Palestine
Libel case winner calls for suspension of sanctioned judge from community chair role
Simon Myerson
The President of Leeds Jewish Representative Council, Judge Laurence Saffer, is facing calls to suspend and investigate its hard-line Zionist Chair, Simon Myerson KC for crude and abusive social media posts.
The call for Myerson’s suspension comes from James Wilson, who published his letter to the President of Leeds Jewish Representative Council on Twitter/X on this week. In April 2023 Myerson re-posted a tweet by Twitter/X user Tom Doran which accused Wilson of being ‘the scum of the earth’ and in some way responsible for the death of Pete Newbon, a director of anti-left pressure group ‘Labour against Antisemitism’ (LAAS).
I am calling on Leeds Jewish Representative Council to immediately suspend and investigate their Chair Simon Myerson KC.
I am calling on them to do this because Mr Myerson has repeated crude dehumanising abuse of the kind used of Jewish people by the Nazis in the 1930s.… pic.twitter.com/1eKWSCPouV— James Wilson (@per_incuriam2) May 7, 2024
James Wilson’s post containing his letter to Saffer
Wilson was the claimant in Wilson v Mendelsohn, Newbon and Cantor. He was recently awarded £30,000 in damages by a judge for defamation and misuse of private information. Newbon died by suicide in January 2022.
Doran’s tweet and Myerson’s re-tweet led to the High Court judge awarding Wilson increased damages. The judge said Doran’s tweet was crude abuse of the same dehumanising kind used against Jewish people by the Nazis in the 1930s. Despite the judge’s findings, it appears Myerson has not apologised to Wilson.
Myerson is also the part-time judge who was recently reprimanded by the Lord Chancellor and Lady Chief Justice for engaging in political in political controversy and posting offensive tweets. It is not known whether Mr Myerson KC continues to hold judicial office in light of his very public intervention in relation to a Green Party councillor. Skwawkbox has contacted the Judicial Press Office for comment.
Myerson recently called for the Green Party to suspend one of its elected councillors over his social media posts on the issue of Gaza. Myerson was also interviewed by LBC radio demanding the councillor’s immediate suspension. The hypocrisy of calling for another person to be suspended for their social media posts despite a judicial finding that he has engaged in crude abuse seems not to have been raised.
It is not known what, if any, action Leeds Jewish Representative Council will take about Myerson. The Council represents over 8,000 Jewish people who live in Leeds.
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Video: pro-Israel campaigner ignored as she parades placard through protest
‘Unsafe’? Nonsense. Watch exclusive video
Anti-genocide campaigners staged protests outside Barclays bank branches in London last weekend against the bank’s investments in apartheid Israel and Israeli weapons manufacture, for example the 2.7 million shares that the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) says it holds in military drone manufacturer Elbit Systems.
And while headlines were made last month by stunts by pro-genocide right-wingers who claim that supporters of Palestine are a threat to Jews – despite the clear fact that Jewish demonstrators are prominent at all the protests – a video captured by one protester shows the utter nonsense of the provocative claim.
As protesters condemned Barclays’ ‘investments in Israel’s crimes against humanity’, a lone pro-Israel woman wandered back and forth through the crowd carrying a placard calling for ‘no ceasefire’ and declaring that ‘Hamas=ISIS’ – and did so in complete safety, entirely ignored by the protesters, possibly to her disappointment:
Another counter-protester separately held up a different pro-Israel placard in equal safety:
The demo then moved on to UCL, in a show of support for students who are holding an encampment in solidarity with Palestinians and against their university’s financial and academic links with the apartheid regime.
The speeches and chants condemning Israel’s genocide and supporting the right of Palestinians to live in peace and freedom were passionate, as they should be when Israel has murdered more than forty thousand civilians, mostly women and children, and maimed tens of thousands more – but the idea that those campaigning against slaughter are dangerous to Jews, even those who support Israel’s genocidal regime, is again exposed as smears, misdirection and fantasy.
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Jew Hate rather than antisemitism – history and attitudes…
There is a great tweet thread here pointing out that really anti-semitism is part of the failed ideology of racism (think of South Africa – no wonder they have taken Israel to the International Court of Justice). Of course, there is only one race – the human race – we all come from Africa. And... Read more
Israel rejects Egypt/Qatar-brokered ceasefire deal, begins Rafah invasion
Netanyahu’s political survival and potentially freedom from prison depends on continuing slaughter
Israel has rejected a ceasefire deal, brokered by Egypt and Qatar and accepted by Hamas, that earlier saw jubilation among Palestinians currently kettled in Gaza. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, whose political future depends on continuing the war and who faces the resumption of criminal proceedings for alleged corruption as soon as he is out of office, is unsurprisingly putting his own interests ahead of the lives of Palestinian civilians and Israeli troops and prisoners of war.
Israel’s invasion of Rafah, where most Palestinians in Gaza have been driven by Israel’s mass murder of civilians, is said to be underway, despite token comments from the US government that it would ‘not support’ such a military operation.
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Video: students walk out of graduation in protest against Gaza genocide
University of Michigan graduates walk out holding Palestine flags
Student graduates at the University of Michigan have walked out of their graduation ceremony, holding Palestinian flags an challenging Israel ‘How many kids have you killed today?’, in protest at Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The protest is part of a growing trend of students protesting at their graduation that has been added to the student encampment movement, holding placards and calling out the horrors being perpetrated on Palestinian civilians despite increasingly brutal state repression of students, including many Jewish students who are playing a prominent role in the demonstrations, for exercising their freedom of speech.
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Israel’s Defenders Talk So Much About Feelings Because They Can’t Talk About Facts
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/09142876b534ccc19b7b41ae47d657c5/href
The Guardian has an article out titled “Israelis voice sadness and defiance over Gaza protests on US campuses”, subtitled “People in Jerusalem express little sympathy with anti-war demonstrators, with some accusing them of hatred for Israel”.
It’s exactly what it sounds like: an entire news report about the feelings that some Israelis are feeling in their feely bits about protests in another country on the other side of the world. The Guardian’s Jason Burke asked some random people about their feelings outside a theater in Jerusalem, and then presented this weird nothing thing as relevant news reporting.
“We didn’t know so many people hated Israel,” some random security guard is quoted as saying.
“Such feelings appear widespread among the Jewish majority in Israel, seven months after war was triggered by surprise attacks launched by Hamas into the south of the country in which about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed and 250 taken hostage,” writes Burke.
“Jewish Israelis interviewed by the Guardian this week blame outrage overseas on misinformation, ignorance, historical hostility from international institutions such as the UN, global ‘double standards’ and entrenched antisemitism,” Burke informs us.
Guardian news on Twitter: "Israelis voice sadness and defiance over Gaza protests on US campuses https://t.co/Qv88bnSRO5 / Twitter"
Israelis voice sadness and defiance over Gaza protests on US campuses https://t.co/Qv88bnSRO5
If you’re just tuning in, it might seem odd to you that a major news outlet would publish a story about the emotions that some Israelis are feeling about foreign protests against an active genocide being committed by their country. After all, this is not a news story. A story about how some people’s feelings are feeling is not news, and is not journalism.
But that’s exactly what the last seven months have looked like in the imperial media: a nonstop fixation on feelings instead of facts. Israelis have upset feelings about anti-genocide protests. Western Jews have upset feelings at campus demonstrators. Biden has upset feelings at Netanyahu. Last October the imperial media suddenly got a lot less interested in reporting on the facts on the ground with Israel and Gaza, and a whole lot more interested in reporting on how some groups of people feel about it instead.
Western reporters, pundits, politicians and officials cannot stop talking about this. The feelings of Israelis and western Jews are not only given more importance than the feelings of Palestinians or any other group, they are given more importance than Palestinian lives. Some Zionist kid pretending to feel “threatened” on an Ivy League campus will get more coverage than the daily massacres that have been occurring in the densely-packed city of Rafah.
Watch Matt Orfalea’s latest video about the deluge of coddling, cooing media coverage that was given to a Zionist activist who falsely pretended to have been “stabbed in the eye” by a pro-Palestine activist for a good example of this behavior:
https://medium.com/media/2f1a760ec13728f250226d3463b8c5ec/href
Israel is the only issue where the western political-media class treats people’s feelings as a matter of supreme importance.
If you’re a stressed-out single parent struggling to pay bills and keep a roof over your kids’ head, they don’t care about your feelings.
If you’re an American who’s been cast into destitution and homelessness by medical bills, they don’t care about your feelings.
If you’re a Palestinian whose apartment complex was bombed with your entire family inside, they definitely don’t care about your feelings.
But if you’re a western Zionist who doesn’t like the cognitive dissonance that comes with encountering anti-genocide protesters, or even if you’re an Israeli who’s upset about anti-genocide protests in whole other country on the other side of the planet, they’re very, very interested in your feelings.
This is of course because the west’s unconditional support for Israel cannot be defended through facts, so the narrative control needs to focus instead on one nonstop appeal to emotion fallacy. Their position is so gross and indefensible that all they have left is babbling about some select people having upset feelings and holding those feelings as more important than stopping an active genocide.
The propagandists and empire managers don’t have facts on their side and don’t have morality on their side, so they attempt to manipulate by pulling on the heart strings using sympathy and compassion. They appeal to some of the healthiest impulses within us in order to dupe us into supporting some of the most evil actions the world has ever seen.
Which is an absolutely disgusting thing to do, naturally. But, again, it’s all these freaks have left.
___________
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Huge victory for Goldsmiths students for Gaza as uni accepts divestment demand and more
Six months of demos and five weeks of sit-ins see university climb down in face of students’ determination
Students at London’s Goldsmiths university have won a huge victory after months of solidarity with Palestinians, forcing their university to accept their demand to divest from involvement with the Israeli occupation and to set up scholarships for Palestinian students.
Organiser Fatima Zaid explained in a Twitter/X thread what the students have achieved, including the end of an investment contract with a firm closely connected to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu – and a review of the university’s use of the unfit (and non-definitional) so-called ‘IHRA definition’ of antisemitism, that has been widely used to suppress criticism of Israel:
2. Statement on Genocide
Goldsmiths will release a collaborative statement between management, @Gold4Palestine and the student union.
Goldsmiths has also agreed to write to the UK government and the local MP to call for a ceasefire and support rebuilding education in Gaza.— Fatima (@fatimazsaid) May 3, 2024
4. Palestinian Scholarships
Goldsmiths will introduce undergraduate scholarships for Palestinian students + an additional fully funded postgraduate scholarship will be implemented from this year.
This will be the only undergraduate Palestinian scholarship offered in Britain!— Fatima (@fatimazsaid) May 3, 2024
6. Immortalise the Student Occupation
One of the lecture theatres that students occupied in the media department will be renamed after Shireen Abu-Akleh.
The @Gold4Palestine occupation will also be memorialised in an exhibition wall in the Professor Stuart Hall Building.— Fatima (@fatimazsaid) May 3, 2024
The news will strengthen even further the determination of students at a string of other UK universities who have set up encampments – and is already encouraging students in the US facing brutal state repression and foul smears.
Congratulations and solidarity with the people of Palestine and all those who are fighting for an end to genocide, occupation, apartheid and repression.
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Parting Waters
The narrative of Jews as the eternally oppressed too often takes center stage.
Breaking video: LA police smash UCLA camp, violently arrest peaceful students
US state mobilises to break protest after taking hours to act against violent pro-Israel mob last night
Los Angeles police have stormed the pro-Gaza protest camp set up by peaceful student protesters at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA).
Riot-clad police are violently arresting students and faculty taking part in the protest against the university’s complicity in Israel’s genocide – which has killed well over 40,000 civilians, mostly women and children – and is smashing up tents and makeshift buildings, despite free speech and association rights being guaranteed by the US Constitution:
Video by Middle East Eye
Solidarity with the people of Gaza and with students everywhere demonstrating against genocide and for peace.
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