The Met Have Informed Me That I Won’t Be Charged for Comparing Israel’s Gaza Holocaust to the Nazi Holocaust

I was arrested on October 4, the 88^th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street when the Met Tried to Force the British Union of Fascists on Jewish East Enders – 300,000 Stopped Them – the Met is Still the Same Racist Force

You may remember that I was arrested on October 4^th for daring to make a comparison between Israel’s holocaust in Gaza and the Nazi holocaust. Two days ago I was informed by the Police that they weren’t bringing any charges.

Israeli military Captain. Daniel Hatniel serving as deputy of Israel’s West Bank intelligence command & ex-spox of an MK

“The little finger of a soldier of ours is worth as much of Gaza… Amalek like Hamas symbolize an idea.. There must not be one of the Amalek left on earth” pic.twitter.com/oA3fDWtEks

— Younis Tirawi | يونس (@ytirawi) February 10, 2024

The Police trying to find a way through Cable Street 88 years ago - genuine anti-Semitism has never bothered the Met

It is ironic that on October 4, 1936 the Met, under Commissioner Philip Game, tried to force thousands of Sir Oswald Moseley’s British Union of Fascists and National Socialists through the Jewish East End. However up to 300,000 East End workers, including Catholic dockers and thousands of non-Jewish workers were having none of it. What ensued became known as the Battle of Cable Street. The Met then was riddled with anti-Semites just as today it is riddled with Islamaphobes. After battling for hours Philip Game was forced to admit defeat as barricades were thrown up.

Notice published in the Jewish Chronicle urging Jews to keep their heads down - when it comes to genuine anti-Semitism the Jewish & Zionist Establishment has always preferred a policy of keeping one's head down

The Met hasn’t changed even if the target of its racism has changed. But even now it has a penchant for arresting anti-Zionist Jews who don’t conform their idea of ‘proper’ Israel supporting nationalist bigots.

In 1936 the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Zionists told Jews they should stay at home and keep their heads down. Jewish workers ignored them in their thousands. Today there is no Jewish  working class.  Jews have migrated socio-economically upwards and politically rightwards such that their best friends today are bigots like Tommy Robinson and friends.

In my response I told DC O’Connor it was as I had predicted when I applied to vary my bail. The Police never had a case for racially/religiously aggravated harassment. It was simply another example of the Police deliberately trying to close down free speech on Palestine . If there was any harassment it was on the part of the police.

The person whose complaint against me led to my arrest was notorious Zionist fanatic Richard Millett who above describes a holocaust survivor who opposes genocide as 'scum' - this is the kind of person the Met takes seriously

I pointed out the even more outrageous arrest, two weeks later, of Professor Haim Bresheeth, a 79 year old Israeli academic suffering from cancer who was kept all night in a cold cell in Holborn police station by these bastards in uniform. He too was told he wouldn’t be charged.

Professor Haim Bresheeth - 79 year old Israeli academic who the Police arrested

It is noticeable that on no occasion have the Police arrested supporters of Israel’s genocide for their language. Supporting genocide is not an offence in the Met’s eyes, Opposing it is, despite the fact that committing or aiding the commission of war crimes or genocide is a specific offence in the International Criminal Court Act 2001, Section 52 of which specifically states that:

(1)   It is an offence against the law of England and Wales for a person to engage in conduct ancillary to an act to which this section applies.

(2)   This section applies to an act that if committed in England or Wales would constitute—

(a)   an offence under section 51 (genocide, crime against humanity or war crime), or

(b)   an offence under this section,

However the Met pick and choose which legislation they will enforce and which legislation they won’t enforce. They call it the ‘rule of law’ but in reality they turn the law into an instrument of political oppression.

The Met and the Anti-Terrorist Police are also engaged in a wholesale abuse of anti-terror legislation in order to clamp down on Palestine solidarity activists. In short the Police are, ever more obviously, becoming a political police whose job it is to attack critics of British foreign policy.

This man, believed to be one of the Zionist counter-demonstrators, was photographed pointing out Palestinian protesters to arrest. This is the collusion Palestine solidarity activists face in London

At the weekly protest at Swiss Cottage the Police eagerly video the speeches Palestine solidarity supporters make for any hint of a pretext with which to arrest them. Arrests are made, despite the Police being fully aware that charges are highly unlikely to follow. It is another form of intimidation. That is one reason why I informed Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley, in a complaint I made on 15 November, that I will be bringing proceedings against the Met for Wrongful Arrest and Unlawful Imprisonment. You can read my complaint letter here.

When it comes to the billions of pounds lost in COVID fraud the Met are remarkably disinterested in enforcing the law

I have also made it clear that I will continue to compare Israel’s behaviour in Gaza with that of the Nazis. The false IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which asserts that such a comparison is anti-Semitic  is not, by its own admission, legally binding. In the Opinion of Hugh Tomlinson KC:

‘It is perhaps worth pointing out that the fact that conduct is “contrary” to the IHRA Definition could not, of itself, render  that conduct “illegal” in any sense.’

The IHRA has been described by Geoffrey Robertson KC as ‘not fit for purpose’.

Sir Stephen Sedley, a former Court of Appeal judge and himself Jewish, went even further in an article in London Review of Books, ‘Defining Anti-Semitism’, when he wrote that the IHRA ‘fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite.’ So what the hell are the Metropolitan Police doing implementing a definition that is not legally binding, which is not fit for purpose and isn’t even a definition.  Apart from pleasing their political masters?

I intend to go back to the demonstration at Swiss Cottage in the near future to explain why Israel’s behaviour is certainly comparable with the Nazis. In some respects it may even be worse. Even the Nazis didn’t single out hospitals and their medical staff for death and destruction. It is a little known fact that the Jewish hospital in Berlin survived unscathed throughout the war and was still in operation when Berlin was liberated. If I am arrested again, so be it.

The theft of Palestinian organs, from those Israel has murdered, is another example of their Nazi-like mentality

If my speech offends racist Zionists and genocide supporters that's also fine. No one is forcing them to listen. Perhaps they will even learn something. In Israel it is not unusual to make such comparisons. As Stephen Sedley ruled, in the landmark case on free speech, Redmond Bate v DPP,  

“free speech includes not only the inoffensive but also the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and provocative, provided it does not tend to provoke violence. Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having

For example the late Professor Ze’ev Sternhell, a child survivor of the Premszyl ghetto in Nazi occupied Poland wrote an article in Ha’aretz, that in Israel there was a ‘Growing Fascism and a Racism Akin to Early Nazism’. No doubt the idiot who approved my arrest would have had no compunction in arresting a holocaust survivor for making such a comparison!

Jewish kids dressed as Israeli soldiers in N15 area with fake guns walking past local mosque as children leave

The comparisons begin with Defence Minister Yoav Gallant when he began the genocide, when he described Palestinians as “human animals” – the very same phrase that Himmler used about the Jews on October 4, 1943, in a talk to SS generals. Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich spoke about how “justified and moral” it would be to starve two million Palestinians, which is no different from the Nazi policy towards the Russians and Hans Frank’s implementation in Poland of ‘death by hunger’ against the Jewish ghettos.

We are facing a full square attack on basic democratic rights and freedom of speech by the police, backed by the State, Starmer and much of the judiciary. Erstwhile liberals such as Liberty are keeping quiet whilst anti-genocide activists are gaoled and harassed.

However those who stand silent are likely to find that the situation gets worse rather than better. So join the pickets of Hotoveli each Friday night and show that the Police and Starmer will not be allowed to introduce a police state by the back door.

Tony Greenstein 

Open Letter to the Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University, Professor Christopher Husbands

Shahd Abusalama is Another Academic to Have Fallen Foul of Zionism's McCarthyist Lobby

To:       c.husbands@shu.ac.uk

Dear Professor Husbands,

On January 21 Shahd Abusalama, a PhD student, was suspended by Sheffield Hallam University on the eve of teaching her first class. Shahd has been subject for the past 4 years to harassment from the Zionist lobby and its fetid supporters for the fact of being a Palestinian willing to speak out about Israel’s war crimes.

Shahd was told that a complaint had been lodged with the university but was not told who made the complaint or what the substance of the complaint was, although that was not hard to guess. It was of course ‘anti-Semitism’.

Of one thing Zionists are certain. Just because Israel demolishes their homes or evicts them to make way for Jewish settlers as well as arresting and imprisoning their children, if not killing them outright, the Palestinians have no reason to resist the Occupation or the other foul misdeeds that they get up to. No the only reason why Palestinians still resist a 55 year old occupation is because they hate the Jews out of some unique pathological condition that they suffer from.

According to the CAA this is anti-Semitic. In fact it is literally true. The Talmud has been used to justify Israeli atrocities, see e.g. https://reformjudaism.org/blog/torat-hamelech, a book by 2 rabbis which justified the murder of children and infantsTorat Hamelech

It therefore follows that anyone who supports the Palestinians must also do so because of anti-Semitism. Even anti-Zionist Jews who are widely recognised as the ‘wrong sort of Jew’, in so far as they are recognised as Jewish at all, are also susceptible to this ‘anti-Semitism’. After all anti-Semitism is a virus.

Rather than going through all the details to Shahd’s case and what happened there is an excellent article on Electronic Intifada, UK Israel lobby takes aim at Palestinian university lecturer.

Below I copy my letter to Sheffield Hallam’s Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Chris Husbands.

Tony Greenstein 

This is the real agenda of those who targeted Shahd but  Professor Husbands is either too stupid or too malevolent to understand this

Dear Professor Husbands,

I write concerning your (now revoked) suspension of Shahd Abusalama from her role as a lecturer because of an anonymous complaint against her. After over a week Shahd stated that she still hasn’t had sight of the allegations. When you announced the investigation into her you didn’t even inform her of this fact. This is Kafkaesque.

It was on the evening of 21 January, just prior to her first class, that Shahd was informed that she had been suspended. No reason was given. Shahd’s suspension has now been revoked because of ‘issues’ with how you handled her case but no further details have been provided.

Shahd is a refugee from Gaza. She was born and raised in Jabalia refugee camp and witnessed at first hand Israeli bombing raids on the camp and attacks on unarmed civilians in Gaza. What she says makes uncomfortable reading for the Zionist lobby in this country and it is that, not anti-Semitism, that is the reason for her suspension.

According to the 'Israeli war room' opposing the IRHA is itself antisemitic!

As Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield Hallam you have a responsibility to defend academic freedom and freedom of speech. In this you have lamentably failed. Your behaviour is reminiscent of the failure of Martin Heidegger, Rector of Freiburg University to speak out against the dismissal of his mentor Edmund Husserl and other Jewish academics.

When Victor Klemperer was dismissed from his post at Dresden University he recounted in his diaries that the only person to say farewell was the cleaner. It is unfortunate that most academics are afraid to speak up against injustice however you do not have Nazi terror as an excuse for your cowardice.

Shahd has long been under attack by supporters of the Israeli state. Her ‘crime’ according to the so-called Campaign Against Anti-Semitism is having defended another student who used the term ‘Palestinian Holocaust’ whilst saying that she would not use such a term. If you or your protégés had bothered to access her Twitter feed then you would have seen a nuanced and thoughtful exposition. Something entirely lacking in your own explanations.

The attacks on Shahd have come about because of her insistence on speaking out against Israeli Apartheid, conclusions both B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch have reached. It has nothing to do with comparisons between Israel and the Holocaust. They were merely the pretext. You are directly responsible for this state of affairs because it was you who insisted that Sheffield Hallam bow to the dictates of the Tory government and Gavin Williamson when you adopted the IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism in February 2021.

The vile Islamaphobic CAA has been to the forefront of the campaign against Shahd, led by racist Gideon Falter, who is Vice-Chair of the ethnic cleaning JNF

Perhaps you might recall the statement which you put out at the time? It read:

The definition is a useful tool for understanding what constitutes antisemitism and investigating allegations. Freedom of expression is an integral part of our values, therefore we are committed to promoting and protecting free speech. The ability to rigorously discuss and challenge ideas goes right to the heart of what it means to be a university.

This was a lie, wasn’t it? You adopted the IHRA not to protect freedom of speech but to destroy it. The IHRA has no other purpose. It is certainly not a definition of anti-Semitism. Your adoption of this ‘definition’ was an act of political expediency. You adopted it despite criticism from many distinguished legal and academic scholars.

Former Lord Justice of Appeal, Sir Stephen Sedley, who is himself Jewish, wrote that the IHRA ‘fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite’. Human rights barrister, Geoffrey Roberson QC said the ‘IHRA definition of antisemitism is not fit for purpose’. Another prominent barrister, Hugh Tomlinson QC described the IHRA as having:

a potential chilling effect on public bodies which, in the absence of definitional clarity, may seek to sanction or prohibit any conduct which has been labelled by third parties as nti-Semitic without applying any clear criterion of assessment.

An observation that perfectly describes your actions. Kenneth Stern, who drafted the IHRA definition, in testimony to Congress described the use of the IHRA by the CAA to try and effect the dismissal of Rachel Gould, a Jewish lecturer at Bristol University, as ‘chilling and McCarthy-like’.

A child could have told you that you don’t need to have a definition of anti-Semitism in order to recognise it. The Oxford English Dictionary definition: ‘hostility to or prejudice against Jewish people’. is perfectly adequate. My father who took part in the Battle of Cable Street against Moseley’s fascist thugs didn’t need a definition of anti-Semitism to know what he was fighting. As Justice Potter Stewart remarked ‘I know it when I see it.’ The real purpose of the IHRA, with 7 of its 11 illustrations of ‘anti-Semitism’ mentioning Israel, is to conflate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

It is of course 'antisemitic' to compare what Israel does with the holocaust. Only Zionists are allowed to do that. Note the assumption that the holocaust is a Jewish only event from which the disabled and Gypsies and others are excluded

The specific allegation which led to Shahd’s suspension was comparisons of Palestinian oppression to that of the Jews under Hitler. There is nothing anti-Semitic about such a comparison. It might be right or wrong but comparing Israel to the Nazis is not anti-Semitic.

There are many Jews, including Holocaust survivors, who make just such a comparison. Perhaps you can explain why it is anti-Semitic to compare mobs in Germany shouting ‘Death to Jews’ with mobs in Israel chanting ‘Death to the Arabs’?

If you are right then Hannah Arendt, herself a refugee from the Nazis, was also anti-Semitic for comparing Israel’s marriage laws to the Nuremberg Laws in Eichmann in Jerusalem.? Just like Nazi Germany, it is forbidden in Israel for a Jew to marry a non-Jew.

Perhaps Deputy Chief of Staff in Israel Yair Golan was wrong to compare Israel with Nazi Germany?  And maybe Professor Ze’ev Sternhall of the Hebrew University, a child survivor of the Przemsyl Ghetto in Nazi occupied Poland, was also anti-Semitic to write of a ‘Growing Fascism and a Racism Akin to Early Nazism’ in Israel?

Yehuda Elkana, a child survivor of Auschwitz and Rector of the Central University of Europe was, by your standards, also anti-Semitic when he wrote that

the deepest political and social factor that motivates much of Israeli society in its relations with the Palestinians is not personal frustration, but rather a profound existential "Angst" fed by a particular interpretation of the lessons of the Holocaust

When the IHRA says that making such comparisons is anti-Semitic what it is doing is providing elites with an excuse to close down discussion on topics that question their own war mongering. The question is a simple one.  Do you or do you not support the censorship of political debate and thought? If you do then you are in the wrong job.

Holocaust education today is used, not to draw universal lessons, such as opening our borders to refugees, but in order to legitimise the racism of the British and Israeli states, not least the oppression of Palestinians. But according to you and those who suspended Shahd it is anti-Semitic for Palestinians to reply in kind.

As Gideon Levy wrote in Ha’aretz:

I have yet to hear a single teenager come back from Auschwitz and say that we mustn’t abuse others the way we were abused. There has yet to be a school whose pupils came back from Birkenau straight to the Gaza border, saw the barbed-wire fence and said, Never again. The message is always the opposite. Gaza is permitted because of Auschwitz.

The lying Jewish Chronicle led the attack against Shahd

The context to all of this is the recent dismissal of Professor David Miller at Bristol University, also after a concerted series of attacks by the pro-Israel lobby. The Jewish Chronicle’s reaction was that ‘Miller’s sacking should be the beginning, not the end’. That is what  Shahd’s suspension was really about – a Zionist witchhunt.

I am aware of who it was who was responsible for making the complaint against Shahd. The person in question is an open supporter of Jewish Supremacy. Your suspension of Shahd was no different to suspending a Black student after a complaint from a member of the British National Party. You should hang your head in shame, assuming you understand the meaning of the word. There are however a number of steps that you can take to make amends.

Firstly you owe Shahd Abusalama an apology and compensation for the hurt she experienced.

Secondly you should immediately ditch the IHRA. If you really need a definition of anti-Semitism then the Jerusalem Declaration on Anti-Semitism is more suitable as it avoids equating anti-Zionism and hostility to Israel’s Apartheid State with anti-Semitism.

Thirdly, given your role in this affair, the honourable thing to do would be to resign as you are clearly unfitted for the role of Vice-Chancellor. I realise that today politicians don’t resign unless they are dragged out of their office but to paraphrase Malcolm in MacBeth, nothing would become your office like the leaving of it.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Greenstein

In this Twitter thread Shahd explains her position on the use of the Holocaust when criticising Israel

Appeal for Paddy French, who is being sued for libel by Islamaphobe-in-Chief and Jewish Chronicle co-funder John Ware

 Is Labour Anti-Semitic? was the title of the BBC Panorama programme – but the answer was never in doubt

Please Support Paddy French's Fundraiser

https://tinyurl.com/23syu3ps 

Dear Friend

This is not an appeal on my behalf.  I’m writing to ask you to support an important legal battle between BBC Panorama reporter John Ware and the retired ITV current affairs producer and investigative journalist, Paddy French, for criticisms he made of the July 2019 Panorama programme “Is Labour Anti-Semitic?

Paddy French

Paddy French is an investigative journalist with more than four decades experience. He founded and edited the Welsh magazine Rebecca (known for its uncompromising Corruption Supplement) in the 1970s. He then went on to become an independent TV producer making programme for Channel 4, the BBC and ITV before joining ITV Wales as a staff producer.

The case is John Ware v Paddy French, QB-2020-002233.

Ware is suing Paddy for £50,000 over criticisms he made of the July 2019 Panorama programme “Is Labour Anti-Semitic?”

I am sure you will remember this BBC propaganda programme. You can refresh your memory with the two blog posts I did here and here.

Ware is a former Sun journalist, a racist and Islamaphobe, who is on the record as saying in the Jewish Chronicle of 26.7.13. (where else!) that whereas anti-Semitism is ‘entirely irrational’  Islamaphobia, if it exists, is ‘reactive’. It is no wonder that Ware won the Islamic Human Rights Commission’s Islamaphobe of the Year award in 2005.

Is Labour Anti-Semitic opened with an Oscar winning performance by Ella Rose, Director of the Jewish Labour Movement and former employee at the Israeli Embassy.  Of course the programme mentioned none of this.  I don’t know how many takes Rose took but her performance demonstrated that she has chosen the wrong career.  Not mentioned in Ware’s propaganda programme was the fact that every witness to ‘anti-Semitism’ that appeared just happened to be officers of the Jewish Labour Movement, who openly describe themselves as the ‘sister party’ of the racist Israeli Labor Party, that is present in a coalition with the far-Right in Israel.

After retiring, Paddy launched Press Gang [press-gang.org], a website which “exposes rogue journalism”. And there is no bigger rogue that John Ware, a man who makes Keir Starmer seem like a model of truthfulness.

Paddy carried out the investigation which proved that News of the World investigations editor Mazher “Fake Sheik” Mahmood lied to the Leveson Inquiry about the number of convictions he’d achieved. He also published a long exposé of Piers Morgan.

Just before the 2019 general election, Paddy — at the time a Labour Party member and a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn — published a Press Gang pamphlet called “Is The BBC Anti-Labour?”

This was a broad critique of Ware’s Panorama programme and how it failed to meet the standards required by the BBC’s own editorial standards. You can read it here:

The case, already a year old, is now moving to trial.

Ware v French presents a unique opportunity to correct the historical record, as well as a risk – however small – that Ware will be able to bully Paddy’s legal team into submission. It is imperative that Paddy is not at any point pressured into an unfavourable settlement solely because his legal team are unable to bear mounting costs.

Paddy is determined to defend himself all the way and willing to risk both his property and livelihood in doing so. But if his legal team were at any point to advise entering into an unfavourable settlement, it will be difficult for Paddy to resist on a No Win No Fee arrangement. Such an outcome will then of course be used as ‘vindication’ by Ware and the BBC, with damaging consequences for wider efforts to correct the historical record. If, on the other hand, Paddy has the opportunity to mount his truth defence – or if Ware was to withdraw from the action – this case could potentially be a powerful check against on-going attacks on progressive left politics.

The case will be the only chance we get to have a forensic examination of how John Ware, Panorama and the BBC came to make a programme that was so outrageously biased. Although titled ‘Is Labour Anti-Semitic?’ the only concession that the BBC made to me during a lengthy complaint was to admit that the question mark in the title was unnecessary. The programme had formed an opinion from the outset and that was that Labour was anti-Semitic.

This programme was a classic example of how, when a radical leader is under attack, you can count on the BBC to represent the Britain’s racist establishment.  It did this with a reporter who is an open Islamaphobe.

Paddy is represented by the experienced solicitors Bindmans and the barristers Hugh Tomlinson QC and Darryl Hutcheon.

He needs at least £200,000 to be able to bring the case to trial.

His crowdfunder has raised nearly £30,000 from more than a thousand supporters.

In addition, private donors are putting up a further £60-70,000.

So he’s already half way there.

If you can, make a donation at the crowdfunder:

Before turning his attention to Ware, Paddy, together with Professor Brian Cathcart, one of the founders of Hacked Off , produced a devastating report on the unscrupulous anti-Muslim reporting of the Times’ journalist Andrew Norfolk. The Times was so stung that it took the highly unusual step of attacking Paddy and Brian in an editorial.

Paddy then began a long series of articles about John Ware’s Panorama programme. One of these articles led to Ware issuing his writ demanding £50,000 damages.

If you want to find out more, here’s a link to get started:

https://paddyfrench1.wordpress.com/2021/02/28/ware-v-french-goes-to-trial/

Ware v French is the key legal action in relation to the Panorama programme and Paddy is determined to take this all the way to trial.

This is going to be a hugely expensive legal battle.  Please help him succeed.

Many thanks

Tony Greenstein