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:

Gideon Falter, CEO of Campaign against antisemitism is seen in discussion with the police during the Pro Palestine March on Saturday. He brought his own security detail. pic.twitter.com/U6HlA89yOD

— Tom Bowles (@tomsdinner) April 19, 2024

Sadly nobody asked so the question remains. https://t.co/f0y8e3ukqf

— Ferret (@Ferretgrove) April 21, 2024

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’:

I too was there and they were definitely not there to just “cross the road” they were lurking around looking for provocation just a few 100 yards from the Israeli counter protest! Note there were other Jews supporting the march such as holocaust survivors pic.twitter.com/aU2aeh3EqC

— Eli786110 (@Aliwala786110) April 21, 2024

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:

I forgot that I actually did take a short video of the Gideon Falter incident on the Palestine march last weekend. He had clearly come over from a small pro Israeli protest to try to antagonise people with his video guy to capture it. pic.twitter.com/VBQ5HHAFZo

— John Lubbock (@jwsal) April 21, 2024

They literally were there to provoke and cause an issue by walking literally head on with the peaceful protestors. SO DESPERATE FOR ATTENTION pic.twitter.com/LVRspnXD99

— Zubair (@zubairb02) April 21, 2024

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:

Gideon Falter ….. filming looks like more than a hobby. It’s obsessional https://t.co/u8WQ5TWE0a

— Jackie Walker – HRH, MP, MBE, ABC (@Jackiew80333500) April 21, 2024

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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Betrayals on ‘anti-racism, Palestine, harassment and dignity at work cited by furious members

Unite SE6246 Brighton and South East Coast branch has passed a motion of no-confidence, with no votes against and only two abstentions, in the union’s general secretary Sharon Graham. The motion cites Graham’s actions on anti-racism, Palestine, harassment and dignity at work – and the branch members’ ‘dismay’ at them.

In full, the motion reads:

Emergency Motion – Sharon Graham’s Leadership of Unite

This branch views with dismay recent actions by Sharon Graham and instructs her to abide by union policy on anti-racism, Palestine, harassment and dignity at work. We note:

1. The ongoing disability discrimination case brought by former senior officer in Ireland, Brendan Ogle, against Unite. It is estimated that legal fees alone will exceed £1m, money paid for out of members’ subscriptions.
2. The collective grievance from the National Officers’ Group at the high handed behaviour of Graham. They allege that workers are being banned from their workplace and/or suspended for raising a grievance. They state that:

Threats of legal action for raising a grievance cannot be ignored or endorsed…. For any worker to exhibit the courage to voice their concerns about their opinions of inappropriate behaviour against them or others is a right not to be denied. If it is to be crushed or swept away simply because the employer is more powerful and we do nothing about such unfairness in the workplace then who are we standing up for?

1. The banning from Unite premises of Jeremy Corbyn – The Big Lie about the weaponisation of ‘anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party.
2. A new feature-length documentary ‘ON RESISTANCE STREET’, has also been banned. It is an examination of the role which music has played historically in the fight against fascism and racism. The excuse for this is an Executive Committee decision in September 2023. According to Sarah Carpenter:

Unite should not use its premises or resources to show or promote any external films or other content that does not relate to our industrial agenda to support the pay, terms and conditions of our members and/or support existing Unite policies. In this context the Union should be especially careful to avoid appearing to endorse any material which causes unnecessary offence to members.

The reason that Corbyn – The Big Lie was banned was not to offend Zionists. It would appear that this film has been banned in order not to upset fascists or racists.

• There are a host of other allegations that have been made that have never been responded to including:
  • banning Unite officials and national banners from pro-Gaza protests
  • placing an official under investigation who refused to cancel a Palestine solidarity fringe event at Labour’s 2023 annual conference
  • told her chief of staff to threaten Peter Kavanagh, Regional Secretary of London & Eastern Region with the loss of a pension bonus if he did not soften his support for Palestinians.

Historically the trade union movement has taken pride in political education. Industrial action went hand in hand with political action. Without the latter workers are left at the mercy of a capitalist system that has no hesitation in using the state to reduce their rights.

Graham’s tenure as Unite boss has also been marked by a string of other allegations, which have never been denied.

The refusal of Graham to mobilise against the genocide in Gaza or take part in the national demonstrations is shameful. We demand that Graham adhere to union policy on Palestine.

This Branch has no confidence in Sharon Graham and calls for her to resign or be removed.

Proposed         Tony Greenstein

Seconded        Sheila Hall

In an email to Unite’s acting regional secretary for the south-east, copied to the notifying him of the motion, branch secretary Tony Greenstein wrote:

I won’t say I have pleasure in attaching a resolution of no confidence in the General Secretary but nonetheless it is my duty…

…We wish this resolution to be placed before the Regional Executive and all other relevant committees in the region including the Area Activists group. We also want it discussed by the union executive.

Because of the seriousness in passing such a motion, I will add a few comments…

…The final straw for some of us was Graham banning the showing of an anti-fascist/anti-racist film on Unite premises and the explanation for this by the former Regional Secretary for the South-East, Sarah Carpenter that:

‘ the Union should be especially careful to avoid appearing to endorse any material which causes unnecessary offence to members.’

This can only be taken to mean that Sharon Graham doesn’t want to offend racists and fascists ‘unnecessarily’. Such a position runs counter to everything this union has hitherto stood for. Sharon Graham is an utter disgrace.

Jeremy Corbyn – The Big Lie was also banned because it might give offence – in this case to the Zionists who are now supporting the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Graham has not only done nothing to oppose what Israel is doing in Gaza but she has actively tried to prevent others doing anything. She has ditched policy on Palestine undemocratically and unilaterally, with the compliance of a feeble and deferential Executive.

Her recent statement targeting anti-war groups and activists and giving explicit support for the production and transportation of weapons to Gaza that have so far killed 14,000 children, and thousands of women and civilians is unconscionable.

Any General Secretary worth their salt would be taking steps to ensure that no weapons whose destination was Israel were manufactured and failing that would call upon dockers and other transport workers not to handle them, as she did with Russian oil recently.

When I think of the support that General Secretaries of the T&GWU, which was one of the founders of Unite, gave to the peace movement and anti-racism – people like Frank Cousins and Ron Todd – then Sharon Graham’s behaviour is shameful.

Jack Jones, another former General Secretary, went to fight against the fascists in Spain in 1936. Sharon Graham has banned an anti-fascist film for fear of upsetting fascists. For such an action alone she deserves to go and the Union Executive should have the courage to face her down rather than accepting her dictats.

I won’t mention the other matters such as her behaviour towards the staff and Brendan Ogle.

Suffice to say that if Sharon Graham thinks that anti-racism and anti-fascism has nothing to do with her ‘industrial agenda’ then this demonstrates that she understands nothing about how racism is used to divide the working class.

Sharon Graham’s tenure as Unite boss has also been marked by a string of other allegations – which neither she nor the union has denied – including destruction of evidence against her husband in threat, misogyny and bullying complaints brought by union employees. She is embroiled in a defamation lawsuit and a discrimination tribunal case brought by Irish union legend Brendan Ogle for the union’s treatment of him and comments made about him by Graham and her close ally Tony Woodhouse.

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Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

https://medium.com/media/9f2c456296ad09397b3599660d866b53/href

One of the reasons I often pivot to poetry and emotion-laden prose in my commentary on Gaza is because it’s so very easy to let ourselves become numb to the horrors of what’s being done there day after day and month after month — but it’s so very, very important not to.

It would be so very easy to get overwhelmed and start letting one day of lies and atrocities blend into the next until it becomes this amorphous gray blob on the periphery of our attention. Reports like IDF sniper drones playing the sounds of distressed women and children to lure civilians out into the open and then shooting them, or Israeli officials ridiculously claiming they had no idea that blowing up a consulate building full of Iranian military officers would be seen as an escalation, have been coming out on a daily basis now, and it’s tempting to let yourself become overwhelmed and stop caring as much.

And it isn’t an accident that we are confronted with that temptation every day. Since day one the Israelis have been yanking public consciousness this way and that with astonishing atrocities, ridiculous denialism and high octane narrative spin, backed by the full might of the western empire and its peerlessly powerful propaganda machine. Every day we’re smacked in the face with new horrors, coupled with new statements from the Israeli regime taunting our sense of reality like “Heeheehee, did we do it? Who knows? No, we didn’t! But if we did it was good!” while western officials make vague obfuscatory statements that they need more information about each incident before taking a position and suggesting that the IDF needs to investigate itself to find out what happened. You’ll see them pour tons of energy into indignantly denying the very idea that Israel would ever attack a hospital, only to have them arguing that it’s fine and good for Israel to destroy every hospital in Gaza just weeks later.

This can break you, if you let it. It’s hard for the mind and heart to take such systematic pummeling, especially if you don’t understand that it is being done deliberately with a very specific goal in mind. The more westerners can be psychologically shoved into throwing up their hands and filing Gaza away in our mental “bad things in the world I try not to think about” drawer, the easier it is for Israel and its imperial backers to do the monstrous things they want to do there.

So I do what I can to help keep the reality of what’s happening in Gaza on the surface, not just in terms of the factual truth but the emotional truth of it as well. The horror. The suffering. That empathetic connection to the plight of our fellow human beings that can drive us to act, and to push for real change.

Don’t let these pricks numb you to what’s happening in Gaza. You can see plainly that that’s what they want, and you can see plainly what they’d stand to gain by pushing people into that state of numbness. So don’t give it to them. Ensure that, by the measure of at least one person, they fail toward that endeavor. And do what you can to ensure that they fail with others as well.

We’re not supposed to be unaffected by this sort of thing. We’re not supposed to be able to find a state of psychological comfort with genocide. It’s not natural, and it’s not right. Man-made nightmares unleashed upon the waking earth are supposed to disturb us.

Don’t let them take that away from you. Feelings are meant to be felt. Feel the grief. Feel the outrage. Feel the anger. Feel the pain. Let it come to you and say everything it wants to say to you, like you would with a small child telling you about their fears or their hurts. Write it down, sing it out, paint it, dance it, roar it into a pillow, throw rocks at it into a stream, whatever you can do to bring it into the world in a more tangible form. Let it wash through you, feel it completely until it has had its say, then get up, and keep fighting.

As we work our way into the monumental endeavor of creating a healthy world together, it’s not enough for us to be informed about what’s going on in the world — we’ve also got to have a mature emotional relationship with it. We don’t just need to have conscious minds, we need to have conscious hearts as well. If we don’t have a conscious relationship with our emotions, and if our emotions don’t have a conscious relationship with what’s going on in the world, then how can we hope to steer the world toward health? Caring and compassion are the only useful compass we have to navigate us there.

So shelter your caring from the efforts of the bastards to snuff it out, like a precious candle flame on a windy day. Even if we lose the battle in the short term, and even if we lose the war in the long term, at the very least you can deprive these freaks of that one little victory by continuing to care.

_____________

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Featured image via Pixabay.

Mark D. Gearan, president of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, has removed political theorist Jodi Dean from her courses because she authored a pro-Palestinian blog post, published on April 9th.

In an April 13th statement posted on the college website, President Gearan wrote:

As a result of Professor Dean’s comments, there now may be students on our campus who feel threatened in or outside of the classroom.

It’s not unreasonable for a college administration to have as an aim that its students not feel threatened in or outside of the classroom. But there are restrictions on the means by which it is allowed to pursue this aim. Among those restrictions are the college’s policies, including those set forth in the faculty handbook.

Like many private institutions of higher education in the US, Hobart and William Smith Colleges includes a version of the AAUP Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure in its faculty handbook, part of which states:

College and university teachers are citizens, members of a learned profession, and officers of an educational institution. When they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community imposes special obligations. As scholars and educational officers, they should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.

Note that while the statement affirms faculty freedom from institutional discipline and sets forth special faculty obligations, it does not make the institution’s respect for that freedom conditional upon faculty’s satisfaction of those obligations. So even if one thought, for example, that Professor Dean’s blog post failed to exhibit “appropriate restraint”, that doesn’t license the institution to take her courses away from her—a clear form of institutional discipline.

By violating Professor Dean’s academic freedom, President Gearan has sent a message to all of the faculty at Hobart & William Smith Colleges: watch what you say, for if the president is in “complete disagreement” with your views, or finds them “repugnant”, or wants to “condemn them unequivocally,” he will not merely express his opinions, but will use his power to take measures that violate your academic freedom, too.

A petition has been launched to urge President Gearan to reverse his decision and refrain from further violations of academic freedom. You can sign it here.

The petition notes that

the text of Professor Dean’s article does not contain incitement to violence, is not directed at specific individuals, nor does it create a clear and present danger—standard tests for acceptable limitations to free speech as per U.S. law and traditions, and according to the guidelines adopted by the American Association of University Professors, endorsed also by Hobart and William Smith Colleges.

Bizarrely, President Gearan’s statement includes this: “we can discuss hard issues upon which we may disagree. But we can never and will never condone or praise violence.” One hopes this is mere thoughtlessness, or a lie. Just imagine the variety of obviously justifiable activities the defense of which this prohibits. (And imagine what could be learned by hearing and grappling with defenses of what one takes to be unjustifiable violence.)

I don’t know if any students actually do feel threatened by Professor Dean’s blog post. Anything’s possible, and apparently, mere possibility of someone feeling threatened is sufficient, in President Gearan’s view, to justify a violation of academic freedom. Suppose some students do feel so threatened. There are many alternative, academic-freedom-respecting means the college could have taken to address those feelings: public events designed to convey support, provision of psychological assistance, extra campus security, for example. Perhaps the best bet would have have been a program for students about the value of academic freedom, and how an institution’s respect for it is not tantamount to the institution’s endorsement of what its faculty say when exercising that freedom.

(Relatedly, because the internet is full of stupid, let me note that my criticism of Mark Gearan’s violation of Jodi Dean’s academic freedom is not thereby an expression of agreement with what Jodi Dean said in her blog post. I don’t agree with her.)

The post Hobart and William Smith Colleges Fails Its Faculty and Its Students first appeared on Daily Nous.