How the case developed that ended with uni lecturer James Wilson’s hard-fought win in court after smears put him and his family in danger – and saw LAAS director Newbon commit suicide

Last week, university lecturer James Wilson won £30,000 in damages from two defendants, James Mendelsohn and Edward Cantor, who had contributed to a smear against Wilson by a third ‘antisemitism campaigner’, Peter Newbon, that put the lives of Wilson and his family at risk. Newbon, a director of the right-wing pressure group ‘Labour against Antisemitism’ (LAAS), was a defendant in the case but died by suicide, after a row with his wife, before the case was concluded. The judgement in the Wilson case revealed that Newbon had ‘concealed’ the case from his wife

The case never involved much-loved Jewish author Michael Rosen. However, Newbon’s fellow ‘campaigners’ have tried hard to associate Newbon’s death with Rosen because Rosen dared to complain about the antisemitic doctoring of his famous children’s book, Bear Hunt, in a social media post by Newbon used to attack former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. The coroner presiding at the inquest into Newbon’s death made no such connection, nor even mentioned Rosen throughout the proceedings, but this has not stopped the trolls’ efforts.

For readers unfamiliar with the Wilson vs Mendelsohn et al case, below is a timeline showing the chronology of the smears and the subsequent legal victory:

• Nineteen months before August 2020: a confrontation takes place at Wilson’s children’s school with ‘Mrs A’. The trial judge has ruled that Wilson was blameless, but A posts a picture and libellous claim to Facebook
• August 2020: Wilson disputes with Newbon on Twitter about the so-called ‘IHRA definition’ of antisemitism – a definition that has been heavily criticised, not least because it doesn’t define, is used to suppress criticism of Israel and enables false accusations of antisemitism – by Jewish legal experts in the UK and even by its original author, Kenneth Stern
• August 2020: in a manoeuvre typical of so-called ‘antisemitism campaigners’, Newbon resorts quickly to ad hominem personal attacks and responds with libellous  claim that Wilson is a ‘freak who takes photos of kids’
• August 2020 onwards: Wilson tries to negotiate with Newbon to remove the libel and warns that he will sue if it is not taken down
• Around August 2020: Newbon’s university employers warn Newbon that he is in breach of the university’s social media code
• November 2020 Newbon gets into dispute with another person on social media – and receives a second warning from university
• Around the same time, Newbon also becomes involved with the so-called ‘University Antisemitism Map’ which targets academics who criticise Israel or dispute the right-wing claim of ‘Labour antisemitism’, labelling them antisemitic and identifying their place of work so collaborators can target their employment. Newbon contacts one institution with an allegation about an employee – the employee is exonerated by institution
• May 2021: Newbon posts a doctored screenshot of a famous ‘tweet’ that originally showed Jeremy Corbyn reading ‘Bear Hunt’ to a group of children. The book held by Corbyn has been photoshopped to make it appear that Corbyn is reading from a notorious antisemitic text, ‘The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion’. The image is accompanied by a parody of the words from the Bear Hunt book
• May 2021: numerous Twitter users object and write to Newbon’s university, whose name is displayed on his Twitter profile. Rosen is informed of the tweet and comments publicly that the doctoring was an antisemitic thing to do. The university says it will take action
• May 2021: As revealed during the subsequent Wilson case, Newbon prepares an apology to be issued to Rosen, then withdraws the apology and starts legal proceedings, presumably having been advised by lawyers that he has a case against Rosen
• December 2021: Newbon escalates by issuing a ‘Particulars of Claim’, the formal opening of a libel case, in which he accepts that Rosen is ‘in’ the tweet but claims Rosen is not the target, as the target is Corbyn who is reading Rosen’s book to children in the image. Rosen prepares defence
• January 2022: Newbon ends his own life after a row with his wife
• January 2022 onwards: Rosen is blamed for Newbon’s death by various parties either by implication or actual accusations. In articles at the time, another case (ie Wilson’s) is mentioned,  but not by name. Some people note that Newbon was running two cases at the same time, defending against Wilson, claiming against Rosen
• March 2022: Wilson and Newbon’s wife settle Newbon’s involvement in Wilson’s case against Newbon, Mendelsohn and Cantor
• February 2023: a High Court judge rejects an attempt by Mendelsohn and Cantor to have the case against them thrown out. The pair had attempted to claim that Wilson could and should have minimised the damage they did to him by backing out earlier from the online conversation in which he was smeared. The judge described the attempt as ‘not very attractive’
• April 2023: The inquest into Newbon’s death takes place. The coroner makes no mention of either the Wilson or Rosen legal cases. The coroner does mentioned that Newbon had a ‘disagreement’ with his wife and that he left the house in a ‘fragile state’. 
• December 2023: the Wilson v Mendelsohn, Newbon (deceased) and Cantor case leads to a four-day trial.
• April 2024: the judge’s findings are published. The judge finds against Cantor and Mendelsohn, dismissing the claims of a string of their witnesses and awarding a total of £30,000 in damages to James Wilson. In the judgment narrative, the late Newbon is described as a bully

The case, which involved the disclosure by Newbon’s widow of his personal communications, also revealed interesting aspects of his conduct toward Michael Rosen and the behaviour of the trolls who have tried to exploit his death to attack Rosen. Analysis to follow.

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Corbyn apparently travelling the length and breadth of Europe to stop the neo-Nazi Ukrainians from ‘fighting fascism’…

Paul Mason was caught last month in a full-blown meltdown of deranged accusations, at a woman who dared to challenge Israel’s mass slaughter of innocent civilians and the unhealthy influence of pro-Israel lobby groups in British politics – and also caught misrepresenting what she had said, when a recording of her comments and his diatribe was revealed.

And he was caught on the same evening in another deranged rant, when he accused Jeremy Corbyn of ‘touring’ Europe ‘tolerating antisemitism’ and ‘disarming the Ukrainian people in their struggle against fascism’:

Audio capture by @UrbanDandyLDN, subtitles by Skwawkbox

As ‘Urban Dandy’, who recorded Mason’s ramblings, commented:

Mason’s suggestion that Jeremy Corbyn tolerates antisemitism is false, just as the widespread, mainstream claims that there was a serious antisemitism problem in Labour under Corbyn’s leadership were false, and have been debunked repeatedly. The MP for Islington North is taking legal action against Nigel Farage for similar defamatory statements, while another political commentator favoured in the mainstream media recently had to make a humiliating public apology for his baseless allegations against Corbyn.

Screengrab from X / johnmcternan

Disarming the Ukrainians

Paul Mason’s second allegation against Corbyn, that the MP has been on a European tour aimed at disarming the Ukrainian people, is also false. Corbyn has never called for the disarming of Ukraine. The anti-war veteran who fronts the Peace & Justice Project has spoken in many European cities since Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, mainly at events organised by peace campaigners. Corbyn has called for diplomacy instead of escalation, and expressed skepticism about the relentless arms sales by western companies. 

Mason’s claim that the left wants to somehow stop Ukrainians ‘fighting fascism’ is also bizarre enough to verge on the delusional. Ukraine is well known, despite the best efforts of the UK media to rewrite history, to be rife with actual nazis, some of whom are in influential positions in the Zelenskiy regime. Zelenskiy himself has seized control of Ukraine’s media, stripped workers of their rights and shut down opposition groups, all key identifiers of fascism.

Mason’s reputation, already falling apart because of his support for Keir Starmer, was shredded in 2022 when The Grayzone revealed his emails plotting with security-state figures to take down left-wing news outlets, accompanied by a notorious, sprawling chart showing the links he imagined among left groups Russia and China – and boasting of ‘cauteris[ing] Corbyn and Stop the War’ so that ‘no MP will touch them:

Mason’s support for Starmer despite the so-called ‘Labour leader’s backing for Israel’s genocide in Gaza has left him a risible figure, yet he keeps spouting his nonsense despite the inevitable backfiring and mockery.

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On March 13, U.S. lawmakers overwhelmingly voted in favor of a bill forcing TikTok’s foreign owner, ByteDance, to sell up or face a stateside ban. Its advocates claim the popular video-sharing app is a Chinese Communist Party-controlled national security threat that could be weaponized as a tool of surveillance and manipulation if it isn’t already. Yet, despite the anti-Beijing hysteria running wild, many haven’t swallowed the bait, with even some typically pliant mainstream outlets alleging a far darker rationale.

For a start, the ominous vision of TikTok as a CPC Trojan Horse is demonstrably absurd. While parent company ByteDance is headquartered in Beijing and was founded by local internet entrepreneurs, court filings, financial returns, official submissions to Congress, and even Chinese government documents show the company is 60% owned by foreign investors, including many in the U.S., while a fifth is in the hands of its own employees, including thousands of Americans.

Despite this, the monolithic narrative of a CPC-run spying app maliciously taking over the phones of young Western citizens has long abounded. In January, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, TikTok CEO Chew Shou Zi Chew was subject to relentless McCarthyite grilling by Republican Tom Cotton on his loyalties and relationship with the Chinese Communist Party. A visibly bemused Zi Chew repeatedly explained he was a patriotic Singaporean, married to a U.S. citizen. These inconvenient facts did not deter the Senator’s bullying, xenophobic interrogation.

Now that the anti-TikTok “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” has passed, much of the media is fraudulently claiming the app is confirmed to be Beijing-owned and controlled. One might argue this is a deliberate smokescreen designed to obscure the true rationale behind the app’s Congressional attack, the individuals and organizations behind it, and who precisely benefits from TikTok being run by U.S. government-approved figures and entities.

In every case, the answer lies in plain sight and is the same. TikTok has long been in the crosshairs of powerful pro-Israel lobbying organizations due to the speed and ease with which content critical of Israeli atrocities and apartheid spreads on its platform. The risk younger users might question the concertedly concealed, horrific reality of Israel’s occupation has become all the graver throughout the Gaza genocide. Now, those same groups have corralled U.S. lawmakers into launching a fatal attack on free speech online.

‘A TikTok Problem’

In November 2023, a leaked recording of Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), appeared online. In it, he despaired over how much sympathy for the Palestinian struggle was apparent online in the wake of October 7’s Al-Aqsa Flood and inevitably disproportionate Israeli response. Expressing shock at how terms such as “Zionist entity,” a delegitimizing characterization applied to Israel, had proliferated, he singled out a particular social media app and demographic as responsible:

We have a major, major, major generational problem…all the polling I’ve seen, ADL’s polling, ICC’s polling, independent polling, suggests the issue of US support for Israel is not left and right, it is young and old…We really have a TikTok problem, a Gen Z problem.”

‘We have a major Tiktok problem.’

Leaked audio of ADL chief executive Jonathan Greenblatt freaking out because global youth aren’t buying Israel’s propaganda anymore. #Gaza pic.twitter.com/tzU02bSXAm

— Sharmine Narwani (@snarwani) November 16, 2023

It is indeed no coincidence that in the same month, several prominent Jewish celebrities and influencers sought to lobby TikTok behind closed doors to erase any “anti-Israel content” from its platform and generally “do more to address a surge of antisemitism and harassment” on the app following October 7. Among the assembled was Sasha Baron Cohen. As MintPress documented in January, his cinematic oeuvre is almost exclusively rabidly Islamophobic and rife with genocidal pro-Israel propaganda tropes.

Cohen is also a repeat ADL confederate, actively complicit in the organization’s online censorship connivances. In September 2020,  he temporarily suspended his Instagram account to protest purported antisemitic “hate speech” on the platform and Facebook. The League led this action, which saw over 1,000 businesses suspend their ads on the social network for a month. At the secret TikTok meeting, he told Adam Presser, the app’s head of operations, and himself Jewish, “Shame on you.”

“What is happening at TikTok is it is [sic] creating the biggest antisemitic movement since the Nazis,” Cohen fulminated, telling Presser:

If you think back to October 7, the reason why Hamas were able to behead young people and rape women was they were fed images from when they were small kids that led them to hate,” he continued, accusing TikTok “of feeding similarly incendiary content to young people.”

Reported unquestioningly in the Western media, dubious claims that Hamas committed a wave of rapes and beheaded infants on October 7, as the group conducted an extremely dangerous lightning strike mission behind enemy lines to kidnap hostages, all along hunted by Israeli Occupation Force soldiers, helicopters, and tanks, have come apart in the weeks and months since. Likewise, no evidence has to date emerged that TikTok is indeed a hotbed of antisemitic hate, let alone uniquely so in the digital realm.

‘Wonderful Vehicle’

On March 6, Nikki Haley suspended her Republican Presidential candidacy. The Israel lobby was no doubt crestfallen. As U.S. Ambassador to the UN from January 2017 to December 2018, she distinguished herself as perhaps the most aggressive and ardent advocate for Israel ever to fill the post—a highly competitive category indeed. During her tenure, the Jerusalem Institute of Justice hailed Haley’s “Zionist spirit,” an accompanying cartoon bizarrely depicting her as Xena: Warrior Princess.

On the campaign trail, Haley was given to frequent Israeli propaganda outbursts. A common occurrence in U.S. politics, most of these utterances flew under the radar. Nonetheless, in December 2023, she elicited much ridicule for unbelievably declaring during a primary debate:

We really do need to ban TikTok once and for all and let me tell you why. For every 30 minutes that someone watches TikTok every day, they become 17% more antisemitic, more pro-Hamas based on doing that.”

Nikki Haley: “For every 30 minutes that someone watches TikTok every day, they become 17% more antisemitic, more pro-Hamas.”pic.twitter.com/ECCriiax80

— TheBlaze (@theblaze) December 7, 2023

It appears Haley was misrepresenting the results of a recent survey conducted by MarketWatch. Yet, her self-evidently ludicrous – and thoroughly discredited – claim was cited without irony in a statement published by the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), applauding the passing of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. The statement further charged:

TikTok’s parent company is beholden to the Chinese government, which has squarely positioned itself against Israel since October 7th. China has filled its state-controlled media and social media channels with antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric.”

That TikTok is antisemitic because it is controlled by the Chinese government is an entirely novel slander for both the app and Beijing. Yet, following Congressional ratification of the Act, JNFA would have every reason to talk a big game. As The Times of Israel reported in mid-March, the organization, along with the ADL, was at the forefront of public campaigning in support of the bill.

We want Congress to tell TikTok that their time is up: We’re done with the lies the platform spreads about the Jewish people and Israel. Click the link below to say #TimesUpTikTok: https://t.co/4IXoKMziiu pic.twitter.com/mmZR6N1r7m

— The Jewish Federations of North America (@jfederations) March 26, 2024

These efforts saw JNFA gather Jewish community leaders across the U.S. for “crucial” briefings on the pending legislation. Conspicuously, the organization’s New Jersey chapter explicitly referred to the Act as “aimed at antisemitism on TikTok,” with no reference to Chinese government influence at all. Meanwhile, Israeli media took aim at Jewish billionaires Arthur Dantchik and Jeffrey Yass over their 15% stake in ByteDance. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency lambasted Dantchik for failing to curb “anti-Israel content” on TikTok despite sitting on its board.

These attacks were likely intended to ensure neither investor – both of whom give generously to Jewish and Zionist foundations – voiced any criticism of the Act. While successful, the Jewish news website The Forward acknowledged that several Jewish TikTok creators vehemently opposed its U.S. government takeover, including several rabbis. One told the newspaper that the app was “a wonderful vehicle” for teaching the Torah and “educating young people about Judaism,” arguing that “the platform’s value outweighs concerns about antisemitism that led some Jewish organizations to push for its ban.”

Of course, their entreaties fell on deaf ears. So, too, did the condemnations of Elon Musk and Donald Trump, who both denounced the legislation as state censorship. Their broadsides were particularly notable, as neither could be plausibly accused of holding even vaguely pro-China or anti-Israel sympathies. In Musk’s case, he has even collaborated with the ADL to suppress anti-Israel posts and users on ‘X,’ his rebranded version of Twitter.

‘A stranglehold on Congress.’

Despite its near-unanimous rapid passage through Congress, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act could run into trouble in the Senate. Republican Rand Paul has pledged to block the legislation on free speech grounds. U.S. citizens “choose to use TikTok to express themselves,” Paul argues, believing the Act would “take away the First Amendment rights” of 170 million users. The Washington Post quoted the Act’s Congressional architect, Mike Gallagher, as retorting:

[The Act] is about foreign adversary control of a social media application…not about shutting down speech. As long as the ownership structure has changed, TikTok can continue, and Americans can say whatever the heck they want on the platform.”

The newspaper did not mention that on March 13, Gallagher let slip the true motivation behind his anti-TikTok push. Namely, it is “becoming the dominant news platform for Americans under 30.” This very much chimes with the concerns of ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt.

Also unmentioned is that Gallagher’s biggest political donor is the infamous American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), accurately described by U.S. political scientist John Mearsheimer as “a de facto agent for a foreign government, [with] a stranglehold on Congress.”

The chief architect behind the TikTok bill is Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher, whose biggest donor is AIPAC

Since October 7, 2023, AIPAC has made no secret of its mission to rid Washington, DC, of any lawmaker even mildly opposed to or critical of Israel’s unrelenting war on Gaza, openly earmarking Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, among others, for defenestration. Chillingly, the organization’s 2022 report on “policy and political achievements” that year brags that it provided $17.5 million – the most of any U.S. PAC – to “pro-Israel candidates,” a staggering 98% of whom won their elections.

Questioning Israeli Influence Deemed ‘antisemitic’

Meanwhile, despite JNFA’s brazen public victory lap following the Act’s Congressional assent and its own central involvement in shilling for TikTok’s censorship, the ADL had the audacity to publish an investigation into how “antisemitic conspiracy theories” spread online after the vote. It charged that “influencers and extremists from across the political spectrum” framed the bill as “a product of Jewish or Zionist influence…an effort to infringe on free speech by limiting the reach of pro-Palestinian content.”

An example of an antisemitic remark about the TikTok bill published by the ADL

The ADL has published a relentless deluge of reports, uncritically amplified by the mainstream media, alleging “antisemitic incidents” throughout the Western world have reached record levels since the Gaza genocide began. Yet, as MintPress has revealed, the League produces these mindboggling figures by categorizing anti-Israel and pro-Palestine rallies and corresponding chants and signage at both as individual “antisemitic incidents.”

The anti-TikTok Act’s untrammeled passage is an epic testament to “Zionist influence” in the U.S. That such far-reaching, disturbing legislation was rubberstamped with virtually zero public, political or media debate or scrutiny, despite intense civil society and American Jewish community opposition, sets a terrifying precedent for future aggressive action being taken against digital platforms allowing inconvenient, brutal truths about Israel to escape into the public domain.

If the Act becomes law, it will undoubtedly be used to target other social networks, apps, and websites on similarly spurious grounds. Indeed, the legislation is explicitly not intended to be restricted to TikTok. Its wording openly states that any tech company “determined by the President to present a significant threat to the national security of the U.S.” can be in the White House’s firing line. Joe Biden has already made it abundantly clear that he will sign the moment it reaches his desk.

In December 2023, MintPress investigated The 10/7 Project, a new Zionist lobby entity founded by AIPAC, ADL, AJC, JFNA, and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. The outfit was initially intended to be a very public affair, promoting human interest stories and atrocity propaganda generated by Operation Al-Aqsa Flood in the media while elevating its eponymous date to 9/11 levels in the American public mind.

The 10/7 Project has, to say the least, failed in this mission not least because citizen activists and journalists have challenged Israeli propaganda and exposed the realities of the Gaza genocide, with such devastating effect, on platforms such as TikTok. As such, it is only to be expected that the same lobbying organizations behind this effort have redoubled their quest for narrative control. If the information war cannot be won fairly, the only option is to nobble all opposition via straight-up censorship.

From Israel’s perspective, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Since October 7, 2023, as Jonathan Grimblatt bemoaned in that leaked recording, poll after poll has shown U.S. public support for Israel is almost exclusively restricted to older generations of Americans. For example, on March 21, Pew Research published a survey showing 46% of 18- 29-year-olds viewed Tel Aviv’s actions in Gaza as “unacceptable,” while 35% of 30 – 49-year-olds – a majority – agreed.

As the entire Zionist project – and the unending, slow-motion genocide it necessarily executes – is wholly contingent on U.S. support to endure, in the face of nigh-universal condemnation from citizens of the world and governments throughout the Global South, such an attitudinal shift could spell the end of Israel as we, unfortunately, know it. That is quite some “generational problem” that needs urgent rectification.

Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News

Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg.

The post Israel’s Shadow Over Free Speech: The Truth Behind the TikTok Ban Bill appeared first on MintPress News.

Young pro-Israel propagandist’s reaction when she realises what she’s given away speaks volumes…

The penny starts to drop…

The attempt by a young proponent of hasbara – pro-Israel propaganda – to shame a US town hall meeting for discussing a motion calling or a ceasefire in Gaza ended in humiliation when a ‘freudian slip’ let to her admitting that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

Laughter broke out at the January meeting in Burlington, Vermont, causing the young woman to pause in her hectoring – and her reaction as she realised what she had said spoke volumes:

Shamefully, the meeting still voted with the pro-Israel propagandists – but the slip revealed that the ‘friends of genocide’ know the truth of what they are inexcusably defending. Tragically for the civilians of Gaza, the US, UK and other western governments are more than prepared to turn a blind eye to the slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians, mostly women and children and collude in mass murder of innocents.

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