Publishing the clip of her speech at the European Parliament, Daly said:
As Israel loses in the court of public opinion, we see desperate attempts to widen the conflict. All with the blessing and material support of the Butcher Biden, a US President who claims Irish descent. Keep our country out of your mouth, @JoeBiden. Your ancestors disown you.
As well as arming and funding Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, Biden has eagerly amplified the Israeli regime’s lies about the events of 7 October to help it ‘justify’ the slaughter and maiming of tens of thousands upon tens of thousands of civilians.
And von der Leyen has sided with Israel shamelessly, despite saying Russia was committing a war crime by cutting off electricity and water in Ukraine – a situation far less grim that the one created by Israel doing the same and worse to Gazans.
Oh for politicians of Daly’s calibre in the UK Parliament, to actually provide the opposition that is conspicuous by its absence with warmongering friend of apartheid Keir Starmer masquerading as ‘Labour’ leader.
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