Open Letter to Ben Jamal, Director of Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Instead of Helping Implement the Proscription of Palestine Action You Should Be Doing Your Best to Frustrate It - As Martin Luther King said:

Please note the date is wrong but the link is correct.

It is Friday 4 July 7.30 pm

Register Here

bit.ly/PalActionPlan 

If you want to add your name to this Open Letter please let me know at azvsas@gmail.com

Monday 30 June, 2025

Dear Ben Jamal,

I write as one of the original founders of Palestine Solidarity Campaign although I resigned in 2022 as a result of PSC’s abandonment of anti-Zionism in the new Constitution which you supported.

I have subsequently observed in wry amusement that you now claim to have been anti-Zionist all along. However as long as you don’t call for the replacement of  a Jewish Supremacist state by a Unitary Democratic State it is impossible to consider PSC anti-Zionist.

We are living through the world’s first live streamed genocide in Gaza and the fulfilment of Zionism’s Messianic End Times. US and British imperialism are wedded to supporting Hitler’s Bastard Offspring. Today when genocidal and exterminationist ideas are commonplace in Israel and when nearly half of Israeli Jews support exterminating the Palestinians of Gaza, the last thing we should do is retreat in the face of government threats of proscription. Today the Nazi doctrine of Death by Hunger is the official policy of the Israeli government.

Ben Jamal

Despite the creation of a mass Palestine solidarity movement, both in Britain and internationally, we have not been able to stop the Genocide. At best we have been able to limit the carnage and force Zionism’s mafia bosses in Tel Aviv to admit a bare minimum of aid.

PSC, together with Stop the War Coalition and other groups, have organised impressive demonstrations in London but by themselves they have failed to change British government policy, wedded as it is to NATO and the alliance with the United States. Today we are led by war criminals and we must act accordingly.

A chance was missed in January when the Police banned the march from starting from outside the BBC. The Metropolitan Police adopted wholesale the Zionist smear that the marches offended Jews worshipping in a distant synagogue,. Instead of saying that you would call the march at the BBC regardless of the Police’s attempt at sabotage you meekly complied by rearranging the starting point in Whitehall, which enabled the Police to kettle, harass, arrest and attack protestors.

By way of contrast, one of the most successful groups in the past five years has been Palestine Action.  It has been so successful that the government has been forced to try and proscribe it as a terrorist organisation. This is the first attempt to ban a protest group as ‘terrorists’. This attempt has been met with a wave of opposition from other protest  and civil liberties groups, charities and academics reaching into the Home Office itself.

If anything represented a line in the sand then this is surely the issue – the proscription of a protest group as ‘terrorists’. It is an assault on the most basic of rights of a democratic society, the right to protest and freedom of speech, Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention of Human Rights.

As you are aware, having often quoted them yourself, protest movements have a long history of defying coercive and repressive laws when democratic rights and basic freedoms were under attack. Slavery abolitionists, trade unionists, Chartists and Suffragettes were prepared to put themselves on the line. As Martin Luther King said in his Letter from a Birmingham Gaol

‘one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."

A law, which is passed, which erodes our democratic rights is an immoral law. This was the position of the Suffragettes, the Chartists and all manner of social movements in the past. This is a law fit for a Police State and yet you insist that PSC branches and members meekly comply. In your ‘advice’ you write

PSC’s position is clear – we will not allow any branch to jeopardise the organisation and the movement by taking such actions in the name of PSC. It is vitally important for all branches to understand this and to act accordingly – ensure that no branch communications profess support for a proscribed organisation, that no events are planned in support of a proscribed organisation, and that no clothing or signs are used which profess support for a proscribed organisation

The Police, the Courts and the State have been implacably opposed to the Palestine solidarity movement.  Why?  Because the West’s alliance with Israel is based on strategic imperialist interests. Israel is the West’s attack dog. This is why Palestine Action has been targeted. To the state Palestine Action’s opposition to Britain’s military co-operation with Israel is no different from that of Hamas. Hence the proposed proscription.

Whereas Western regimes have supported the Zionists the people have supported the Palestinians as opinion polls have consistently demonstrated.  The reception of the audience at Glastonbury to Kneecap and Bobby Vylan’s chants of ‘death to the IDF’ demonstrates who has the ear of the young.

We see this in the decision of the High Court on Monday approving the sale of F-35 components even though the judges knew full well that they will be used to commit genocide.

The Guardian reported on Saturday that ‘concerns about proscribing Palestine Action extended into the home secretary’s own department.’ A senior civil servant was quoted as saying that ‘Home Office staff are concerned about the “absurd” decision to ban Palestine Action under UK anti-terrorism laws.’

 “From desk to desk, colleagues are exchanging concerned and bemused conversations about how absurd this is and how impossible it will be to enforce. Are they really going to prosecute as terrorists everyone who expresses support for Palestine Action’s work to disrupt the flow of arms to Israel as it commits war crimes?

If ever there was a time for civil disobedience it is now. It is fine citing the example of groups in the past which broke the law for the common good but there comes a time when PSC has to decide which is more important – obedience to the law or solidarity with the Palestinians. If PSCrefuses to contemplate civil disobedience it is more of an NGO than a solidarity campaign.

The time to refuse to accede to the proscription of Palestine Action, whilst Zionist genocide groups go unmolested, is now. If thousands of people openly defy the proscription by refusing to accept Police State Starmer’s equation of Protest Groups with Terrorism then the law will  become inoperable.

As it says in Ecclesiastes 3 (and Pete Seeger’s song Turn, Turn, Turn)

‘To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.’

Now is that time but to the leadership of PSC, afraid as you are of your own shadow, the idea of civil disobedience is something you praise in history not something you yourselves participate in. Past heroism is easy to praise. Doing it yourself is something else.

PSC has never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Unlike the Anti-Apartheid Movement of the 1970s it is afraid to build a popular movement that challenges the State’s support for genocide. The vast majority of the population, both in Europe and the United States are utterly sick of the genocide in Gaza yet PSC is afraid of breaking the law. 

Now is the ideal time to put a spoke into the Zionist wheel. Now is the time to defy yet another anti-Palestinian law with both right and public opinion on our side. Yet what do you do?  You instruct members and branches of PSC to fully implement the ban on supporting Palestine Action if the law comes into effect. Let’s be blunt. You are doing the work of the Zionists for them. You don’t know what to do with a mass movement except march them up the hill and down again.

You have no perspective beyond the accumulation of funds and the employment of more staff.  PSC has made over a million pounds from Israel’s genocide in Gaza yet politically you are still as timid as when, in 2022, you took anti-Zionism out of the constitution.

What is your justification? The threat of 14 year prison sentences? I doubt if even Lady Justice Carr, the most reactionary Chief Justice since Lord Denning would dare impose such a sentence but more importantly public opinion would not stand for it. The best way of avoiding prison sentences is mass defiance of the law such that it will be impossible to implement it since it is clear to all that Palestine Action is not a terrorist group. Embedding a lie within the law will not make it true.

A mural was painted in Gaza over a year ago to thank us for taking direct action against Israel’s war machine.

Now, more than ever, Palestinians need us to step up.

Join our workshop tomorrow and #ShutElbitDown: https://t.co/Aw3ubRyNC0 pic.twitter.com/cBqMk5gUuz

— Palestine Action (@Pal_action) October 20, 2023

Your fear of challenging the unjust laws that Yvette Cooper is proposing stems from your fear of upsetting the applecart. To be blunt you are afraid of challenging the undemocratic British state and prefer to sacrifice the Palestinians instead. It was not PSC but Palestine Action that had a mural painted for it in Gaza.  Palestine Action have achieved in 5 years more than PSC have done in 40.

What is the purpose of PSC if not to support the Palestinians?  Palestine Action has closed 3 Elbit factories and premises in its five years of existence. It has posed a challenge to the Israeli state’s operations in this country which PSC with all its staff and resources have not been able to match. Hence its proscription.

I am not at all surprised by your behaviour. When Palestine Action was formed in July 2020 PSC did all that it could to strangle it at birth. Your ‘legal advice’ then was a carbon copy of your advice today. You wrote:

PSC has sought legal advice about the potential liabilities arising from the commission of acts of criminal damage of high monetary levels ... If the value of the damage caused exceeds £5000 a person can be sentenced to a maximum of 10 years imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine.

These liabilities potentially extend to both individuals encouraging or assisting criminal acts (including, for example, providing financial support), and organisations, including PSC branches that offered encouragement or assistance.

These concerns are not raised because PSC, or the BDS Movement is opposed to any form of direct action. Instead, they are raised because of the strategic and legal risks associated with the type of action being conducted by the group.

If supporters of the Palestinians had taken your advice and if members of PSC had gone along with it then Palestine Action would not have existed. You were forced to change course because PSC members and supporters disregarded your advice. Today you write that:

Publicly inviting support, for example through a social media post, wearing clothing which indicates support, or arranging a meeting where a member of a proscribed organisation speaks or a speech indicating support for the organisation is given are all criminal offences which can carry prison sentences of up to 14 years

That is true, theoretically and that is why mass action in defiance of this law is necessary and should be organised, with PSC’s help if possible, without it if necessary. The proscription of Palestine Action can only be challenged by mass defiance, not the timidity of PSC under your tutelage. PSC itself should be taking the lead instead of trying to frighten its members. There is nothing stopping national PSC declaring that its support for PA remains unchanged.

You and the leadership of PSC have always been hostile to PA because you saw it as a competitor. In January 2022 when PA achieved its first victory with the closure of Elbit’s Oldham factory PSC was eager to claim the credit. You issued a statement which said:

We pay tribute to all those who have campaigned since Elbit Systems purchased the site in 2007, including many members of the Manchester PSC branch 

As I wrote at the time:

‘I have to pay tribute to whoever drafted the statement. It must have taken some effort to draft a statement welcoming the closure of the factory without at the same time mentioning the group which was responsible for the campaign that was responsible for this success.

Because British imperialism supports Zionism and Israel there is no legal way to prevent the state supporting Israel short of mass action. That is why defiance of the law is an essential component of any solidarity action. Of course that does not mean we defy the law on any and every occasion but we choose the time and place. This is such an occasion. The classifying of a protest group as a terrorist group breaks new ground. It is a red line for more than just the Palestine solidarity movement. It has united Palestine solidarity supporters with virtually the whole liberal and even not so liberal establishment. It is indefensible. If any issue was likely to be won by a refusal to cowtow to the Police and State this is the time.

Your real reasons for opposing a refusal to implement the law have nothing to do with possible prison sentences for those who defy the law. They have everything to do with your empire building and the cushy salaries that comes with it.

You say that ‘The people of Palestine are depending on us now, during their darkest hour, and we cannot afford to let them down.’ Yet by colluding in the implementation of this law that is precisely what you are doing. You are helping the British state implement this police state law.

Tony Greenstein

Supported by:

Leeds Students Against Apartheid Coalition

Unis Resist Border Controls (URBC)

Meet Central Synagogue’s Fascist Rabbi who the Met are using as a Pretext to Ban Protests Outside the BBC

Barry Lerer called on Lammy to Apologise for  Suspending 8% of Britain’s Arms Supplies to Israel & Blamed Palestinian Parents for Israel’s Murder of Their Children 

 

Above is an interview by Ben Jamal of PSC with Middle East Eye where he quotes extracts from sermons made at the Central Synagogue.

The synagogue's rabidly far-right Rabbi Barry Lerer and his synagogue have hosted a never ending series of right-wing figures including Michael Howard, Boris's sister Rachel Johnson and Theresa Villiers MP - as well as the mad genocidal ‘journalist’ Melanie Phillips and Campaign Against Anti-Semitism’s Gideon Falter.

Fascist Lerer has as much right to his political views as Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson but this helps us understand why he has complained to the Met. He totally ignores, not just secular left-wing Jews, but religious Jews who attend the Palestine demos and who are very warmly received.

Since a Novara article this week, the synagogue has taken down the webpages of its sermons, so I have added some extracts from these sermons as footnotes to. Google has a record of all these webpages so any extracts can be confirmed.

Lerer condemns the UN, the International Court of Justice and ends up quoting the equally far right Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, who was trained in a settler yeshivah, to the effect that Israel is going to extraordinary lengths to protect human life.

If after at least 200,000 deaths, including indirect deaths, the deliberate starvation of the Palestinians of Gaza, the deliberate bombing of tent encampments burning their inhabitants alive, Lerer thinks that Israel is taking care to uphold humanitarian law one can only assume that he is a fantasist, a liar or both. Or just a raving loony fascist of the type that used to stick out their right arm.

Either way this is the kind of person the Institutionally Racist Metropolitan Police is relying on to enforce their ban.

Perhaps accusing Palestinians of being ‘human animals’ as Israel’s Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, did, in an echo of Himmler’s description of Jews is upholding humanitarian law?  On 9^th October Gallant declared:

“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” Gallant says following an assessment at the IDF Southern Command in Beersheba.

“We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,”

Or Netanyahu’s comparison of Palestinians with Amalek whom god commanded the Israelites to wipe out to every man, woman or children.  Or Bezalel Smotrich’s saying that it is morally right to starve 2 million people.

If Netanyahu and Gallant are really upholders of humanitarian law, despite the warrants out for their arrest by the International Criminal Court then we must reassess Hitler and Goebbels. Perhaps they too have been misjudged.

The Sermons of Rabbi Barry Lerer    (before they were removed this week from Central Synagogue’s website)

The Rabbi of the synagogue that is closest to the BBC - and who the police have made clear has been one of the people saying I and my congregants feel unsafe – says that he’s twice had to put back services, to delay them, to prevent the service taking place when we're there. He's not provided any evidence that anyone's tried to go to the Central Synagogue, harass people etc.. But he said we can hear them chanting genocidal chants inside the synagogue.

What does he mean by genocidal chants. He's talking about people chanting from “The River To The Sea Palestine Will Be Free”. So the argument is: we're inside a synagogue, we can hear this in the background; we know there are people with Palestinian flags etc. - that's harassing.

It's worth saying something about this rabbi’s political positions which came to light yesterday and was covered by Novara media. He has published sermons on the synagogue's website in which he attacked Starmer, calling him 'two-tier Kier'. He said that the government effectively, and the policing it enforces, is unfairly hard on the far-right but has another rule for those on the left.[1]

Barry Lerer accused the BBC of being horrendously anti-Israel.[2] He's criticized the UN and says the International Court of Justice and the decisions made by the ICJ are lies.[3]

Most notoriously and shamefully, in a sermon he quoted Golda Meir, who notoriously said ‘We'll have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us’.[4] And he's also talked about the need to go on the attack against our enemies wherever they exist.

“It is time to go to combat our enemies, not only on the battlefield, but the hostile press, those on social media, the UN and Governments who have no desire for the truth or peace and seek the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people.”[5]

What that demonstrates is the police are taking evidence from this person with egregious views [as if he’s a] good faith actor who's informing them that they have to prevent people protesting for the rights of the Palestinian people from going within any sort distance of his synagogue regardless of whether he's got a service on or not.

It is clear that Rabbi Barry Lerer is an out and out racist so it’s no surprise at all that the institutionally racist Metropolitan Police should use him as an excuse to ban protests at the BBC. But that is all they are – pretexts and excuses.

For someone to blame Palestinian parents for the deaths of their children, 20,000+ of whom have been deliberately murdered by Israel in Gaza is beyond vile.  Perhaps he would like to blame Jewish parents for the death of their parents in Nazi Germany?  Israel has deliberately targeted Palestinian children. Hind Rajab wasn’t killed by her parents but by deliberate Israeli tank fire.

[1] “Elon Musk has accused Kier Starmer of being two teir Keir- with the Government and policing policies having one rule for those on the right and another for those on the left. This was apparent in the heavy handed policing of the recent demonstrations here in UK …” Rabbi Lerer, Sermon, 7 August 2024. (This sermon was made just after the far right, anti-immigrant riots of last summer)

[2] “A major study published this week by Assersons, a British law firm based in Tel Aviv where my brother works is a sobering read. A dedicated team used AI to follow four months of war coverage. It identified over 1500 breaches of the BBC’s own guidelines on impartiality and accuracy. Time and again after 7^th October the BBC’s output soft-soaped Hamas’s atrocities while depicting Israel as ‘militaristic and aggressive’.

Israel was 4 times more likely to be associated with war crimes in BBC reporting than Hamas, whose entire campaign from October 7 onwards has consisted of war crimes against both Israeli and Gaza civilians. Israel was 14 times more likely to be associated with genocide and six times more likely to be associated with breaking international law.

We’re also reminded of the BBC’s stubborn refusal to call Hamas terrorists. Instead insisting on referring to 7 October as a ‘militant attack’- and how they claimed why they weren’t using the T-word by saying that they ‘don’t take sides’, and won’t use loaded words like “evil” or “cowardly” and how they don’t talk about “terrorists”.’

But we all know that this isn’t true. The BBC has referred often to ‘far-right terrorism’ and even wondered if incels are adherents to a ‘far-right terrorist ideology’. And as for impartiality, we all know the BBC takes sides all the time – on Brexit, climate change, woke etc. As Brendan Oneill wrote– Faced with a thousand dead Jews, the Beeb finally rediscovered the importance of impartiality.” Sermon, 14 September, 2024.

[3] “This past year has been an Annis Horibilis for the Jewish Community and for the State of Israel. It feels like we have been in a boxing ring with a World Heavyweight Champion. We seem to be knocked down again and again whether it be the constant Israel bashing in the media, the threats and missiles of Hamas and Hezbollah. The sham trials in the ICJ. The demonstrations on University campuses. The constant lies being spread at the UN. Iran’s missile attack just before Pesach. The cold blooded murder of 6 of the hostages just a month or so ago. We have been broken and even shattered time and again- but we are not out.” Sermon, 2 or 3 October 2024.

Earlier in that same sermon, Rabbi Lerer said: “For anyone who has visited Israel over these 12 months they would have seen Posters and Banners all over the Holy land read Yachad Ninatzeach- together we will be victorious! And this was shown by the tens of thousands of Israelis who returned from all around the world to Israel after October 7^th to fight – because we don’t have another land….”

[4] “And of course we think of the how children have been killed on both sides of the conflict. How children have been orphaned on both sides of the conflict. We are reminded of Golda Meir’s famous quote “We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”” Sermon 3 or 4 October 2024.

[5] Sermon 28 September.

Earlier in that same sermon, Rabbi Lerer said:

“We must succeed in our mission—standing firm, striving for a better world, and embracing the truth. As one voice we stand up to antisemitism and we call on the hostages to be released. The state of Israel is also standing. Standing up against the Hezbollah bullies who have rained daily rockets since October 8th, caused many deaths (including civilians and children) and displaced over 60,000 people in the North from their homes for the past year who have been living as refugees in their own country. Israel is standing up against the world and governments and media who chose not to see or not to comment on any of those events over the past year- their eyes were too focussed on Rafah….now that Israel is finally responding they have all of a sudden woken up- condemning Israel of course and calling for a ceasefire.

The United Nations General Assembly last week voted 124 to 14 against Israel’s right to defend itself, with 43 countries abstaining, including nations like Germany, England, Australia, and Canada....” (This sermon was made just after the Israeli attack on Lebanon from 23 September.)

Earlier in another sermon, on 7 September, Rabbi Lerer said:

"In a press conference later that day Prime Minister Netanyahu also apologised “To the families of the six hostages, I ask for your forgiveness that we did not succeed in bringing them home alive. We were close, but we did not make it.”

But where were the other apologies? Where were the apologies of the USA – Hersh’s country of birth?

Where is the apology from the David Lammy the Foreign Secretary who, on the day of these funerals and while five British citizens are still being held hostage in Gaza, decided to announce the suspension of thirty arms licenses to Israel? Accusing Israel of breaching Humanitarian Law when as the Chief Rabbi says “it is in fact going to extraordinary lengths to uphold it!” As Brendan O’Neill wrote… in normal times, such a flagrant moral abandonment of our old ally of Israel would be geopolitically foolish; in the wake of the 7 October pogrom and its unleashing of a global wave of Jew hate, it feels nothing short of sickening."

See the Press Statement of Jewish Network for Palestine

If you want to be a football hooligan you should be an Israeli football hooligan – then Israel will give you compensation if you get injured

 The press & the world’s leaders ignored the racist attacks of Tel Aviv Maccabi Fans & concentrated on the Justified Reaction to these Fascist Thugs

When Lies & Disinformation Become the Norm It Means That We Have Entered an Era of Permanent War – What happened in Amsterdam was not a Pogrom but Israeli thugs getting a taste of their own medicine

Israeli hooligans provoke clashes in Amsterdam after chanting anti-Palestinian slogans

Truth they say is the first casualty of war and this has been particularly evident in the coverage of the fight back by Dutch citizens when attacked by Israel’s racist football fans.

Once again ‘anti-Semitism’ has proven to be the false anti-racism of the right. It is the only ‘racism’ that they are concerned about. Ursula von der Leyen, the far-right German President of the European Commission couldn’t restrain herself. It was all about ‘anti-Semitism’. Nothing about attacks on Arabs or Dutch citizens.

What von der Liar was saying that any amount of anti-Arab racism and attacks on Arabs was ok, but if the victims should fight back then that would be ‘anti-Semitism’.

90 years ago this plastic von Pappen figure would have been complaining about the Jews of Germany. The idea that von der Liar would have stood out to oppose Nazi anti-Semitism is wishful thinking. The Nazis were put in power by the German conservative Deutsche National Volks Party of which Liar’s Christian Democrats are the heir.

Another pip squeak to put his oar in was Dutch Prime Minister, Dick Schoof, who decried “antisemitic attacks on Israeli citizens.”

Excellent short Owen Jones podcast

It is one of the talents of our rulers that they can spout any amount of verbiage without actually saying anything. Even Holland’s King, Willem-Alexander got into the act which proves that there is no fool like a Royal Fool.

history has taught us how intimidation goes from bad to worse, with horrific consequences. Jewish people must feel safe in the Netherlands

What history has taught us is that any group of people can become racists and genocidaires, Jewish people included. Racism is not a biological inheritance. 

This is the senile fool who said he'd seen photos of the heads of severed babies after October 7 until it was 'walked back' by the White House  - Biden is a genocidal liar

What Schoof and Willem-Alexander forget is that they represent the Dutch State which bent over backwards to collaborate with the Nazi occupation, unlike Denmark nearby. The Blue Police, the predecessors of today’s Dutch Police thugs, took an active part, alongside the Gestapo, in winkling out Jews in hiding. I really don’t think we need lessons from the heirs of Nazi collaborators.

Anne Frank was not a Zionist but unfortunately Zionists have colonised all the holocaust memorial organisation. Anne considered Zionists as freaks. All the so-called holocaust organisations have echoed to the same lies

Instead of pointing out that Israel’s fans got a dose of their own medicine Schoof wittered on about anti-Semitism. As did Starmer and Lammy.

It would be too much to expect Lammy, the Black face of imperialism to come out for once with an original thought

Sky News Deletes Video and Substituted a Lying One Instead

Sky News has edited and re-uploaded a new version of their video on the violence in Amsterdam, claiming the previous edit “didn’t meet Sky News’ standards for balance and impartiality.”

In other words, they changed it to be more sympathetic to the Israeli rioters who instigated… https://t.co/bP8HEbZoAJ pic.twitter.com/ZY6xHkZfE5

— Wyatt Reed (@wyattreed13) November 10, 2024

ISRAËLISCHE HOOLIGANS ZETTEN AMSTERDAM OP ZIJN KOP (ENG SUB) 

As Jonathan Cook wrote:

We know that an early report from the scene by Sky News’ reporter was one of the only to correctly describe the video as showing Israeli hooliganism, not antisemitism.

But Sky quickly took down that report, saying it wasn't "balanced". The channel then heavily re-edited the segment and issued a new version that presented the footage – now wrongly – as evidence of Dutch locals attacking Israeli fans.

That was crucial to shoring up the false “antisemitism” and “pogrom” narratives spread by western politicians and the establishment media.

Here's where it gets even more disturbing. The Dutch photographer interviewed by Jones says she was interviewed by Sky News about her footage before the second, re-edited report was aired.

In other words, not only was Sky's reporter correct in her first account of the events in Amsterdam, but Sky's news editors back in London knew exactly what the footage showed too – because the Dutch woman who filmed it had told them.

And yet Sky's news team still edited a correct news report to make it incorrect.

The only conclusion one can draw is that they did so to mislead their audience. They didn't make a mistake. They didn’t act out of ignorance. They knowingly aired disinformation. They intentionally peddled fake news.

In other words Sky News deliberately lied to its viewers.

Britain’s prostitute press, almost unanimously led with the ‘anti-Semitic’ attacks on Israel’s racist hooligans rather than what sparked the counter attacks.  Former Revolutionary Communist Party member, now Spiked ‘journalist’ and the Koch Brothers prostitute, Brendan O’Neill, informed us in The Telegraph that 'pogroms have returned to Europe, yet the ‘anti-racist’ Left are silent.' Presumably attacks on Moroccans and Arabs don’t count as pogroms because they are O’Neill’s untermenschen.

War criminal Blinken has prevented the State Department confirming Israeli war crimes - this man deserves the same penalty as the Nazi war criminals experienced at Nuremberg. Anti-Arab violence and genocide doesn't bother him 'antisemitism' does

The BBC, the Voice of the British Establishment, for which it acts as a well paid harlot, naturally only focussed on the well-deserved kicking that Israel’s fans got. But even their occasional reference to the Israeli fans violence was too much for the far-right Spectator.

Only the Daily Mail, in its first headline mentioned the violence of the Israeli football fans.  However it soon fell in with the rest of the pack.

The Guardian did likewise. In its article on more than 60 arrests, none of them football hooligans, there were just 2 out of 34 paragraphs that explained that the cause of the violence was the Israeli fans.

Dutch man being beaten up by Israeli football hooligans - but if u mention it you are anti-Semitic

So Maccabi hooligans come into Amsterdam, abuse and assault its citizens, make them feel unsafe in their own city, and all the Western leaders bend over and apologise to them for fake antisemitism when they should have condemned their behaviour and stood with the actual victims.…

— Maryam (@monothiest24) November 11, 2024

 

A social media video verified by Reuters showed Maccabi fans setting off flares and chanting “Olé, olé, let the IDF win, we will fuck the Arabs”, referring to the Israel Defense Forces. The police chief said a large crowd of Maccabi supporters had then gathered on Dam Square on Thursday lunchtime and there had been “fights on both sides”...

One Amsterdam resident, Barbara Weenink, said she had found the behaviour of Israeli fans threatening. Weenink, who has demonstrated at pro-Palestine events, said she was warned not to go out with a keffiyeh on that evening. She did not see the events after the match but had seen Israeli football fans before it. “I saw the Israeli fans walking here before the match – I found it very threatening,” she said.

16 year old Dutch Boy’s Fearless Reporting Puts the World Press to Shame

Dutch Police Chief statement about some of the violent Israeli football fascists

The only Jewish paper to have a more balanced coverage of what happened in Amsterdam was The Forward, America’s oldest Jewish paper and formally a Bundist paper. It’s article talked about the ‘weaponisation’ of Dutch Jews’ fear and how ‘Many in the country’s small Jewish community say the incident was stripped of context’.

Jelle Zijlstra, who is Jewish and works as a community organizer in Amsterdam, made a post that went viral on Instagram stating that “multiple truths can exist at the same time.” It highlighted both the assaults on Israelis and footage of the fans shouting “F— Palestine” the night before.

“There was definitely antisemitism involved in some of the events that took place,” Zijlstra said in an interview. “Were Jews attacked in the streets? Yes, but those Jews were also violent hooligans.”

https://youtu.be/_LsYMpuYh3s

Israeli football thugs tearing down a Palestinian flag in Amsterdam

The Forward observed that:

some Dutch Jews noted that roving bands of Maccabi Tel Aviv fans had spent Tuesday and Wednesday nights marauding through the city center chanting racist anti-Arab slogans, climbing a facade to rip a Palestinian flag off the second story of an apartment building and assaulting a Moroccan taxi driver.

Forward’s article at least made an attempt to speak to those on the ground even if it didn’t interview any of the Arab attackers. It wrote

Ami Shuman, a photographer for the right-wing Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom, said he was trapped with his son while trying to escape the violence Thursday night, and that they eventually had to be escorted back to their hotel by the police.

“We saw violence, we saw people with black eyes, deep cuts under their eyes, we saw someone accidentally hit by a police officer, and a woman crying,” Shuman told The Times of Israel. “They came in masses, running through the alleys.”

Forced to answer for Israel

Waterman, who also works as a strategic adviser to a local nonprofit called Jewish Social Work, spent Friday helping Israeli fans who volunteers had ferried to a safe location provided by a Jewish sports club in Amsterdam.

He noted that the violence appeared to have been targeted only at the Israeli visitors, and not Dutch Jews or Jewish institutions. But Waterman said many in the community were nonetheless shaken, especially after a year in which they have faced a spike in antisemitic and anti-Israel activity in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel and the start of the war in Gaza.

Waterman said many Dutch Jews are treated like representatives of Israel, a special burden in a country of only 30,000 Jews. “You might be the only Jewish kid in your school and kids say, ‘Hey, what are you people doing in Israel? Why are you killing kids?’” he explained. “It can force you to defend things you don’t necessarily agree with.”

Local Amsterdam residents tell how they were assaulted and menaced

Israeli football thugs shouting 'we will rape your girls' - if u oppose this it makes u antisemitic

The answer is quite simple. Jewish bodies should dissociate themselves from Israel’s genocide and say that Zionists don’t speak in our name. It’s quite simple. When Jews defend Israel’s genocide, in the name of Jews, they can’t complain if there is a counter-reaction.

The article also mentioned

Antisemitic chants are also common at Dutch soccer stadiums. “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas,” used to be a popular cheer for fans of teams playing Ajax, because of its association with Jews. It has fallen out of favor in recent years, but other derogatory songs have taken its place.

“I’ll speak to fans who assure me that they are not antisemitic, they’re just doing it because of Ajax, but there’s definitely some other factors,” said Boaz Krone, a social worker in Amsterdam.

If there are anti-Semitic chants they should be condemned but they are not dissimilar to similar chants at Tottenham. But because Israel claims that it represents all world Jews it is incumbent upon Jews to dissociate themselves from the horror that Israel represents. If they don’t they can’t complain. You can’t have your cake and eat it.

Meanwhile, far-right Dutch politicians, who took control of the government in July, have positioned themselves as protectors of Holland’s Jews by seizing on antisemitism from Arab and Muslim residents of the country.

A mob of Israeli thugs (fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv) attack a Palestinian in ATHENS, GREECE!

A mob of Israeli thugs (fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv) attack a Palestinian in ATHENS, GREECE!

Zionism is a scourge.pic.twitter.com/6uRvxl1ggm

— Jalal #CeasefireNow (@JalalAK_jojo) March 7, 2024

84 years ago when the Nazis occupied The Netherlands, the NSB, the Dutch National Socialist Organisation, began attacks on the Jews. It was the working class in Amsterdam who repelled them and then went on General Strike. I have no doubt that if Wilders had been alive at the time, he would have been a prominent Dutch national socialist.

Ofer Casif, the only Jewish member of the Knesset who isn't a Zionist has been suspended for 6 months for opposing Israel's genocidal racism - this is Israeli democracy in action

But our lazy, lying press could not even be bothered to interview Dutch Jews about what they thought of the matter. They were content to take their cue from the stuffed dummy Starmer and his Black parrot Lammy, whose only concern is to keep in step with Senile Biden.

The Israeli fans were attacked, not because they were Jewish but because they were Israeli thugs. A small point but one lost of the mass media. If this had been an anti-Semitic attack then it’s strange that Amsterdam’s 14,000 Jews haven’t received similar treatment.

Maccabi fans thought they could behave in the same way as they do at home where racist chants and thuggery are dealt with by a Zionist police force that only ever arrests Palestinians. Hopefully they learnt a valuable lesson and will keep their bigotry to themselves next time they have an overseas outing.

But what does the coverage by the Lying Press tell us about their coverage overall?  This wasn’t a one-off mistake but a continuation of  their refusal to cover a year long genocide in Gaza.  Or when they do cover it they frame it as Hitler’s sorry Israel’s ‘right to self-defence.’

Imagine Vladimir Putin had declared that the Ukrainian resistance was ensconced in hospitals and proceeded to bomb them. It doesn’t take much imagination to forecast their outraged reaction.

The 'Green' Foreign Minister of Germany, Anna Baerbock, shows that she's no different from the other bourgeois  parties in her anti-Arab racism and support for Zionist genocide

The images from #Amsterdam are horrific and deeply shameful for us in Europe. The outbreak of such violence against Jews crosses all boundaries. There is no justification whatsoever for such violence. Jews must be safe in Europe. - @ABaerbock https://t.co/5dk4C8k6ap

— GermanForeignOffice (@GermanyDiplo) November 8, 2024

Imagine that Putin declared half of Ukraine a free-fire zone like the North of Gaza and refused the entry of food, fuel and water we would rightly compare him to the Nazis. After all it was Hans Frank, the Governor-General of the General Gouvernment, Poland, who declared a policy of ‘death by hunger’.

Yet if you even dare mention a comparison between the Nazis and Israel you will, like me a month ago, be arrested for a ‘racially aggravated offence’.  You see Israel and Zionists are a race according to the thick, racist coppers of the Metropolitan Police.

If von der Leyen had been alive 90 years ago she would have been the first to justify Hitler’s actions. The German State has always loved holocausts – from that in Namibia, Ost Afrika and Armenia to the Nazi holocaust and now Israel’s holocaust. Indeed it is hard to think of a holocaust that the German state hasn’t smiled upon.

The fact that those who claim to inherit the memory of the holocaust victims are perpetrating a holocaust themselves normalises and trivialises what happened during the Final Solution. See my article in Al Jazeera ‘Why is Germany supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza?’

The Zionists, who did their best to obstruct the rescue of Jews during the Holocaust understand full well the motives of Olaf Scholz and von der Leyen. When Israelis chant, as the Maccabi fans did ‘death to the Arabs’ or ‘there is no school in Gaza because there are no children’ they demonstrate that the majority of Israelis can now be called Judeo-Nazis. ‘Death to the Jews’ was the favourite chant of German and Polish anti-Semites in the 1930s. The fact that the Dutch Police, acting in the best traditions of the Blue police, failed to arrest any Tel Aviv Maccabee fans testifies to their racism.

See Sana Saeed’s No, there were no ‘antisemitic pogroms’ in Amsterdam. Here’s what really happened.

“Olé, olé!

Olé, olé, olé!

Let the IDF win and fuck the Arabs!

Olé, olé!

Olé, olé, olé!

Why is school out in Gaza? There are no children left there!”

These are the sentiments that Starmer, Lammy Biden and all the ratpack who ‘lead us’ are happy to ignore. Only racism against Jews counts these days. Why? Because Jews are the moral alibi, the tame colonial pets, for the West’s military adventures in the Middle East. Unfortunately most Jews are too stupid to understand this.

As Mouin Rabbani noted

Not only do the Israeli club’s supporters have a reputation for genocidal racism (their motto is “Death to the Arabs”, supplemented with the chant, “May Your Village Burn”), but many of those who traveled to Amsterdam have during the past year served in the Israeli military’s genocidal campaign against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip

But then ministers in the Israeli government, such as Ben Gvir and Smotrich, have demonstrated with and chanted ‘death to the Arabs’ themselves. Ben Gvir had a poster on his wall of Baruch Goldstein, who opened fire in the Ibrahimi Mosque killing 29 worshippers. This is the kind of racist slime that makes up Israel’s government.

Britain’s media, unlike Al Jazeera, has wilfully ignored the destruction of hospitals and schools, the murder of children, the bombing of tent encampments and all the other genocidal acts of Israel because they are propagandists for the imperialist axis of the USA, Britain and Germany. Never have our rulers stood so naked.

Our task is to build the Palestine solidarity movement but also to make clear what we stand for. We must say explicitly that Israel, like South Africa under Apartheid, is a failed state that cannot be reformed. It has to go. Unfortunately the past year of genocide has taught Britain’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign absolutely nothing.

The forthcoming AGM in 2025 has a plan and ‘strategy’ document, if one can call it that, which simply repeats past failures. New thinking is not and will not be PSC’s forte as long as it remains in the hands of a tiny political clique.

What is clear, though not to Ben Jamal or PSC, is that the British state fully supports Israel come hell or high water. No amount of polite lobbying is going to change that.

Putting people like Starmer, (a human representation of the police state) and Lisa Nandy on your platform doesn’t advance the cause one iota. The minimum PSC can do is to adopt an anti-Zionist stance and jettison the 2 state solution as an illusion that acts as a smokescreen for continued Israeli colonisation and ethnic cleansing.

When Britain’s media do focus on Gaza they always take care to put it in the context of the October 7 break out from the world’s largest prison. The lives of Israelis are worth more than a hundred if not a thousand Palestinian lives. This is precisely what Ben Gvir’s spiritual mentor, Rabbi Dov Lior, Chair of the Settlement Rabbis, said.

A Jewish fingernail is worth a thousand non-Jewish lives

 If there is one takeaway from Gaza it is that Zionism and the Israeli state have a limited shelf life. Its main supporters are far-right politicians or neo-Nazis – Viktor Orban, Trump, Geert Wilders, Tommy Robinson, Richard Spencer. After all if you are a neo-Nazi what is there not to like about the Israeli ethno-religious state?

But all is not doom and gloom. Spare a thought for your average Tel Aviv Maccabi hooligan. Having been bested by those ‘dirty’ Arabs and terrorised for once, they are at least eligible, as victims of a ‘hostile action’ to compensation from Israel’s National Insurance.

'Victims' of 'anti-Semitism' arrive back in Israel 

‘Traumatised’ Maccabi Tel Aviv fans arriving at Ben Gurion airport from Amsterdam singing:

Ole ole, ole ole ole
Let the IDF win & fuck the Arabs
Ole ole, ole ole ole
Why is school out in Gaza?
There are no children left there!”

pic.twitter.com/wPGeKhCekF

— Double Down News (@DoubleDownNews) November 8, 2024

Compensation for injured racist thugs

But dear readers please don’t fret or worry for Israel’s beat up hooligans.  Israel's National Insurance will ensure that they get ‘mental assistance for the victims of violent actions perpetrated in against Israelis in Holland.’ Eat your heart out you anti-Semites!  Only in Israel could it pay to be a racist football thug. 

Tony Greenstein