Richard Sanders

Presenter of Double Down Newswatch, your one-stop shop for the best of independent media.

[Richard Sanders @PulaRJS]

Next Wednesday sees the launch of Double Down Newswatch, a new weekly magazine programme that will showcase the best of independent media.

Here I explain why it's needed.
https://t.co/IkPaMAuWoC

[Aleen from Gaza 🇵🇸🍉 @lmy8KMPMAf32854]

I grew up watching Mr. Bean. ❤️

Before the war, whenever my family wanted a happy evening, my mother would make popcorn, and we would all gather around the TV to watch his funny shows. I was just a child, with no worries, enjoying those beautiful family moments.

I never knew his real voice. I had only ever seen him make us laugh.

Today, for the first time, I hear him speak about us. And for the first time, the man who brought so much laughter into my childhood makes me cry instead. 💔

Please listen to him carefully. The face I once associated with laughter is now speaking about our pain. I never imagined I would live to see the day when Mr. Bean would remind me not of the happiness of my childhood, but of the heartbreaking reality of what we have endured.

[The Iain Duncan Smiths @TheIDSmiths]

"You know who else are antisemitic vermin? Your school-age children" feels like a significant escalation in our political class's psychological warfare against its own citizens on behalf of a genocidal foreign state

[Richard Sanders @PulaRJS]

The British media is an embarrassment.

[NewsCord @newscord_org]

The past 20 days have marked one of the most monolithic pushes by British media to vilify the Zionism is Racism Green Party motion.

Imbalanced coverage would be an understatement.

The papers wrote 447 articles on the Greens' Zionism vote. Israel, pro-Israel groups and the Chief Rabbi got 12,133 words. Palestinians got 3,173.

Any institution that parades as a "news outlet" can no longer be taken seriously if it covers this motion without also covering the people, Palestinians, who have endured, suffered and been oppressed the most by the ideology in action.

What the figures show:

• Israel's government alone got 3,904 words. More than every Palestinian put together.

• 2,422 of the 3,173 Palestinian words came in stories tying Lubna Speitan, the Palestinian who proposed the motion, to al-Qaeda.

• Apart from Lubna, two Palestinians were quoted across 436 articles, for 76 words between them. Nobody in Gaza, the occupied West Bank or Lebanon was quoted at all.

• Lubna told the Telegraph that 56 members of her family had been killed in Gaza. One article mentioned it: the Telegraph's own al-Qaeda story, in paragraph 44 of 51.

• Lubna has received death and rape threats since the vote. Al Jazeera reported it. None of the 447 British articles did.

• 43 articles said, in the paper's own voice, that the motion meant the destruction or abolition of Israel. The motion calls for one state with "equal rights for all".

• 36 headlines said antisemitism. Not one of 447 said genocide.

• 304 of the 436 articles we read in full never mentioned the genocide at all.

• 0 of 89 comment pieces backed the motion.

• The Daily Mail ran 38 articles on the motion, and in that time, just 2 on Israel's ongoing attacks across Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.

Full report: https://t.co/4liNwhBG2g

[Paul Holden @pauleholden]

Ed has never threatened the Labour Party with non-cooperation for facilitating and enabling a genocide, arresting pensioners for holding signs, or overseeing new restrictions on the right to peaceful protest... despite being the Party of civil liberties. Why is that?

Seems to me the whole political establishment is telling on itself. A motion is a red line, but genocide isn't.

[Jeremy Corbyn @jeremycorbyn]

The government has officially blocked my call for a public inquiry into Britain's role in Gaza.

Delaying scrutiny will not make questions about British complicity in genocide disappear - and we will never give up until we have brought about justice for the Palestinian people.

[Richard Sanders @PulaRJS]

https://t.co/0jaVXoARSf

[Richard Sanders @PulaRJS]

"I don't know what the fuss is about. Zionism is of course racist. .... Zionists ... decided to establish their self-determination on the territory of another people. .... There's no way that the state of Israel could have been established without the expulsion of the people already living in the territory ... Why is this so difficult to understand?"

The indomitable Ghada Karmi, driven from Jerusalem as a child, cuts through the crap at this morning's Greens4Palestine press conference. /1

[Richard Sanders @PulaRJS]

Shami Chakrabarti, meet Ahmed Alnaouq- who lost almost his entire extended family in an Israeli bombing, including 13 small children - and @ghadakarmi - exiled as a child from Jerusalem in the Nakba and forced to live her entire life in exile because she belongs to the wrong ethnicity .

Perhaps you could explain to them why their views are "foolish ... student politics." /1

[Richard Sanders @PulaRJS]

"For me as a Palestinian, Zionism is racism. Zionism is genocidal. Zionism is sociopathic. Zionism is all about ethnic cleansing for a group of people at the expense of another. If I were not Palestinian, if I just happened to be a Jewish person, I would have lived with all my rights granted. No one would have questioned me, no one would have come after my land, my country, to kill us. So if that is not racism, then what is? Ever since I came to the UK, I've been hearing some bizarre ideas: 'Zionism means different things to different people'. Zionism means only one thing. And it means one thing to the people that it was manifested at. Zionism means genocide and death."

Ahmed Alnaouq, who lost almost his entire extended family in a single air-strike, including 13 children, speaks at this morning's Greens4Palestine press conference./1

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

To be clear: both the Lib Dems and Labour are saying that they will refuse to form a coalition with the Greens, even if it as the expense of a Reform or Tory government, because of a Green Party conference motion condemning a political ideology that’s led to genocide?

Really?

[Richard Sanders @PulaRJS]

This is really quite shocking from Shami Chakrabarti. "This foolish motion" is what the vast majority of Palestinians believe.

Perhaps she could explain to them how it is that she - miraculously - came to understand their own lived experience better than they do.

If you want to debate tactics and strategy, fine. But that's not what she's doing.

Coming from a member of a party that has materially assisted the wholesale slaughter of small children for the last 3 years it is frankly obscene.

[teresa smith @treesey]

Shami Chakrabarti condemns the Green Party’s Zionism is racism motion on #PoliticsLive
“It’s not even fair to student unions to call this student union politics”. She describes the motion as “wrong and highly inflammatory”

[Richard Sanders @PulaRJS]

Full report here.
https://t.co/RQi9LK7LOW

[Richard Sanders @PulaRJS]

Western media played a key role "in marginalizing Palestinian voices and reproducing Israeli narratives, .... which ultimately legitimized atrocities."

Important new UN report on media complicity in the genocide. Startlingly almost entirely ignored by western media. /1
https://t.co/lCuYuW3cS0

[Richard Sanders @PulaRJS]

"The genocide has exposed long-standing ideological biases in media coverage of Palestine/Israel, including across Western traditional media and major digital platforms. It has exposed a system that determines whose voices are heard and whose suffering is recognized. These attempts to influence opinions through content curation, amplification and other forms of distortion have serious consequences for the human rights of the Palestinian people and those who defend their rights." /2

[Richard Sanders @PulaRJS]

@carolecadwalla Exactly.

[Richard Sanders @PulaRJS]

Another odd thing about today's @bbclaurak prog - why have Jo Coburn on the panel, a woman who has spent almost her entire career as a BBC journalist? Hey - outlandish idea - but how about a Palestinian?

Certainly lifted the veil on the political perspective Coburn had been bringing to her journalism all these years.

[Richard Sanders @PulaRJS]

👏👏👏 In the face of the predictable onslaught from @bbclaurak Zack Polanski turned in a solid performance re Zionism is racism. No apology, no climbdown. Jo Coburn and Nadine Dorris left spluttering with outrage, which indicates he did something right.

Dale Vince, wearing a kaffiyeh, even managed to slip in a reference to “genocide,” without correction. We’re getting there, slowly.

As for Laura, if only we knew what her own views were ...

[Liam Shrivastava @LiamShrivastava]

I will take no moral lectures from a party that is aiding and abetting a genocide

[Richard Sanders @PulaRJS]

👏👏👏 In the face of the predictable onslaught from @bbclaurak Zack Polanski turned in a solid performance re Zionism is racism. No apology, no climbdown. Jo Coburn and Nadine Dorris left spluttering with outrage, which indicates he did something right.

Dale Vince, wearing a kaffiyeh, even managed to slip in a reference to “genocide,” without correction. We’re getting there, slowly.

As for Laura, if only we knew what her own views were ...

[Maha Hussaini @MahaGaza]

A routine morning update during the “ceasefire”: At least 6 Palestinians have been killed and 26 others injured, including two fishermen off Gaza’s coast, as Israeli attacks continue by air, land and sea.