James Wilson wins defamation case against Mendelsohn and Cantor in judgment that speaks volumes about methods and attitudes of so-called ‘campaigners against antisemitism’

University lecturer James Wilson has been awarded £30,000 in damages against James Mendelsohn and Edward Cantor for defamatory material published about him during an argument about supposed antisemitism in the Labour party. The false claim, that Mr Wilson was a ‘freak [who] takes pictures of kids’, put Mr Wilson and his partner in fear of physical danger, as well as seriously damaging his reputation. The judge had previously rejected an attempt by Mendelsohn and Cantor to quash the lawsuit.

The judgement lays bare that:

• Mendelsohn and Cantor kept private information and recycled it to the late Dr Pete Newbon – a director of the anti-left group ‘Labour against Antisemitism’ (LAAS), so that he could use it to defame Wilson – the information was untrue and based a) on statements from someone the judge found to have lied about Wilson and b) on false claims about a university disciplinary investigation. Newbon was described by the judge as ‘bullying’
• that Newbon, who committed suicided in 2022 after a row with his wife and has been lionised by so-called ‘antisemitism campaigners’ despite his awful record as a serial troll repeatedly disciplined by his employers Northumbria University for his appalling social media conduct, had not told her of Wilson’s lawsuit against him for the defamatory posts
• Mendelsohn and Cantor refused to apologise, mediate or settle, forcing the legal action to proceed to its conclusion
• a key witness for the defendants said that she had been offered £5,000 by Mendelsohn and Cantor to testify for them (though the judge did not make a finding that her claim was true)
• the defendants further abused and insulted Wilson in the course of their defence – despite, in the case of Cantor, being warned by the judge not to do so

The defendants – who represented themselves in court apart from the use of a barrister to cross-examine Wilson – wheeled out a number of figures who are well known for their attacks on the left in an attempt to shore up their defence. The judge dismissed them:

• University lecturer David Hirsh, a prominent, pro-Israel proponent of supposed ‘left antisemitism’, who wrote an unintentionally revealing elegy to Pete Newbon after his suicide. Hirsh was called to bolster the defendants’ claim that Wilson had shown ‘unwarrantedly aggressive and belligerent conduct’. The judge rejected Hirsh’s evidence that Wilson was ‘aggressive, unpredictable, persistent and irrational’ and found that Wilson’s communications with him over the spreading of a crowdfund for the defendants’ legal costs were ‘not unreasonable’
• Nathan Comiskey, another advocate of ‘left antisemitism’, who claimed that Wilson contacting him about insulting remarks was ‘highly intrusive and upsetting’ and that he had felt ‘harassed and targeted’. The judge ruled that there was nothing unreasonable in Wilson’s communications and that Comiskey’s testimony did nothing to support the defendants’ claims about supposed unwarranted aggression or belligerence
• Simon Myerson – a founding signatory of LAAS and supporter of Israel, and a part-time judge recently sanctioned for judicial misconduct for abusive social media posts. Myerson was also a vocal supporter of Newbon, trying to link Jewish author Michael Rosen to Newbon’s suicide, despite a coroner not mentioning Rosen at all in his inquest findings. Mendelsohn and Cantor put forward Wilson’s communications with Myerson, who had shared a post describing Wilson as ‘scum of the earth’, as evidence to support their claim of aggressive behaviour. The judge ruled that it did nothing of the sort
• Joanne Bell and journalist Adam Cailler – more well-known anti-left activists whose correspondence with Wilson was put forward by the defence as supporting evidence. The judge ruled, “I can find nothing in the emails which is particularly aggressive or which points to conduct of the kind said to demonstrate the pleaded propensity [to aggression]”

A Myerson attack on Michael Rosen

The findings, as well as being clearly welcome to the smeared and endangered James Wilson, illuminate much of the approach of the right-wingers who created and propagated the ‘Labour antisemitism’ smear. While so-called ‘antisemitism campaigners’ – lauded by Hirsh in his document supporting the creation of the so-called ‘Pete Newbon award’ – are ready to doxx, insult, smear and abuse those with whom they disagree, the conduct of the defence and the witnesses it put forward or quoted reveal a group that is quick to describe their supposed hurt and fear when someone challenges them and, even in the most reasonable terms, takes issue with the smears and abuse. Happily, the judge saw through such asymmetrical nonsense.

Mr Wilson, in a statement about the result, said:

The Judge has found that Mr James Mendelsohn gave Dr Pete Newbon confidential and defamatory information about me. It included a screenshot of a Facebook post that said I was “a freak who took pictures of kids” outside a school with a clear photo of me. The impression was, as the Judge decided, like a ‘wanted’ poster. When the Facebook post was published originally, there were incidents that made me fear for the safety of me and my family. The police secured its deletion within 24 hours.

The Judge found that the allegations in the Facebook post were untrue. Mr Mendelsohn took a screenshot of the Facebook post in the 24 hours it was published and, having kept it for 19 months, gave it to Dr Newbon in August 2020 knowing Dr Newbon was making abusive attacks on me on Twitter/X and so he could use the screenshot as a weapon against me.

Dr Newbon and Mr Eddy Cantor then published the screenshot on Twitter/X to, as the Judge has found, abuse and bully me. When Dr Newbon realised the screenshot he and Mr Cantor had published put the safety of me and my family at risk, he took no action. I suspect this was on the basis of advice he got from his solicitor.

Even when Dr Newbon deleted the screenshot from his feed, he sent it to other people by private message. He also invented seriously defamatory allegations about me that he sent to other people.

I did not want the litigation to start. The Defendants could have settled for zero damages and zero costs, and an agreement to delete and not to further publish the screenshot. Litigation only started because all the Defendants, presumably on advice from their solicitors, insisted that publication of the screenshot was in the public interest. They claimed this despite knowing of the intimidatory incidents.

I did not want there to be a trial. What made a trial inevitable was the conduct of the Defendants. I suspect some of the Defendants’ conduct was the result of advice from their solicitors. The Defendants’ conduct included:

• Refusing to comply with the Civil Procedure Rules on pre-action conduct.
• Refusing mediation in favour of litigation to drive up my costs and to try to bankrupt me.
• Making repeated threats to bankrupt me, explicitly referring to the impact this would have on my employment and children.
• Making false allegations of anti-Semitism to try to get me to abandon my claim.
• Making misogynistic allegations about my partner and falsely accusing her of conspiring to pervert the course of justice and breaching professional conduct rules.
• Taking the case to trial having stated: (a) they had no money and I would not recover any costs or damages; (b) they did not care about the outcome (they were “blasé about the result”); (c) they saw what they were doing as some sort of revenge (they “regard this as payback time”).
• Refusing to engage sensibly in negotiations to settle the whole claim when both Dr Newbon’s widow and I wanted to quietly and cheaply settle the claim and avoid further publicity after Dr Newbon’s tragic death.

The Defendants received encouragement on social media and financial help in pursuing their

defences. The crowdfunding claims made by the Defendants were outrageous. The most distasteful aspect was using Dr Newbon’s death to raise money (“One of us is now sadly silent. Those remaining must today come together and fight”).

The reality was that, having used Dr Newbon’s death to raise money, no serious effort was made to defend Dr Newbon at trial. I tried to protect Dr Newbon’s posthumous reputation by settling the claim without a trial and judgment. Mr Cantor rejected in principle a settlement for nominal damages and zero costs in November 2021. Rather than getting Mr Cantor out of the litigation for a nominal sum, [his lawyer] insisted I would have to pay him money before Mr Cantor would settle the claim. I do not know whether Mr Cantor himself knew about this, given his subsequent expressions of bemusement about being involved in the proceedings at all.

Both Defendants refused an offer to settle before trial for just a quarter of the damages the Judge has awarded. When the trial started, I avoided seeking a finding of harassment against Dr Newbon. It is unfortunate that detailed information about Dr Newbon’s conduct has been put in the public domain after his death.

In my opinion, the Defendants and/or their solicitors tried to cause me devastating reputational and, through the costs of the proceedings, financial harm because they disagree with my views on the State of Israel. The Defendants’ conduct was encouraged by others who share their views.

Dr Newbon also brought a separate defamation claim [against author Michael Rosen, who had complained about the antisemitic editing of an image showing one of his books]. He had intended to apologise for the conduct which was the subject of that case, but seems to have received dreadful advice to sue rather than simply say sorry. He ended up involved in two completely unnecessary and hopeless legal cases.

As the Judge found, it seemed the Defendants were motivated by an intense dislike if not hatred of me. For my part, I have no antipathy towards the Defendants despite their conduct and its impact on me and my family. I have never published confidential or defamatory information about the Defendants. I have never been abusive to them. I never retaliated to the Defendants’ abuse and bullying. It is ironic that while the Defendants are convinced that I am motivated by prejudice against them, it is they who had an obsessive and irrational dislike of me. I find it sad that the Defendants, their former legal advisers, and others believed that defending the State of Israel from criticism justified their conduct to me and my family.

It is my hope that what has happened to the Defendants and their families, and me and my family, never happens to anyone else again. Please do not use the judgment in my case as a reason to attack or abuse others on social media. Mr Mendelsohn and Mr Cantor definitely do not deserve to be attacked or abused and I urge people not to do so.

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Kara Swisher is a little sorry!

Well-known Israel advocate and Corbyn critic found to have breached professional standards in attack on trans rights campaigner

Pro-Israeli barrister and part-time judge Simon Myerson KC has been disciplined by the Lady Chief Justice and Lord Chancellor for attacking a transgender rights campaigner on the Twitter/X social media platform.

Myerson supports Israel against accusations of genocide and has frequently attacked Corbyn and his supporters

Myerson received a sanction for ‘judicial misconduct’ after complaints were upheld for a series of offensive tweets. Myerson accused the campaigner of having a “tiny intellect” and making “idiotic statements”. The disciplinary decision can be found here. Myerson broke the principle that judges should avoid participating in online debates on politically controversial topics to maintain the integrity and dignity of their judicial office.

Myerson insists Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza despite its slaughter of tens of thousands of women and children and insulted a Jewish anti-genocide campaigner

Some observers might consider there to be a suggestion of hypocrisy to Myerson’s behaviour. In September 2023, Myerson was a witness against a solicitor accused of posting offensive tweets at a disciplinary tribunal. Myerson’s evidence was that the solicitor’s tweets went “well beyond the bounds of acceptable conduct”, raising questions about whether he gave evidence to a tribunal about another person’s offensive social media posts without telling the tribunal that his own offensive posts were under investigation by the Lady Chief Justice.

Myerson also has a history of controversial comments on Twitter/X about the suicide of the Northumbria University academic Dr Pete Newbon, who died after a row with his wife. Newbon had posted to Twitter/X a meme of an image that originally showed Jeremy Corbyn reading much-loved author Michael Rosen’s Bear Hunt to some children, but in which the title of grossly antisemitic forgery ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ had been photoshopped onto the book.

Rosen, who is Jewish, was understandably unhappy that the Protocols had been photoshopped on his book. Myerson suggested that it was Rosen’s tweet in response to Newbon that led to complaints to Newbon’s employer that were linked by Newbon’s supporters to his suicide. Rosen’s tweets were far less offensive than the tweets Myerson has now been disciplined for and the coroner did not mention Rosen or his tweets at all in his inquest findings. Newbon, who had tried to get fellow academics sacked, was in fact on a final warning from the university because of his repeatedly awful conduct on social media – and was doing badly in a lawsuit brought by another individual whom his false claims on social media had endangered. Rosen has featured frequently in Myerson’s Twitter/X timeline.

Myerson, like Newbon a founding signatory of the so-called ‘Labour against antisemitism’ (LAAS) group that weaponised antisemitism allegations to attack then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and whose directors have also attacked Michael Rosen, continues to be active on Twitter/X in support of Israel’s conduct in Gaza. Myerson rejects the finding of the International Court of Justice that Israel may be engaged in genocide. His position is that Israel’s actions in bombing Gaza and refusing to allow aid to enter are proportionate responses to the October 7 attack by Hamas. Most serious legal commentators are clear that Israel’s actions are disproportionate and are likely to amount to war crimes.

M

Simon Myerson criticised a court for finding anti-Zionism is a protected political belief and insists that Israel was not told to implement a ceasefire even though the International Court of Justice told it to stop killing Gazans and protect them instead.

Those reading Myerson’s recent social media output might feel justified in concluding that a change in his behaviour is unlikely. Yesterday he bizarrely accused a Jewish Twitter/X user of having learned to be snide ‘almost certainly aided by being Jewish’ when the user gently mocked the Israeli spokesperson Eylon Levy.

Mr Myerson did not respond to a request for comment accompanied by an initial draft of this article.

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Danger to patients and conflicts of interest as government continues to push for expanded use of ‘associate’ roles – with help from the Royal College of Physicians

A survey by the Doctors’ Association UK (DAUK) has revealed ‘deeply disturbing’ ‘scope creep’ in which – as warned by the British Medical Association (BMA) and others – ‘physician associates’ (PAs), who are not qualified as physicians, are being used and acting as doctors.

A statement by the group warns that PA are not only overstepping the boundaries in which they are meant to operate, but also being used by NHS trusts and health companies to fill positions that require fully-qualified doctors:

PAs are overstepping boundaries, putting patient safety at risk, and impacting doctors’ training. This is shocking in itself, but made far worse by recent events at the Royal College of Physicians… Doctors at Torbay report PAs being used as “middle grades” – clear scope creep.

According to a doctor recruitment agency:

Doctors in speciality training programmes are known as Middle Grade doctors. Junior Middle Grade doctors are trainees who have completed their foundation training and are now in the early years of their speciality training. They are: ST1/ST2: ST stands for Specialty Training.

According to survey responses from doctors at Torbay and South Devon NHS Trust, as well as being used as ‘middle grade’ doctors and putting patients at risk by acting outside their competencies, PAs:

• work without adequate supervision
• consent inappropriately
• participate in unsafe clinical activity
• treated severe infective colitis with antibiotics and steroids simultaneously

According to NHS Scotland, steroids “shouldn’t be used if you have an ongoing widespread infection. This is because they could make it more severe.”

The DAUK also linked the survey results to this week’s fiasco at the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), where attendees of an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) regarding concerns about PAs linked the behaviour of the RCP’s panel, which was accused of ‘contempt’, shutting down discussion and even filibustering, to the RCP’s financial conflict of interest in the millions of pounds it reportedly makes from administering PA examinations.

The RCP is hiding their full survey data from FRCP and Council until after the EGM vote. This lack of transparency is unacceptable…

The RCP Registrar, who sets RCP professional standards, works at this Trust. (Important note: there is no indication she was involved in this case [of steroid/antibiotic administration].)

Doctors at Torbay report PAs being used as “middle grades” – clear scope creep. Yet the Registrar, whose job is to “create consensus” & uphold standards, has been involved in withholding critical data that potentially sways the EGM vote. This is not leadership.

The Registrar’s own job description emphasises “accountability for clinical and professional affairs” and “…setting and maintaining professional standards.” How can the Registrar fulfil these duties, ensuring patient safety and upholding standards, when those very standards are being violated in their own Trust? This is an untenable conflict of interest.

In our view, the Registrar has failed in their core responsibility for transparency and integrity of RCP decision-making. We call for their resignation to restore trust in the RCP. The RCP’s position on PAs is currently compromised.

The statement concludes with a call on all voting members of the RCP to vote to support all the motions tabled at the EGM calling for a rethink on the issue of PAs:

Lastly, we are asking that Fellows vote in favour of all five motions as presented, to ensure that a safe revaluation of the PA role can be conducted to ensure patient safety and to ensure continued viable training of the medical profession moving forward.

The use of PAs, which is considered by nine out of ten doctors to be dangerous to patients and confuses many patients, who do not realise that they have not been seen and treated by a fully-qualified medic, is being pushed by the government as a way of ‘downskilling’ the NHS, reducing costs and allowing increased profits for private providers, under the guise of the so-called ‘NHS Workforce Plan’ as part of the ‘Integrated Care Systems’ (ICS) project.

ICS, formerly called ‘Accountable Care Organisations’ (ACOs) after the US system it copied, were renamed after awareness began to spread that ACOs were a system for withholding care from patients and that care providers were incentivised to cut care because they receive a share of the ‘savings’. The system remained the same, but the rebranding disguised the reality.

The government used a ‘statutory instrument’ (SI) to pass these changes, avoiding proper parliamentary scrutiny, but both the Tories and Keir Starmer’s Labour support these and other measures to cheapen the NHS for private involvement and only independent MP Claudia Webbe spoke against them during the brief SI debate. Green peer Natalie Bennett’s motion in the House of Lords to attempt to kill the instrument was defeated by the Tories with the help of Labour peers.

At least two people have already died avoidably because of misdiagnosis by PAs. Emily Chesterton, 30, who didn’t realise she wasn’t seeing a doctor, was treated for a calf strain when she had a deep vein thrombosis that led to a lethal embolism. Ben Peters, 25, was sent home from A&E with a ‘panic attack’ that was really a serious heart condition. A doctor’s Twitter/X thread includes details of others said to have died because of issues around PAs.

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