Open Letter to Sir Mark Rowley, Metropolitan Police Commissioner – Yesterday You Were Anti-Semitic, Today you are Anti-Palestinian

Rowley Has Decreed that ‘Globalise the Intifada’ is A Crime – Today I Repeated It Twice in A Speech As Sussex Police Looked On

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The attack on Jews at a Chanukah celebration in Australia has become the pretext for a crackdown on civil liberties and democratic rights. Mark Rowley, Metropolitan Police Commissioner is to the fore in calling for the suppression of the Palestine solidarity movement.

Sir Mark Rowley, the Heinrich Müller of the Met

Rowley, as part of his efforts to use British Jews as the Trojan horse for a Police State has repeatedly refused to meet with anti-Zionist Jews or the Palestine Coalition whilst meeting with pro-Genocide Zionist groups. For him, anti-racist Jews are as much the enemy as Palestinians. 

Written evidence to Parliament by Palestine Solidarity Campaign states that

The MPS has so far refused repeated requests for an in-person meeting with representatives of the Jewish bloc and on at least two occasions the police have sought to prevent them joining the march on the grounds that, being Jewish, they were assumed to be counter demonstrators.

When people call out the racism of the Metropolitan Police we should remember that it began with colonial policing of the Irish, then moved onto Jews and is now manifested in  anti-Muslim and anti-Black racism.

On Sunday at midday I shall be one of 3 Jewish speakers at a webinar Scottish PSC is holding on the the killings in Australia. London’s Gestapo Commissioner Rowley, alongside his Manchester understudy Stephen Watson, announced that the chant ‘Globalise the Intifada’ was now an arrestable offence. In response I penned an open letter to Rowley.

Never has your racism @metpoliceuk been so clear. In your statement you say 'Our thoughts are with those who lost their lives, their families and those injured.'

When have you ever made a similar statement in respect of the thousands of Palestinians, nearly half of whom are… https://t.co/IgDnbp8wWT

— Tony Greenstein tonygreenstein.com (@TonyGreenstein) December 18, 2025

Dear Mark Rowley,

You issued a statement recently which said that ‘Antisemitic hate crime has surged, protests have intensified, and online abuse has grown since 2023.’ This is the method of Nazism. Juxtaposing completely different phenomenon.  Everything equals everything.

Your concern about racism is touching, even novel, given that you have turned a blind eye to it for so long. In February 2025 you told BBC's Today programme: "The public can have confidence in us." Your only gift is knowing how to lie. The very police station Charing X, whose racism and misogyny led to the sacking of your predecessor, Cressida Dick, was the subject of a Panorama programme Undercover in the Police which confirmed that you were a liar. Racism and sexism were everywhere.

As long as the Metropolitan Police are led by a racist there is no hope of reform. You have made it clear that the only racism you are interested in is ‘anti-Semitism’ – a prejudice not a form of racism. Attacks on Mosques and Muslims and Black people are no concern of you. The only ‘racism’ that concerns you is that against privileged White people .

The implication of your remarks were clear. Protests against genocide were responsible for the growth of anti-Semitism and on-line abuse. Such a sleight of hand is worthy of Goebbels and is indicative of nothing so much as your own dishonesty.

There is no evidence of a growth of anti-Semitism, unless you redefine it as opposition to Zionism, ethnic cleansing and genocide. But let us assume I am wrong and there is a growth in anti-Semitism, why is that?

The Israeli government and the Zionist movement have branded all opposition to the genocide in Gaza as ‘anti-Semitism’. If you oppose starving children you are anti-Semitic. Is it any wonder that some people believe them and then target Jews?

No one knows better than you the history of the Metropolitan Police. From the murder of Stephen Lawrence to the murder and rape of Sarah Everard and the canteen culture of Charing Cross Police, to say nothing of all the Black people you have murdered in the line of duty (Roger Sylvester, Mark Duggan, Chris Kaba et al.).

Senior Police officers even agreed to the police spying on the Stephen Lawrence Defence Campaign. A fish rots from the head down and the precondition of the Metropolitan Police reforming itself is your replacement.

When anti-Semitism was a genuine form of racism in the 1930s, anti-Semitism was rife amongst the Police. Today when Jews are the moral alibi and the pretext for the British ruling class support for Israel then ‘anti-Semitism’ is a concern of the Police.

When I asked Google’s AI ‘were the Metropolitan police antisemitic during the 1930s and sympathetic to the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists ’, which was led by Sir Oswald Moseley, the results were instructive and shed a light on your concern about ‘anti-Semitism’ now.

It is also instructive to refer to Daniel Sonabend’s book ‘We Fight Fascists’ about the fight of the mainly Jewish Anti-Fascist 43 Group after 1945 and the anti-Semitism of the Metropolitan Police.

It describes how the head of 'G' Division, Superintendent Charles Satterthwaite shouted 'Fucking Jew bastard!' at a Jewish anti-fascist Murry Silver as he repeatedly  beat him, whilst two of his officers held Silver against the wall.  Satterthwaite was described by one member of the 43 Group, Lennie Rolnick as a 'first class anti-Semite who would have done well at Belsen (concentration camp)’.

Historian Dave Renton found that anti-fascists were three times as likely to get arrested as fascists.  Sonabend asked why this was and his answer was ‘Widespread anti-Semitism in the Metropolitan Police force’. Nor was Satterthwaite the only officer who made regular reference to the faith of the anti-fascist disruptors he was arresting. Two young Group members from the East End, a hairdresser's assistant called Vidal Sassoon and his friend Mo Levy, had a particularly nasty run-in with the law, which Sassoon described in his autobiography.

One evening in Kilburn, we chased the fascists into a pub and were ourselves chased by the police. They arrested three of us. It took a long time to get to the police station which was only a few streets away. Two policemen held one of my comrades, Mo Levy, while a sergeant pounded him, beating him everywhere but the face, at the same time calling us 'dirty Jew bastards', 'fucking Yids who Hitler missed' and 'sons of foreign whores'.

Sonabend writes that

Knowing they were dealing with an institutionally anti­ Semitic organisation, the 43 Group's leadership were keen not to provoke the police. In fact, they went out of their way to be cooperative.’ 

Have the Police changed?  Yes in the sense they are no longer anti-Semitic, because the Jews are no longer on the left nor are they working class. Note that Sonabend described the Met as ‘institutionally anti-Semitic’ just as Black people in the 1980s and 1990s were to describe the Met as institutionally racist.

Jews have changed and the focus of the Met’s racism has changed but that is all. The Metropolitan Police have changed the target of their racism but they are still the same old  uniformed racists.

Today support for Israel and Zionism is the political rationale for their Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism. Israel is the most anti-Muslim country in the world and has formed an alliance with anti-Muslim racists such as Tommy Robinson, who was an Israeli government guest recently as well as individuals such as Dutch fascist, Geert Wilders.

In your statement Mark you said that ‘Our thoughts are with those who lost their lives, their families and those injured,’ referring to Jewish victims of the Australian attack. Over 100,000 Palestinians have been killed and hundreds of thousands injured in Gaza.  Children have been starved to death.  Yet you haven’t even acknowledged the death and destruction in Gaza. Your thoughts are with Australian Jews but not Palestinian children. What other explanation for this is there other than racism? Palestinian lives don’t matter because they are an indigenous people, the victims of western colonialism.

In your pathetic statement you say of Jewish people that

Jewish children attend schools behind fences, guarded by security and routine police patrols. No community should have to live like this. That must change.’

Really?  If Jews are under siege it is a siege of their own and your making.  You are deliberately making Jews into targets as a justification for the British State's support for Genocide. They are your colonial pets, hostages for your own malevolent intentions. Jews are the justification for the State's increased repression.

You say ‘Current laws are inadequate’.  Really?  You have been given more and more powers yet always you are dissatisfied. Perhaps when we have a fully fledged police state you will be satisfied? Or maybe when juries are finally abolished so that servile judges can be relied upon to rubber stamp your arrests and prosecutions.

It is not for you to comment on the adequacy of the law. Still less is it for you to define that law. For most people the laws are already too repressive and we know from past experience that it will be trade unionists, climate protesters, housing activists - indeed anyone bar employers and the rich who will feel their effects. 

What you want is a police state where people like you dictate the political agenda.  And speaking of dictating the political agenda you have all but outlawed chants such as “globalise the intifada”. Well I for one will make sure to include at least one mention of how the Intifada should be globalised. 

That is why today at a demonstration in Hove outside the offices of Vile Kyle MP, I repeated the slogan ‘Globalise the Intifada’ to make it clear that we, not you, will decide what we say.  Sussex police officers just looked on. So are we to have different laws now for different cities?   The Intifada is an Uprising against an Illegal Occupation. It has nothing to do with British Jews, much as you would like to lay the blame for Israel’s genocide on Jews.

We will not allow you to dictate what we are allowed to say and not say. You are paid to implement the law not to make the law.

We refuse to be stampeded into a police state by those who use Jews as the pretext for abolishing freedom of speech. When the Police decide what we are allowed to say and not say then we are already on the road to dictatorship.

It is time to move on Mark Rowley. You belong in a museum alongside all the other dinosaurs such as your role model, Gestapo Chief Heinrich Muller. As long as you are head of the Metropolitan Police we can expect a continuation of the racism that led the Met 30 years ago to covering up for the killers of Stephen Lawrence.

Tony Greenstein

Kathleen Folbigg – A Miscarriage of Justice that Cries to the Heavens

There was no evidence that she killed her 4 children – it was a presumption that their deaths couldn’t have been a coincidence which scientists have now discredited but Stubborn Australian Judges and Politicians Refuse to Admit Their Mistake

Fairfax Media/Getty Images, Kathleen Folbigg, pictured after a court hearing in 2004

It is often assumed that judges are impartial and juries are infallible. But as the false imprisonment of the Birmingham 6 and now Julian Assange shows judges are anything but unbiased or neutral. In the case of the Birmingham 6, Guildford 4 and Maguire 7 there were criminal conspiracies by the police. Nor was the scientific evidence infallible. The evidence of Dr Frank Skuse was discredited but still the Court of Appeal under Lord Lane upheld the conviction.

The Birmingham 6 on their release

If we had a law that any judge who wrongly turned down an appeal had to serve the same time in prison as the innocent person whose conviction they upheld there would be a dramatic reduction in such cases. However that is too much to hope for.

When the Birmingham 6 brought civil actions against the Police for having had confessions beaten out of them Lord Denning ruled against the appeal continuing.  Not because of lack of evidence but because of the implications of admitting that the Police had engaged in a conspiracy, alongside others.  Denning ruled in 1980 that:

“Just consider the course of events if their action were to proceed to trial… If the six men failed it would mean that much time and money and worry would have been expended by many people to no good purpose. If they won, it would mean that the police were guilty of perjury; that they were guilty of violence and threats; that the confessions were involuntary and improperly admitted in evidence; and that the convictions were erroneous… That was such an appalling vista that every sensible person would say, ‘It cannot be right that these actions should go any further’.”

As a result the men served 11 more years in prison. Not that Denning was alone. In 1987 the Birmingham 6 had a second appeal. By then the scientific evidence had been discredited as indeed had all the other evidence. But the 3 judges, led by LJ Lane went out of their way to discredit the defence case. I remember watching the reconstruction on Channel 4 and I was amazed at the sheer obstinacy and dishonesty of the judges. Lane began the verdict with the statement that “The longer this case has gone on, the more convinced this court has become that the verdict of the jury was correct.”

Infamous Police photo of the Birmingham 6

Three years later the Birmingham 6 were cleared by the same Court of Appeal. The Prosecution had conceded the case. A new scientific test, the ESDA test, had been invented that proved, through indentations on the pages of the notebooks that the Police used, proved that the confessions had been beaten out of them.

The notorious West Midlands Police’s response was to destroy the notebooks in their custody in similar cases.

However this article is not about the Irish cases. It is about an Australian woman, Kathleen Folbigg.  Four of her children died before the age of 2. It was a case of Sudden Infant Death.

The Sydney Morning Herald/Getty Images, Kathleen Folbigg (left) at her murder trial in 2003

There was no evidence that Kathleen had inflicted any violence on them or that they had suffered any violence. She was sentenced to 40 years in prison, 30 of them without parole.

Just as in the Irish cases above Australian judges have moved heaven and earth in order to protect an unsafe verdict and keep Kathleen in gaol.  Presumably they believe that losing her children is not enough punishment.

Research has shown that two of the children had genetic abnormalities that could have caused their death. To any reasonable person it would be obvious that there must be a presumption that the same is true with the other two  deaths. 

Yet wooden-headed judges and politicians prefer to keep Kathleen in gaol as and until scientists come up with the proof that the other 2 children also died because of a genetic abnormality.

The concept that an innocent person should have to wait as an until scientists have made further discoveries is in essence reversing the burden of proof and expecting the Defendant to prove their innocence rather than the other way around.

Australia, like Britain, is a common law country where judges make law and precedents.

90 distinguished scientists, including 2 Nobel laureates signed a petition calling for Kathleen’s release yet the Governor of New South Wales Margaret Beazley and the Attorney General Mark Speakman have deliberately prevaricated and delayed. Defending the reputation of NSW’s judicial system is more important than keeping an innocent person behind bars.

Australia’s ABC has produced the video above and the article below explains this appalling case in more detail. But this case is not unique to Australia or Britain. It is a consequence of judicial systems where process and procedures are considered more important than justice.

Perhaps the ultimate example of this lunatic addiction to procedure rather than justice is the application of Arizona state to the US Supreme Court that two prisoners should not be allowed to put forward evidence showing that they are innocent because they failed to do so in an earlier state court hearing despite the woeful incompetence of their state appointed lawyers.  In other words Arizona should have the right to judicially murder them because they were unable to afford decent lawyers!

The Justice for Kathleen Folbigg can be contacted here.

Tony Greenstein

Kathleen Folbigg: Could science free Australian jailed for killing babies?

By Quentin McDermott
Sydney

Published 11 March 2021 

Imagine for a moment what it must feel like if, as a mother, you give birth to four children, one after another, each of whom, as infants, dies from natural causes over a 10-year period.

Then imagine being wrongly accused of smothering them all and being sentenced to 30 years in jail for four terrible crimes you did not commit.

That narrative is emerging as potentially the true story of Kathleen Folbigg, an Australian mother from the Hunter Valley region of New South Wales (NSW).

Branded at her trial in 2003 as "Australia's worst female serial killer", Folbigg has already spent nearly 18 years in prison after being found guilty of the manslaughter of her firstborn Caleb, and the murder of her three subsequent children, Patrick, Sarah and Laura.

But now, fresh scientific evidence is turning this case on its head.

Last week a petition signed by 90 eminent scientists, science advocates and medical experts was handed to the Governor of NSW, requesting a pardon for Folbigg and her immediate release.

Among the signatories were two Nobel laureates and two Australians of the Year, a former chief scientist, and the president of the Australian Academy of Science, Professor John Shine, who commented: "Given the scientific and medical evidence that now exists in this case, signing this petition was the right thing to do."

If Folbigg is freed and her convictions are overturned, her ordeal will be seen as the worst miscarriage of justice in Australia's history - worse even than the case of Lindy Chamberlain, who served three years in prison after being wrongly convicted of murdering her baby, Azaria, at Uluru.

The petition exposes a troubling gulf in this case between science and the law.

Over several appeals and a detailed inquiry which re-examined Folbigg's convictions in 2019, Australia's judges have resolutely rejected the notion of reasonable doubt in her case, giving greater weight to the circumstantial evidence presented at her trial, and the ambiguous entries which she made in contemporaneous diaries.

Kathleen Folbigg and her children

"It remains that the only conclusion reasonably open is that somebody intentionally caused harm to the children, and smothering was the obvious method," said Reginald Blanch, a former judge who led the inquiry. "The evidence pointed to no person other than Ms Folbigg."

The NSW government further assured the public two years ago "that no stone has been left unturned".

But the science, increasingly, points to the conclusion that there must be reasonable doubt about her convictions. "The science in this case is compelling and cannot be ignored," says human geneticist and researcher Professor Jozef Gecz.

Child and public health researcher Professor Fiona Stanley says: "It is deeply concerning that medical and scientific evidence has been ignored, in preference of circumstantial evidence. We now have an alternative explanation for the death of the Folbigg children."

That alternative explanation lies in the recent discovery of a genetic mutation in Kathleen Folbigg and her two daughters which, the scientists say, was "likely pathogenic" and which they believe caused the deaths of the two girls, Sarah and Laura.

A different genetic mutation has been discovered in the two boys, Caleb and Patrick, although the scientists acknowledge that here, further research is needed.

The initial discovery of the two girls' mutant gene, CALM2 G114R, was made in 2019 by a team led by Carola Vinuesa, a professor of immunology and genomic medicine at the Australian National University, and a driving force behind the petition calling for Folbigg's release.

"We found a novel, never-before reported mutation in Sarah and Laura that had been inherited from Kathleen," Professor Vinuesa told the BBC.

"The variant was in a gene called CALM2 (that encodes for calmodulin). Calmodulin variants can cause sudden cardiac death."

In November last year, scientists from Australia, Denmark, France, Italy, Canada and the US reported further findings in the prestigious medical journal, Europace, published by the European Society of Cardiology.

Prof Carola Vinuesa's research led to the discovery of the mutant gene

A team in Denmark, led by Aalborg University Professor Michael Toft Overgaard, conducted experiments designed to test the pathogenicity of the CALM2 variant.

They found that the effects of the Folbigg mutation were as severe as those of other known CALM variants, which regularly cause cardiac arrests and sudden death, including in young children while asleep.

The scientists stated: "We consider the variant likely precipitated the natural deaths of the two female children."

Both girls were suffering from infections before they died, and the scientists suggested that: "A fatal arrhythmic event may have been triggered by their intercurrent infections."

The scientists also reported that Caleb and Patrick each carried two rare variants in BSN, a gene shown to cause early onset lethal epilepsy in mice.

The recent genetic discoveries follow in the footsteps of earlier expert medical opinions which support the theory that all four children died from natural causes.

Professor Stephen Cordner, a Melbourne based forensic pathologist, re-examined the children's autopsies in 2015, concluding that: "There is no positive forensic pathology support for the contention that any or all of these children have been killed." He added: "There are no signs of smothering."

Three years later, in 2018, forensic pathologist, Matthew Orde, Clinical Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: "Fundamentally, I'm in agreement with Professor Cordner, in that all four of these child deaths could be explained by natural causes."

Now, as Lindy Chamberlain did before her, Kathleen Folbigg bides her time in jail, awaiting the outcome of the petition and a recent hearing in the NSW Court of Appeal. She continues to protest her innocence.

An old fashioned morality tale on London’s Tube – how a racist thug was floored by a single punch

From New York to New Zealand the news of Billy Steele’s knock-out punch spread

It’s not often that we have a good news story with a happy ending. In this case it was racist boor and son of wealthy builders, who taunted 3 Black youth telling them to 'go back home'. What was heartening is that he received no support from fellow tube travellers with his racist outburst. How different this might have been 20 or 30 years ago.

As the youth got off the train one of them launched a devastating hook and Billy’s head was acquainted with the tube floor. It seems that it knocked some sense in him as he decided not to press charges.

The news of this latter day morality tale spread like wildfire, from London to New Zealand, Australia and New York. It was even covered in the Daily Mail and its sister paper The Metro but it is unlikely to have any lasting effect on these garbage sheets who spread news of the ‘invasion’ of desperate refugees stranded in Calais.

As the New York Post described it, Billy was flushed down the Tube!

Tony Greenstein

PS:  As Billy Steele was not wearing a face mask on public transport I hope the Police will be prosecuting the idiot.

Man knocked out cold after ‘racist’ rant aboard London Underground train

This racist was flushed down the Tube.

The unhinged straphanger was knocked out cold in a caught-on-video punch aboard a London Underground car after hurling abuse at a group of black passengers, whom he referred to as “pets.”

“This is my home and you’re all going back, and you know it as well,” the maniac yells in the shocking video shot on the Central Line, the Independent reported.

“You’re black!” he then shouts in the footage posted on the Twitter account @pktheterrible.

A woman apparently behind the camera then asks: “What’s that supposed to mean? What does being black have to do with anything?”

“Shut up!” he yells at her. “This is popular!”

The man begins swaying from the handrail as he shouts “lesser than us, they’re lesser than us” — and calls the group his “pets.”

In another clip, the deranged straphanger approaches a group of black passengers and provokes them as they get off at the Bank Station in central London.

Suddenly, one of them delivers the coup de grâce — a vicious right hook that sends him to the floor in a heap, to some laughter.

A man checks the pulse of the unconscious instigator as a woman says off camera: “Don’t help a racist.”

His knockout garnered 2.2 million views as of early Monday afternoon.

A British Transport Police rep said they were “aware of two videos on social media showing an incident on a Central Line Underground train on 15 August,” the Independent reported.

The investigation is ongoing.

What kind of democratic state threatens to expel a journalist for asking the ‘wrong’ question of a politician? The Jewish Democratic State of Israel

As Israel Threatens to Withdraw Antony Loewenstein’s Press Credentials why does the Guardian abandon him to the wolves?

Can you imagine it?  Theresa May is asked an awkward question about her £1,000 leather trousers or about what  ‘Brexit means Brexit’ actually means.  Or maybe Boris Johnson is asked to give the name of a foreign leader who he hasn’t offended or insulted?  You get the message. 

Antony Loewenstein - Journalist Threatened by Israel with Expulsion for Asking Zionist Politician Lapid an Awkward Question!

Yair Lapid says Jews can live nowhere else but Israel - Lapid has previously gone on record as saying it would 'bother him greatly' if his son married Rona not Rina.

The next day the Prime Minister’s press spokesman announces that serious consideration is being given to withdrawing the journalist’s press credentials, meaning that will therefore have to leave the country.  This is what happened to BBC correspondents in the democratic state of Zimbabwe, when they started asking awkward questions about Robert Mugabe.  Of course Israel is not Zimbabwe and therefore the BBC will not cover this story.  

Even in the UK or Western Europe, i.e. in most bourgeois democratic countries, journalists don’t get threatened with expulsion for asking awkward questions.  However Israel is a bogus democracy.  Sure it has the trappings of a democracy but pierce beneath the surface and it is a police state in all but name.  Torture, censorship, violent state racism, inbuilt discrimination.  It has the lot.

Lapid is seen here at a press conference with Israeli officers attacking the Israeli human rights organisation Breaking the Silence for publishing the testimony of Israeli soldiers that Israel committed war crimes in Gaza

Yair Lapid, a former Israeli TV journalist, is the leader of the ‘centrist’ Yesh Atid party in Israel’s Knesset.  He was in the coalition government with Netanyahu until 2015 and politically he is on the far-Right.  The fact that he is called a centrist demonstrates the nature of Israeli politics.  Earlier this year when the soldiers’ group, Breaking the Silence, published testimony from soldiers who had served in Operation Protective Edge about the war crimes that had been committed, it was Lapid who went out of his way to take part in demonising BTS.

In The Times of Israel Lapid said he would be ‘bothered’ if his son married a non-Jew.  Speaking on Galei Israel radio, Lapid said, “It bothers me, I admit. I say that if tomorrow my son came to me and said, ‘Dad, I want you to meet Rona, not Rina, and she’s Russian Orthodox or Catholic and we’re getting married and the kids won’t be Jewish’ — would that bother me? It would bother me greatly.'

This is not a matter of religious preference but out and out racism, because in Israel being Jewish is a question of race and national identification and that is the primary objection. 

Loewenstein asked a very reasonable question about Apartheid and Israel.  Understandably Zionists and Israeli politicians are sensitive about being compared to the Apartheid regime.  Having had the best of relations with the Apartheid regime when it was in existence, including supplying it with weapons, including nuclear technology, Israel doesn’t like being compared to Apartheid.  It is understandable.

The fact that Israel rules over 3-4 million Palestinians in the Occupied Territories without according them any civil or political rights, including the vote, and that it has done so for nearly 50 years is not apartheid according to Zionist apologists.  The fact that a Palestinian state is out of the question, because ‘there is no partner for peace’ doesn’t mean that the Palestinians can be allowed to destroy the ‘Jewish’ state through being granted the right to vote, thus making a fetish of democracy.

Israel within the 1948 borders is an ethnocracy, a Jewish state, despite 20% of the population being non-Jewish.  In practice that means that Israel within the 1967 borders is also an apartheid state.  But these are questions reasonable people can debate and discuss.

The real question however is, what kind of state is it that expels a journalist for asking the ‘wrong’ kind of question?

Tony Greenstein

Israel threatens to toss Antony Loewenstein after he asked Lapid question about apartheid

Philip Weiss

Antony Loewenstein

The Jerusalem Post reports that the Israeli government is thinking of ending Antony Loewenstein’s press credentials, forcing him to leave Jerusalem, because he asked a tough question of a government official.

Loewenstein, the Jerusalem-based author most recently of the book Disaster Capitalism, has gotten wide support from journalists in the hours since the story broke, including Max Blumenthal and Mairav Zonszein and others on Loewenstein’s twitter feed.

Here’s the story.

On December 12, Loewenstein attended an appearance of Yair Lapid, the leader of the Yesh Atid (There is a Future) party and a former finance minister, at the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem’s King David Hotel.

Loewenstein asked him: 

You talked before about the idea that since Oslo, Israel has done little or nothing wrong but the truth is that 2017 is the 50th anniversary of the occupation, there are now 600,00 to 800,000 settlers, all of whom are regarded by international law as illegal. Is there not a deluded idea here that many Israeli politicians, including yourself, continue to believe that one can talk to the world about democracy, freedom and human rights while denying those things to millions of Palestinians and will there not come a time soon where you and other politicians will be treated like South African politicians during Apartheid?

Lapid gave an answer, video of which he posted on his Facebook page.

“We live in a post-truth postfacts era… You just gave us a perfect example. These are presumptions, not facts. It’s a declared policy of Israel that we need to go to a two-state solution and the ones who refused it were the Palestinians. The ones who call Jews pigs and monkeys in their school books are the Palestinians. And the problem is that the Palestinians are encouraged by the Guardian and others saying we don’t need to do anything in order to work for our future because the international community will call Israel an apartheid country. Israel is not an apartheid country, Israel is a law-abiding democracy. Unlike by the way the Palestinians, Israel is make sure that human rights are protected in this area. Why don’t you go to the Palestinian Authority or to Gaza and ask them about women rights and gay rights and Christian rights and why is it that you can’t be safe there if you don’t follow the Islamic sharia?

Loewenstein posted an account on his site, “Senior politician doesn’t like question about occupation, spits dummy.” Loewenstein commented: 

It was a depressing and dishonest answer. Furthermore, with a few notable exceptions, the vast majority of journalists in attendance were deferential to Lapid and asked him bland questions. Lapid is a man who proudly talks about building a wall around all Palestinians. Like in so many countries, most reporters rarely challenge establishment power; they’re afraid of losing access…

I’ve been writing about Israel and Palestine since 2003, and visiting since 2005 (I now live in Jerusalem), and all that’s worsened is the extremism and vitriol of Israel supporters.

That day the Jerusalem Post then covered the question and answer. “Lapid: ‘Guardian’ delays Mideast conflict solution.”

Then a pro-Israel site began publicizing the fact that Loewenstein has supported Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel, or BDS, and spoke in favor of it at a rally in Sydney in 2014: “BDS is growing and I’m proud to be part of a global movement that’s led by the Palestinians most directly affected.”

Today the Jerusalem Post has followed up with a story saying that the Israeli government is considering not renewing Loewenstein’s press card, so that he would have to leave the country in the spring.

A journalist who has allegedly engaged in activity supportive of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement may not be able to remain in Israel, the Government Press Office told The Jerusalem Post exclusively on Sunday.

GPO director Nitzan Chen said he was leaning against renewing the press card of Antony Loewenstein, a Jerusalem- based freelance reporter who writes for The Guardian and other publications. If the card is not renewed when it expires in March, the Interior Ministry will not allow him to remain in Israel.

“We are leaning toward recommending that his work permit not be renewed due to suspected BDS activity,” Chen said. “We are checking the incident because unfortunately, the journalist did not give enough information to our staff. We will learn to check better so there won’t be such incidents in the future.”

The Post did say eight paragraphs down:

Loewenstein noticeably directed what was seen as a hostile question toward Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid at an FPA event last Monday.

In his post today, titled Free Speech in the Jewish State, Loewenstein offers some corrections and comments:

• For over a decade, I’ve been an independent journalist and best-selling author who has written for major media outlets from across the world, including the Guardian and New York Times, and I’ve worked and lived as an investigative reporter in some of the toughest places in the world including Afghanistan, South Sudan and Honduras. I’m currently based in Jerusalem as an accredited, freelance journalist – my freelance credentials were accepted by the Israeli Press Office this year as I’m not formally associated with any media group – and have published my work this year in many publications including Newsweek Middle East, the Guardian, The Nation and The National.

• Truly free nations respect and encourage free speech. They welcome it;

• Real democracies value diversity of opinion.

Loewenstein is a dear friend, so we can’t even pretend to be objective, but this is disheartening, and we’ll keep you posted.

Australia's biggest media union opposes expulsion of Loewenstein

Australia’s biggest media union supports free speech in Israel

In the last 24 hours the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) union, Australia’s leading media union representing the country’s best journalists, (I’ve been a member since 2003/2004), has sent the following letter to the Israeli Ambassador in Australia, the Australian Ambassador in Israel, Dave Sharma, and the Israeli Government Press Office:

His Excellency Shmuel Ben‐Shmuel

Embassy of Israel in Australia
6 Turrana Street
Yarralumla ACT 2600

Email: info@canberra.mfa.gov.il

20 December 2016

Your Excellency

Antony Loewenstein is a member of our union and a well known freelance journalist in Australia.

We write to seek your assistance in ensuring he continues to receive appropriate support and accreditation to continue his journalism while in Israel.

We have been concerned by recent reports suggesting the Government Press Office in Israel may be considering either withdrawing or not renewing his accreditation. As an issue of free speech, any assistance you could offer would be greatly appreciated.

Yours sincerely

Paul Murphy
Chief Executive Officer

Israel threatens to expel reporter who asked apartheid question

Israel jails Palestinian journalists and threatens to revoke permits of international journalists, including Australia’s Antony Loewenstein, pictured in 2014, over unfavorable coverage. (Claudio Accheri)

Israel is threatening to expel an Australian journalist in Jerusalem, accusing him of being a supporter of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

The threat against Antony Loewenstein comes after the freelance journalist asked a question about Israeli apartheid at a press conference given by former government minister Yair Lapid, and after a campaign against him by the anti-Palestinian group HonestReporting.

“We are leaning toward recommending that his work permit not be renewed due to suspected BDS activity,” Nitzan Chen, director of the Government Press Office, told The Jerusalem Post. “We are checking the incident because unfortunately, the journalist did not give enough information to our staff. We will learn to check better so there won’t be such incidents in the future.”

Speaking to The Electronic Intifada, Loewenstein, who has won recognition for his reporting from South Sudan and Afghanistan, dismissed any suggestion he had misrepresented himself.

“I am an accredited freelance journalist which is how I presented my work to the Israeli government in March, which they accepted,” Loewenstein said. “I’m not here associated with any organization. I’m here as a freelancer, officially, so there’s been no misrepresentation by me, ever.”

Loewenstein has written about the region for more than a decade, including the bestselling book My Israel Question.

Growing crackdown

The effective threat to expel Loewenstein comes a week after the Committee to Protect Journalists revealed that this year Israel remained among the world’s worst jailers of reporters – all of those in its cells are Palestinians.

And earlier this month, Israel detained and expelled Isabel Phiri, associate general secretary of the World Council of Churches, claiming she too supports BDS.

Last week, Israel’s Shin Bet secret police barred entry to two leaders of a British Muslim humanitarian aid group, citing “security reasons.” The two officials from Muslim Hands were invited to the country by the Abraham Fund Initiatives, which the Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz describes as “a nonprofit group that promote coexistence, cooperation and equality between Jews and Muslims.”

In August, Israel’s public security and interior ministries set up a joint task force to deny entry to or expel foreign activists allegedly affiliated with organizations that support BDS.

This is part of a broader crackdown, whose primary targets are Palestinians.

On Friday, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that it has been receiving a “worryingly high number of complaints” about Israel violating basic rights of Palestinian human rights activists.

It said that human rights defenders living under Israeli occupation “face daily violations of some of the most fundamental protections afforded by international human rights and humanitarian laws.”

The UN said peaceful protest and opposition to the occupation is effectively outlawed.

Anatomy of a smear

Loewenstein became a target after he asked a challenging question at a press conference last week to Yair Lapid, head of the Yesh Atid party that was formerly part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government.

“You talked before about the idea that since Oslo, Israel has done little or nothing wrong, but the truth is that 2017 is the 50th anniversary of the occupation,” Loewenstein began, according to The Jerusalem Post.

Pointing to the large number of Israeli settlers now in the occupied West Bank, Loewenstein continued: “Is there not a deluded idea here that many Israeli politicians, including yourself, continue to believe that one can talk to the world about democracy, freedom and human rights while denying that to millions of Palestinians, and will there not come a time soon, in a year, five years, 10 years, where you and other politicians will be treated like South African politicians during apartheid?”

In response, Lapid attacked The Guardian, claiming that it and other publications are encouraging Palestinians to be intransigent.

From there, HonestReporting, a pro-Israel group whose managing editor once worked in the Israeli army spokesperson’s unit, launched a campaign against Loewenstein.

It called him “an anti-Israel activist” and implied he had obtained his official Israeli press card and membership in the Foreign Press Association under false pretenses.

“Loewenstein is clearly incapable of reporting on Israel in a fair and objective manner,” HonestReporting asserted.

“Did Loewenstein gain his official press card by claiming to be a Guardian writer?” the group asked, effectively making an allegation without any basis.

HonestReporting took its campaign to The Guardian directly, complaining to the newspaper that 

“hiring Loewenstein was the equivalent of hiring a corporate lobbyist to be the newspaper’s business correspondent.”

This apparently elicited the desired response: The Guardian threw Loewenstein under the bus – presumably without speaking to him first.

According to The Jerusalem Post, The Guardian’s head of international news, Jamie Wilson, said that Loewenstein was contracted to write comment pieces for Guardian Australia and remains an occasional comment contributor but he “is not a news correspondent for The Guardian in Israel.”

And The Guardian’s correspondent in Jerusalem, Peter Beaumont, emailed HonestReporting that he had never heard of Loewenstein.

“The Guardian’s distancing itself from Loewenstein is a welcome development,” HonestReporting’s managing editor Simon Plosker said, adding that the Foreign Press Association should revoke Loewenstein’s membership and the Israeli Government Press Office should cancel his accreditation.

Loewenstein told The Electronic Intifada that he identifies himself accurately as a freelancer and author of several books, who contributes to many publications, including The Guardian, The New York Times and Newsweek Middle East.

Loewenstein noted that in the tight-knit world of foreign correspondents in Israel, it would be impossible to get away with misrepresentation: “It’s a pretty small place.”

But the smear did its job and now Loewenstein is a target for government expulsion for asking a challenging question of an Israeli leader.

In February, the Committee to Protect Journalists condemned Israel’s intimidation of the international media, including threats to revoke the credentials of reporters who published headlines it didn’t like.

“It is virtually impossible to work as a reporter in Israel and the occupied territories without a press card,” the group’s executive director Robert Mahoney said. “The threat of withdrawing accreditation is a heavy handed approach at stifling unwelcome coverage.”