Luke Stanger – Why has this racist & misogynist not yet been expelled from the Labour Party?

Calling Gypsies and Travellers a ‘Nasty Blight’, targeting Women and Black women especially for abuse and making false accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ is all in a day’s trolling for Lukey

My initial response to Stanger's racist comments

At the end of last year, one of the nastiest of Labour’s right-wing trolls, Luke Stanger, was suspended by the Labour Party. Even by the standards of Labour’s odious Right Stanger is in a league of his own.

His speciality is in targeting women, Black or ethnic minority women in particular. People such as Labour’s  Black council candidate in the Brighton and Hove Council elections, Alex Braithwaite, or Haringey’s Seema Chandwani. It says a lot about the current state of the Labour Party that the target of Stanger’s abuse, Alex Braithwaite, has herself now been suspended.

Another Stanger tweet attacking the only Black candidate in the local elections in Brighton & Hove

Luke claims Jewish ancestry. It seems every non-Jewish racist in the Labour Party is now searching their family tree for a trace of Jewish blood! In reality Luke is about as Jewish as a ham sandwich.

Stanger has a nasty habit of accusing anti-racists of ‘anti-Semitism’ – especially if they are Black or Jewish! As Alexei Sayle, the Jewish comedian, said ‘There can be no greater injustice than anti-racists being accused of racism by racists"

To be fair (and I always try to be fair) Stanger is a few sandwiches short of a picnic. He doesn’t seem to understand that non-Jews accusing Black people of racism and Jewish people of ‘anti-Semitism’ is both racist and anti-Semitic. But what can you expect from a White person for whom racism is simply an abusive epithet to hurl at your opponents?

Luke Stanger with Simon Cobbs (right), founder of Sussex Friends of Israel, a supporter of the neo-Nazi Jewish Defence League, Cobbs has demonstrated with the EDL

What makes Stanger’s behaviour so inexcusable is that there has never been the slightest evidence that he (or the rest of the Labour Right), has ever had the slightest interest in combating genuine racism.

Stanger accuses Jewish group the JVL of 'antisemitism' without a trace of irony - I'm also not a member!

You won't see Stanger protesting outside Yarl’s Wood or Campsfield Detention Centres for asylum seekers which New Labour set up and ran. The idea of him or fellow Zionist trolls campaigning around Grenfell Tower or any other form of state racism would be to indulge in a flight of fancy. Only ‘anti-Semitism’ concerns them.  

And not the kind of anti-Semitism that we are seeing amongst Israel’s best friends in Hungary, Poland or amongst Trump’s supporters.  Stanger’s concern about ‘anti-Semitism’ only arises in the context of criticism of Israel or Zionism. 

Zionist group that supports Tommy Robinson attacks Richard Burgon

Founder and owner of JHRW in a promotional video with Tommy Robinson

Indeed Stanger has taken to retweeting from the far-Right Jewish Human Rights Watch, a group that is neither Jewish nor interested in human rights.  It is led by Manchester solicitor Robert Festenstein, who made a guest appearance in a promotional video with Tommy Robinson.

Given that Joan Ryan's departure broke Stanger's heart, one can only assume he will soon be following her

Stanger learnt the tricks of the trade when he was an intern with crooked MP, Joan Ryan. People may remember Ms Ryan from her starring role in Al Jazeera’s The Lobby when she tried to frame Labour conference delegate Jean Fitzpatrick as an anti-Semite. Unknown to Ryan, the conversation was being taped. The Labour Party had to unsuspend Jean when it became clear that Ryan was a brazen liar.

Joan Ryan has now thankfully departed to the Funny Tinge Group - hopefully Stanger will follow her

Ryan of course was a model of probity. She was forced to repay more than £5,000 in mortgage interest in the parliamentary expenses scandal.  Ryan’s only achievement, apart from being Chair of Labour Friends of Israel, was to claim more expenses than any other MP in 2006-7 having been runner up the previous year. Given the stiff competition this was indeed a remarkable achievement.

It speaks volumes that Stanger praises Lansman's 'thoughtful' speech at the JLM

Stanger is well connected. It’s rumoured that the reason he wasn’t suspended earlier was because of support from Tom Watson.

Despite accusing others of racism, Stanger is quite clearly an accomplished racist in his own right. On August 8^th 2018, in response to a Daily Mail story ‘200 travellers moved from Surrey common invade village SIX MILES away’ Stanger tweeted in response:

‘I am perplexed by how some on the left have any sympathy for such matters. The traveller community are frequently a nasty blight on communities who wreak civil unrest onto areas.’ (my emphasis)

Anyone who doubts the racist nature of this post should substitute ‘Jews’ for ‘travellers’. It met with a strong response from other Twitter users.

Gypsies waiting to be put to death at Auschwitz

Luke’s initial defence was that ‘Highlighting that some in the traveller community cause civil disorder and wreak havoc onto local communities makes me a racist?’ This was disingenuous. Luke didn’t talk about some but all travellers. But even if he had used ‘some’ that would not make the Tweet any less racist. Instead of concentrating on the hounding of travellers and Gypsies from one area to another, the deprivation and attacks they suffer, Luke joined in those attacks portraying Gypsies and Travellers in terms of anti-social behaviour or as the Nazis put it Gemeinschaftsschädlich, damage to the community. 

Stanger doesn't understand why calling Travellers a 'nasty blight' might be racist - perhaps Nigel Farage's Brexit party would be more understanding?

Another attack on Anne Mitchell. The Mark in question is lawyer Mark Lewis, a Zionist solicitor recently fined £12,000 by the Law Society for wishing an early death on his critics! Lewis is a far-Right Zionist and member of Herut UK, the party of Benjamin Netanyahu. This is who Lukey keeps company with when attacking socialists

For someone who professes to be so aware of ‘anti-Semitism’ that he can attack anti-Zionist Jews as ‘anti-Semites’ Stanger is seemingly unaware of Porajmos, the extermination of the Gypsies by the Nazis. Of course that is not so surprising since the Holocaust and the extermination of European Jewry are treated as being synonymous.

Contrary to Zionist mythology and the propaganda of the Holocaust mongers, the Jews were not the only victims of the Holocaust. The Gypsies were murdered in much the same proportion as the Jews. An estimated half a million died in the camps and Nazi ghettos. There were Gypsies in both Warsaw and Lodz, the two largest ghettos in Nazi occupied Poland. But whereas the Jewish Holocaust has been harnessed to the needs of western imperialism and its support for the Israeli state, the Gypsy Holocaust has been all but forgotten. The same is true of the T4 ‘Euthenasia’ campaign which marked the start of the Holocaust. The murder of up to ¾ million disabled people is barely mentioned.

Pamela Fitzpatrick, a Labour candidate in Harrow, is another woman that Stanger became fixated upon

The Holocaust has been the principal ideological justification for the Israeli state. As Israeli Professor Edith Zertal wrote in The Politics of Nationhood [pp. 4, 91] there hasn’t been a war involving Israel ‘that has not been perceived, defined, and conceptualized in terms of the Holocaust.’ Israel has mobilised the Holocaust ‘in the service of Israeli politics.’ 

Even the definition of anti-Semitism which conflates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism is called the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. Israel receives the largest amount of US aid in the world, all of it military, because Israel is a state which operates as the West’s armed watchdog in the Middle East.

The Gypsies play no such role and are instead the scapegoat of the European Right. Last June the fascist Deputy Prime Minister of Italy, Matteo Salvini promised to expel thousands of Roma and conduct a census of the remainder in a chilling reminder of what happened under Mussolini.

Stanger is 'sick to my stomach' because Seamus Milne is part of Labour's negotiating team with Theresa May in 'constitutionally historic talks'. Clearly Stanger is in the wrong party and should be helped to migrate.

It is because there is no political utility in opposing racism against Gypsies that the Labour Right, not just Stanger, have demonised them. In his Defence after having been suspended Stanger drew attention to the anti-Gypsy racism that is prevalent amongst MPs and Councillors.

John Mann's racist anti-Gypsy booklet

Stanger mentioned John Mann MP in particular. Mann, who famously called Ken Livingstone a ‘Nazi apologist’, issued a pamphlet on Anti-Social Behaviour in which Gypsies were demonised as a social pest and nuisance. 

There is a certain logic in Stanger’s Defence. Why hasn’t Mann been suspended?  However it is no defence against racism to point to the treatment of other racists. It’s like complaining of being prosecuted for speeding and pointing to the fact that other people were also breaking the speed limit.

Romani children who were victims of the medical experiments of Auschwitz Dr Mengele - what Stanger calls a social blight

Stanger has engaged in a non-stop campaign against the Labour Party’s only Black candidate in the local elections in Brighton and Hove, Alex Braithwaite. Why? Because she cast doubt on the existence of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party and suggested it had been a means of attacking Corbyn. That is obviously true. Why else would the Mail and The Sun be so concerned about Labour anti-Semitism? Is it seriously suggested that newspapers who employed Katie ‘migrants are cockroaches’ Hopkins are seriously concerned with anti-Semitism? Why is it anti-Semitic to cast doubt on the motives of those who are weaponising anti-Semitism?

A few of the reactions on Twitter to Stanger's views on Gypsies

Anti-Semitism in the Labour Party was never raised until Corbyn was elected Leader. It was only after the 2017 General Election, when to everyone’s surprise, Corbyn achieved the biggest swing to Labour since 1945, that claims began to be made that Labour was ‘institutionally anti-Semitic’. As Bob Pitt observed:

[Luciana] Berger wasn’t alone in undergoing a dramatic conversion to the view that Labour is afflicted by a plague of antisemitism. Back in 2016 Berger’s fellow Independent Group founder Chuka Umunna similarly dismissed suggestions that party was institutionally antisemitic (“I have not seen one incident of antisemitism in almost 20 years of activism within my local Labour Party”), as did Jewish Labour Movement vice-chairs Sarah Sackman and Mike Katz (“neither of us has ever experienced any incidence of anti-Semitism from within the party”), only for all of them to discover just a couple of years later that the Labour Party was riddled with antisemitism from top to bottom.

To people like Stanger and the JLM denying the existence of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party is in itself proof that you are anti-Semitic. It is the same logic that prevailed in the Salem Witch Trials. Denial of the existence of witchcraft was proof that you were a witch! This is the medieval standard of justice that Stanger and the Labour Right employ.

Did Yvette Cooper know she was giving a misogynist and racist a photo opp?

What makes it worse is that whilst Stanger has repeatedly harassed Alex Braithwaite for exercising her freedom of speech other Labour council candidates who hold the same opinions and who, like Alex, oppose the IHRA, have not been targeted. Why? The only conclusion is that they are White.

Alex has now, quite shamefully, been suspended and such a decision increases the likelihood of the Tories retaining a marginal seat. It is shameful that Jenny Formby and Jeremy Corbyn have effected a regime that takes its orders from the Tory Press and Guido Fawkes. Helping the Tories retain a seat is what Stanger calls his ‘love’ of the Labour Party. 

Stanger’s Self-Pitying Whines

What is truly pathetic is how Stanger whines and sobs about how terribly he is suffering as a result of his suspension! He is quite happy to harass others who are vulnerable and for his political enemies to be suspended without good cause but when he is suspended he engages in one long self-pitying whine. He pleads in his Defence that::

I also wish to set out my mental health problems as I believe you should take these into account.

As noted above, I suffer from depression, anxiety and ADHD. I don’t wish to invoke my mental health as an emotive matter. Nor do I wish to use it as a prism with which to contextualise any mistakes I have made.

However, the process my suspension has so far entailed has sent me down into a deep depression and seen my motivation affected. Being so abruptly formally suspended from the organisation that makes up such a significant part of my heart and soul was crushing.

Skwawkbox appeared to know more about the reasons for my suspension than I did, shaking my faith in the integrity of the party’s disciplinary process

This special pleading by someone who has done so much to inflict depression and suffering on others is symptomatic of the Labour Rights self-obsession and sense of victim-hood. A lack of empathy and understanding of how others feel is certainly part of Stanger’s condition but this is not so much a mental as a political affliction. Not once, in his incessant abuse of women in particular has he ever thought about the effects of his own actions on others. In his self-indulgent whine, he tweeted that:

‘I am so desperately sad to be informed that my Labour Party membership suspension has been referred onto the NCC... From the outset this process has been marred with an absence of due process... vindictive spirit... the letter of my formal suspension containing only unspecified allegations in mid-October relating to ‘social media conduct’ to the leak to Skawkbox several weeks later who were given prior notice of my charges before I was... the sense of powerlessness felt by the matter’s unreasonable conduct...’

And so it goes on. Whine after whine, bleat after bleat, moan after self-indulgent moan. It’s strange how the Right only talk about due process when they experience their own treatment of others. Civil liberties are only applicable to them. One person, Carl Sargeant, even committed suicide after being suspended but I don't recall Luke Stanger displaying the slightest interest or concern. One might have an ounce of sympathy for this wretch if Stanger hadn’t done his best to inflict as much pain and suffering on his political foes.

I was suspended for two years for comments I was alleged to have made. I wasn’t even told what those comments were still less who had made the complaints. A letter arrived in the post one sunny spring day in 2016 and when I emailed and rang up Labour HQ I was given no information whatsoever. 

The first that I knew of the reasons for my suspension was when my son alerted me to articles in The Telegraph and Times online two weeks later. Powerlessness? Depression? Vindictiveness? Stanger and his cronies gloated at my suspension and that of many others. They called the Chakrabarti Report a ‘whitewash’ because it called for due process and natural justice.

So you might not be surprised that I don’t feel too much sympathy with Stanger’s plaints. As for Stanger’s mental health problems. I do not accept that his vitriolic, racist and misogynist behaviour are a consequence of his mental health. If Stanger suffers from anything it is a political pathology for which there is probably no cure this side of socialism.

Harris Fitch in the middle with two Sussex Friends of Israel members

On 9^th July in Brighton after an Annual General Meeting that the Left won by 2-1 (& which was almost immediately set aside because of lies by Councillors Emma Daniels and Warren Morgan) there was an ugly incident in a pub afterwards. Two right-wing Labour thugs, one of whom was Harris Fitch, threatened and abused Seema Chandwani and Michael Calderbank who were told “get the fuck out of Brighton now, scum”. They had previously addressed a packed to overflowing Momentum rally at the Brighthelm community centre. The person who pointed out Seema and Michael to these thugs was Stanger:

I was in conversation with two individuals at the bar... I pointed out to them that also in the bar was a man called Michael Calderbank who had previously worked for John McDonnell. I suggested he might have been in Brighton to organise for Momentum’s attempt to win the local party AGM. ... At no point did I foresee what occurred next, which was that the two individuals were abusive and threatening towards Mr Calderbank and his partner, Seema Chandwani. The subsequent offensive conduct by the two individuals was entirely unpredictable...’

And if you believe that you really do believe in Father Xmas. Stanger by his own admission, having targeted Seema and Michael did nothing to restrain his associates.

Stanger blamed the objects of his attacks for 'bullying' him

Stanger claims that he harassed Alex Braithwaite and wrote tweets attacking her candidature ‘because I am extremely concerned about incidents involving antisemitism in my local party, which have been common knowledge in recent years.’ Really?  What incidents? There haven’t been any anti-Semitic incidents in Brighton and Hove Labour Party so why should he be concerned about a non-existent threat?

Of course people criticise Israel and Zionism but that is not anti-Semitism unless Stanger believes that Jews and Israel are one and the same thing.  If so then it is he who is being anti-Semitic because he is saying that British Jews bear a responsibility for the actions of Israel.

More Black women that Stanger has fixated upon

What puzzles me is why someone who has been active in the Labour Party since 2010, and who has had no involvement in anti-racist or anti-fascist activity, suddenly be so concerned about ‘anti-Semitism’? In April 2012 there was a mass mobilisation of hundreds of people in Brighton and Hove which prevented the English Defence League marching through the city centre. We stopped the fascist march. Stanger played no part in this unlike the people he is now vilifying.

One of many tweets from Stanger attacking anti-racist members of the Labour Party as 'antisemitic'

Another person that he has demonised as an ‘anti-Semite’ is Hove Labour Party Executive Member Anne Mitchell. Active in Palestine solidarity and anti-racist work she too has now been suspended. Anne’s offence according to Stanger? 

‘stating antisemitism is being ‘privileged’ against other forms of racism. I am unable to determine how any racism can be privileged against any other and therefore concluded that she in some way is trivialising antisemitism compared to other forms of racism.

The Labour Opposition under Ed Miliband supported the 2014 Immigration Act and Theresa May's 'hostile environment policy' which led to the Windrush deportations of hundreds of Black people. Has Stanger ever raised concerns over genuine issues of racism such as these? Has he or his Labour Right trolls shown any concern over the Grenfell fire which was as much the responsibility of New Labour as the Tories?

Anti-Semitism has been the only form of racism that has been raised in the Labour Party by Stanger and his fellows.  What is this if not privileging anti-Semitism? Jews in Britain are not subject to deportation, do not suffer from Stop and Search or Police violence or over representation in the prison estate. Jews in Britain are not economically discriminated against. Those whose only concern is a non-existent 'antisemitism' related of course to Israel are obviously privileging anti-Semitism.

Stanger attacking the Chair of his CLP as well as Anne

According to Stanger ‘Anne Mitchell has also asked JLM to justify reports of IDF violence.’ Apparently this is ‘invoking a traditional antisemitic trope in suggesting British Jews have split national loyalties that involve Israel or are collectively responsible for the actions of a state they are not usually citizens of.’

The hypocrisy is breathtaking. The JLM sponsored the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism which states that ‘Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination (e.g. by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour)’ is anti-Semitic.

If words mean anything then this means that Israel is, as it claims to be, the nation state of all Jewish people, including British Jews. That is what Israel’s Jewish Nation State Law claims. Zionist mythology holds that Israeli Jews are part of a world wide Jewish nation. If this is so then Jews in Britain are obviously responsible for what Israel does since they are part of one, world-wide Jewish nation. 

But Anne wasn’t even doing that.  She was querying a Zionist organisation, the JLM which is affiliated to the World Zionist Organisation and what its view was on Israeli army violence. The JLM is the British wing of the Israeli Labour Party. The JLM only accepts Zionists, Jewish and non-Jewish, as members. Of course it is perfectly right to challenge it on where it stands on the violence of Israel's military.

So worked up was Stanger that he made a Complaint Against Ann Mitchell. Anne tweeted him: ‘Can we please stop talking as if all Jewish comrades are in agreement and hold similar views, because they do not.’ By conflating the JLM with all Jews it is Stanger who is guilty of the very crime he accuses Anne (& Alex) of.  In her tweet to the JLM she specifically referred to ‘Zionist orgs’.  It is Stanger’s anti-Semitism which translates ‘Zionist’ into ‘Jew’ when as Stanger knows, the worst Zionist racists are, like himself and the neo-Nazi founder of the alt-Right, Richard Spencer, non-Jewish. Spencer even calls himself a White Zionist, an apt description for Stanger.

Further information on Stanger’s sad plight can be obtained from Skwawkbox’s Stanger ‘abusive behaviour’ case referred to Labour’s senior disciplinary committee.

Tony Greenstein

When it comes to Foul Mouthed Abuse, noone can outdo Zionist Lawyers like Mark Lewis

Pro-Israel lawyer Matthew Berlow sanctioned by the Law Society for racist smears against Scottish PSC member

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.’

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.

Mark's day of rage

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:

Why, as a British Jew, I’m terrified by anti-Semitism in my country.

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.".

Making Craig Murray "homeless"

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.

Robert Festenstein

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!

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

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