When you
think of members of the legal profession you think of the scales of justice and
the statue of liberty. Justice blind to all special interests, political causes
and favours. Lawyers are generally thought of as people who carefully weigh the
pros and cons of an issue, always willing to see the others’ viewpoint. They
are officially Officers of the Court and their first duty is to see justice is
done. But when it comes to Zionist lawyers then you can throw all of that out
of the window.
Support for
the Jewish supremacism and the State of Israel is their first priority. They
are not the first nor the last to put the interests of the State before the
interests of justice. You only need to recall John Yoo and Jay
Bybee two White House lawyers who produced legal opinions to justify
torture. As the New York Times put it, they ‘were
not acting as fair-minded analysts of the law but as facilitators of a scheme
to evade it. The White House decision to brutalize detainees already had been
made. Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee provided legal cover.’
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| Strange as it may see, NW Friends of Israel, which has previously worked with Tommy Robinson's EDL, had nothing to say about this meeting. Perhaps not surprising since many of their members were in attendance |
The same is
true of the Zionist lawyers below. Support for Israel, right or wrong, is their
only concern. Land confiscation,
virulent state racism, apartheid laws are all explained away by Jewish
exceptionalism. Their legal training is but a weapon to be employed against supporters
of the Palestinians. Shouting ‘anti-Semitism’
at every opportunity gives these lawyers the ideal pretext to engage in
wholesale abuse.
Mark Lewis
Speaking of bigots, none come more obnoxious than Mark Lewis,
who made a name for himself in the
hacking cases against the News of the World. Lewis is an ardent supporter
of Herut UK, the British branch of Likud.
It is an organisation that is steeped in racism. Benjamin Netanyahu,
Likud Prime Minister, is famous for going on Facebook at the last election to
warn Jewish voters that ‘droves’
of Arabs have gone to the polls. Likud has presided over a dramatic
increase in Israeli state racism, most recently sealed with the Jewish
Nation State Law.
Lewis, who spoke at the relaunch meeting of Herut UK, is of the opinion
that whatever the Israeli government does should be supported by British Jews
and opposition to Zionism and Israel is automatically anti-Semitic. He
therefore defends without reservation the Jewish settlements in the West Bank,
the theft of Palestinian land, the Jewish only roads etc. Indeed he will
shortly become a settler himself and no doubt will excuse attacks on
Palestinians, burning of crops, polluting water sources, demolition of houses
by the need to fight ‘anti-Semitism’.
Like Berlow, Lewis is nothing if not abusive. So much so that he has got himself hauled
up before the Solicitor’s Regulation Authority on charges of abusing people
on social media. His excuse is that they
are all neo-Nazis but that is but a pretext.
Lewis is a partner of Mandy
Blumenthall, the representative of Herut UK. In August 2018, Lewis and
Blumenthal told the Victoria Derbyshire programme that they are quitting
the UK as they no longer
feel safe because of anti-Semitismand they will move to Israel in December
where they can practice their racism without being called to account.
Blumenthal naturally lays the blame at the door of Jeremy
Corbyn. Derbyshire, alone amongst BBC
journalists gave
them a good grilling and showed how vacuous are their claims.
On 9 August
2014 when Israel was bombing Gaza, Mark Lewis railed on Twitter
against anti-zionists,
calling them anti-Jewish
racist scum. It started at 2:33pm with Mark's tweet:
Ruthless approach to antisemitism
The Times of Israel reported
that “Lewis takes a ruthless approach, believing that it’s
necessary to be aggressive against anti-Semites on social media.”
“Someone can
be a Nazi, but at least [if they are taken
to court] they can be a homeless Nazi,” he says. “I’m quite happy to take their
homes off them. If these people would have rational debate, I would do that
[instead], but they are nutters who have conspiratorial
theories and I will never change their outlook.".
In September
2017, it was reported that Jake Wallis
Simons, associate editor of the Daily Mail Online,
was suing Craig Murray, former UK
ambassador to Uzbekistan, for £40,000 in damages plus
£100,000 legal costs for lawyer Mark Lewis, who was representing Simons in a
High Court case commencing on 7 November 2017.
Craig Murray
wrote
that “This case has the
potential to bankrupt me and blight the lives of my wife and children. I have
specifically been threatened by Mr Lewis with bankruptcy.”
Craig Murray
reacted:
"I
sincerely hope [Mark Lewis] does not consider me a Nazi, though plainly this case is
started by my falsely being smeared as an anti-Semite. But no matter how
objectionable somebody may find my views on Israel/Palestine, how does
it serve justice that “at least my”
wife and 8-year-old son “can be homeless.”
That is however precisely what Mr Lewis seeks to achieve and to be plain, he
has threatened me in person with bankruptcy
High-profile
solicitor facing tribunal over online spats with “neo-Nazis”
Law
Gazette, 28.9.18.
Mr Lewis has been outspoken in his support of Israel. A former director
of UK Lawyers for Israel, in June he halted the pro-Palestinian Al Quds rally
in central London for an hour by refusing to move his wheelchair.
He said at the time that he did so to protest against Hezbollah flags
and “inflammatory rhetoric”....
The newspaper also said that Mr Lewis took a “ruthless approach, believing that it’s necessary to be aggressive
against anti-Semites on social media”.
Mr Lewis told Legal Futures that he could not comment on the case
beyond saying that he would “fully defend”
himself and that “it will be a very
interesting battle”.
There have
been an increasing number of disciplinary cases involving social media posts,
made more acute where the solicitor identifies as such. Last year, the SRA issued a
warning notice to solicitors on how to conduct themselves on
social media. Media
lawyer Mark Lewis to face SDT over social media comments
High profile
media lawyer Mark Lewis – who came to public attention with his work on the
phone-hacking cases – is to face a disciplinary tribunal over alleged comments
on social media.
Mark Lewis
It emerged today that the Solicitors Regulation Authority has decided to
prosecute Lewis, a partner at London firm Seddons.
The allegations are that in May 2017 he used his Facebook account to post
‘offensive and profane communications’
towards a third party.
The SRA also alleges that between July 2015 and December 2016 he used
his Twitter account, which publicly identified him as a solicitor, to post
offensive and profane communications.
None comes
nastier than Robert
Festenstein, a bankruptcy solicitor.
He is essentially a fascist. So it was no surprise when he played the
part of a solicitor in a video
with none other than Tommy Robinson. Festenstein is a founder of Jewish Human Rights Watch, an organisation
that is dedicated to opposing human rights for Palestinians and anti-Zionists.
In May 2017 Festenstein
wrote
to the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in London attempting to close down the
Palestine Expo 2017 Festival on the grounds it was a ‘Jewish hate festival’ despite it having numerous Jewish speakers
like Ilan Pappe or Miko Peled. One thing JHRW shares with groups like the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism is a hatred
for free speech and debate, the hall mark of fascism.
The letter from Festenstein was one long lie. It began with a lie: ‘We
act for Jewish Human Rights Watch – JHRW.”
It would be more truthful to have said ‘I am Jewish Human Rights Watch – JHRW.”
There are number of companies under the name JHRW or similar.
There is JHRW Education
in which Festenstein is the sole director.
There is Jewish
Rights Watch in which Festenstein is one of 3 directors.
In short Festenstein deliberately
disguised his own connections to JHRW in order to make his letter seem more
plausible. It would be interesting to see who paid him for the letter and how
much!
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| A letter of total deception - Fenstenstein writes on behalf of a client who just happens to be himself |
The
next lie was to write that ‘’Whilst our client has
no difficulty with legitimate protest, it is most concerned that you are
allowing a group with terrorist links to operate an event on your premises.’ Yet more lies. Like most Zionist activists Festenstein has
the greatest difficulty with any protest to do with Palestine and the
suggestion that there was any link with ‘terrorists’ is risible. Given Festenstein’s links with the far-Right
and Tommy Robinson he should perhaps have been looking nearer to home.
Recently
members of JHRW attacked a Palestine Solidarity Campaign meeting in Manchester
and are suspected of being involved in an attack on a Jewish Voice for Labour
meeting at Labour Party conference in Liverpool.
Festenstein
is also suspected of being involved in a meeting
between Tommy Robinson and a dozen members of the Manchester Jewish community.
Festenstein isn't your run of the mill solicitor. He was fined £20,000 by the Solicitor's Disciplinary Tribunal in November 10th for a series of breaches of the rules governing solicitors. They are detailed below. He was charged with a second solicitor whom he had employed, Bryan Slater. Slater was struck off the rolls. In short Festenstein is a solicitor whom most people would give a wide berth to.
Jonathan Goldberg QC
The other Zionist
lawyer I have become acquainted with is more of a clown than a villain like
Lewis and Festenstein. I refer to Jonathan
Goldberg QC, who is a patron of the far-Right Campaign Against Anti-Semitism. In an email
exchange with a friend of mine he asked:
‘hear your friend Greenstein got his just deserts.
What was the
problem with his family ? Was he an abused child ?
The ‘logic’
of this statement being that Jewish opponents of Zionism must have suffered
‘child abuse’. Apart from anything else
it trivialises the very real problem of child abuse.
I asked the
learned QC what kind of idiot attributes political differences to child abuse. Because
Zionists cannot perceive why anyone might oppose the ethnic cleansing and
apartheid policies that Israel follows, critics are seen as suffering from
psychological trauma of one kind or another. Goldberg responded that he was
aware my father was a rabbi but that
‘where sons strive so desperately to dishonour their parents and negate
everything they stood for publicly, as you have done so prominently, it often
stems from a history of abuse, whether verbal, physical or worst of all sexual.’
Whatever his
talents, Goldberg’s expertise clearly doesn’t extend to the medical or
psychological field. Even the most brilliant of Zionists, and there is no doubt
that Goldberg is a very capable if not brilliant lawyer, unlike Lewis and
Festenstein who are merely functionaries, Goldberg is nonetheless completely incapable
of understanding why many Jews reject Zionism.
The
attribution of political disagreement to
the realm of psychiatric causes was characteristic of Stalinism which
incarcerated many dissidents in mental asylums.
Goldberg, for all his talents, is incapable of understand that it isn’t
rejection of one’s parents but a rejection of Zionism and what it does to the
Palestinians that more and more Jews find unappealing.
Goldberg is
probably a good example of how people can be brilliant in a narrow area like law
but narrow minded bigots in all other areas. Despite an inauspicious start we continued
our conversation and it became a little less heated. Indeed Jonathan despite
continually promising that he would terminate the correspondence clearly
couldn’t resist the temptation to engage with me! A copy of the correspondence is below and the
affair was the subject of a blog post. The
Wit and Wisdom of Jonathan Goldberg QC
Goldberg is
probably best remembered for his caustic comments on the failed litigation in Fraser –v-
University College Union where it was alleged that the union’s Boycott of Israel
policy discriminated against Jewish members of UCU. The Tribunal
comprehensively rejected the case brought by Fraser ruling
that the case ‘represents
an impermissible attempt to achieve a political end by litigious means.’ Fraser was represented by Anthony Julius of Mischcon de Reya, the solicitors for the
Princess Diana Fund who nearly bankrupted it with his hubris and fees! Goldberg described
the bringing of the case as ‘an act of epic folly by all concerned.... You
only bring such showcase litigation if you are certain to win.”
Anthony Julius, who had brought the case,
demonstrated a staggering degree of incompetence. For example all the claims
were outside the time limits which are 3 months, at an Employment Tribunal. It
is clear to all but Julius that Zionism is not a protected characteristic (thus
meriting the protection of the Equalities Act 2010). Julius isn’t an employment
solicitor and he was clearly out of his depths. Julius seems to have taken this
criticism to heart. Previously a
flamboyant character he has gone to grass. Nothing has been heard of him
since.
Matthew Berlow
Below is the
story of how criminal lawyer and Glasgow
Friends of Israel activist Matthew Berlow fell foul of the Scottish Law
Society because of his foul mouthed racist rantings. Berlow smeared and abused a Palestinian activist. Justice however caught up with him as he has
now been fined £1,750 by the Scottish Law Society in addition to being
instructed to attend Diversity Training.
It is this latter punishment that Berlow resents more than anything else
since he considers being Jewish grants him immunity from being a common and
garden bigot. A report of this case is in the Herald on Sunday is entitled Diversity training for Jewish
lawyer who called pro-Palestinian campaigners 'scummy racists'.
The Case of
Matthew Berlow and Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign
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| Matthew Berlow is a member of Glasgow Friends of Israel, a far-Right racist group that uses Nazi style language when talking about 'euthanising' i.e. murdering Palestinians - |
Berlow described Dr Karolin Hijazi as a “thin-skinned…wannabe social justice warrior and a “snowflake”, a
term popular with US White supremacists and the extreme
right generally to attack those who
stand up to them. A defender of the Israeli army, a force charged with war
crimes and possible crimes against humanity, Berlow has agreed to pay the Law
Society of Scotland a £1,750 fine for his behaviour but is upset that he has
been mandated to undergo “diversity training”.
In 2016, the Aberdeen Branch of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity
Campaign (SPSC) protested an Israeli Dead Sea cosmetics company which profited
from the Israeli occupation and apartheid structures. Berlow, a staunch
defender of a state that is openly
racist, attacked demonstrators as “scummy racists”, claiming bizarrely that
the Israeli company was merely an outlet for hatred of Jews, a "soft Jewish target to aim your bile at”.
Protests across Scotland fuelled by Israel's massacres of thousands of Palestinians led to the Israeli company closing down and leaving the
UK.
Dr Hijazi later reported Berlow to the Scottish Legal Complaints
Commission, which found “potential
conduct issues". The Law Society of Scotland investigated and received
Berlow's defence that his comments were not directed at "snowflake" Dr Hijazi but at the
Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
Karolin Hijazi is a long-term, committed Palestinian campaigner. She was
jailed by Israel in 2012 when a group of Scots joined the Welcome
to Palestine effort to reach Bethlehem to
help build a school. She refused food during detention with many of the others
and was deported along with other British and Scots activists.
The Law Society of Scotland concluded that Berlow had used “derogatory language...damaging to the
reputation of both the profession as a whole and of the individual solicitor
concerned”. It would seem Berlow couldn't stop digging, for the Law Society
judged his written defence of his original actions to be “derogatory and aggressive".
He was found guilty of unsatisfactory professional conduct and ordered
to pay Dr Hijazi £100 compensation on top of the £1,750 fine.
Berlow will appeal the diversity training order on the basis of a 2017
attack on Scottish BDS campaigners by a minor pro-Israel blogger, David
Collier, acting on behalf of the Israeli Embassy. The report claims SPSC is an anti-semitic organisation that denies the Holocaust.
Dr Hijazi said she found Berlow’s comments “particularly disturbing, having campaigned against racism,
discrimination and bigotry all my life”. SPSC stands foursquare for
Palestinian rights and opposes anti-semitism and vile Holocaust denial, which
we consider no less repulsive than Berlow's denying that the Palestinian people
suffered a brutal ethnic cleansing by Zionist militias in 1948 and
subsequently.
In any event it is advisable to be sceptical about any utterance from
Berlow and his comrades at Glasgow Friends of Israel; the Friends of Israeli
Snipers openly use the dehumanising language of "euthanising"
Palestinians.
Even after Berlow appeared as a prosecution witness in Glasgow Sheriff
Court in a failed
three-year effort by Scottish prosecutors and
pro-Israel lobbyists to secure convictions for racism, i.e. antisemitism,
against myself and Jim Watson, he and I maintained an email exchange. (I like
the adage, "Hate the sin but not the
sinner".)
During our exchanges, I pointed out what he knew, that his Friends of
Israel were still lying about the verdict of the recent trial.
Matthew Berlow replied: "I will post the truth about the verdict AND I will make it
clear that you are not anti Semitic and cannot be responsible for those that
may attach themselves to your cause but that you try and root it out to the
best of your ability...". In a separate
email, dated 1 August 2017, Mathew acknowledged that "There is no doubt that you are not anti Semitic as you eloquently
refute that at every opportunity..."
Normally, SPSC and other campaiging groups have to
accept the most grotesque inventions from pro-Israeli groups since their
deep pockets and our modest means make a defamation trial very difficult. The
successful challenge by Dr Hijazi to unfounded attacks and smears, of which
there have been many demented examples,
should inspire those maligned in this way to fight back.
Mick Napier
West Calder
21 October 2018
