Rob Ballantyne

I used to be proud to be British, but these days I'm just embarrassed. I'd leave if they hadn't taken that option away.

[Rob Ballantyne @RobBallantyne59]

Erasing a Word Erases a People: Reinstate Palestine in the British Museum - Sign the Petition! https://t.co/qfuw7QwtMh via @UKChange

[Rob Ballantyne @RobBallantyne59]

@Parody_PM Two short planks

[Rob Ballantyne @RobBallantyne59]

@StokeyyG2 Against Albania and Latvia, at home.👏👏👏

[Rob Ballantyne @RobBallantyne59]

@bbc5live Why are we obsessed with growth? We don't need it. There is plenty of wealth in this country. We just need to distribute it better.

[Rob Ballantyne @RobBallantyne59]

@Nigel_Farage You had a milkshake thrown at you. Grow up. It's not the crime of the century. Get over yourself.

[Led By Donkeys @ByDonkeys]

“My name is Amos Goldberg. I am an Israeli Professor of Holocaust Studies. For nearly 30 years I have researched and taught the Holocaust, genocide and state violence.

And I want to tell whoever is willing to listen that what’s happening now in Gaza is a genocide.

A year ago when October 7th happened, like all Israelis I was in shock. It was a war crime and a crime against humanity. 1200 people - more than 800 of them civilians - were killed in one day. Children and the elderly were among those taken hostage. Communities were destroyed. It was outrageous, traumatizing, personal. Like most Israelis, I know people who were killed, who lost loved ones or whose loved ones were taken hostage.

But immediately afterwards came Israel’s response and within weeks thousands of civilians were killed in Gaza. It took me some time to digest what was unfolding before my eyes. It was agonizing to confront that reality. I was reluctant to call it a genocide.

But if you read Raphael Lemkin – the Jewish-Polish legal scholar who coined the term ‘genocide’ and was the major driving force behind the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention – what is happening in Gaza now is exactly what he had in mind when he spoke about genocide.

It does not need to look like the Holocaust to be a genocide. Each genocide looks different and not all involve killing of millions or the entire group. The United Nations Genocide Convention explicitly asserts that genocide is the act of deliberately destroying a group in whole or in part. Those are the words.

But there does need to be a clear intent.

And indeed, there are clear indications of intent to destroy Gaza: Israel’s leaders - including the prime minister and the minister of defence - and many high-ranking military officers, media personalities, rabbis, as well as ordinary soldiers were very open about what they wanted to achieve. There were countless documented incitements to turn the whole of Gaza into rubble and claims that there are no innocent people living there.

A radical atmosphere of dehumanization of the Palestinians prevails in Israeli society to an extent that I can’t remember in my 58 years of living here.

Now that vision has been enacted. Tens of thousands of innocent children, women and men have been killed. Over a hundred thousand were wounded. There is a near total destruction of infrastructure, intentional starvation and blocking of humanitarian aid. There are mass graves and reliable testimony of summary executions. Children that were shot by snipers. All the universities and almost all hospitals are gone. Almost all the population is displaced. There have been numerous bombings of civilians in so-called ‘safe zones’. Gaza does not exist anymore. It is completely destroyed. Thus, the outcome fits perfectly with the stated intentions of Israel’s leadership.

Lemkin - that scholar who coined the term ‘genocide’ - described two phases of a genocide. The first is the destruction of the annihilated group and the second is what he called ‘imposition of the national pattern’ of the perpetrator. We are now witnessing the second phase as Israel prepares ethnically cleansed areas for Israeli settlements.

And therefore, I have come to the conclusion that this is exactly what a genocide looks like. We don’t teach about genocides in order to realize it retrospectively. We teach about it in order to prevent it and to stop it.

But like in every other case of genocide in history right now we have mass denial. Both here in Israel and around the world.

But reality cannot be denied.

So yes, it is a genocide.

And once you come to this conclusion you cannot remain silent.”

- Statement to Led By Donkeys, December 2024
- Photo: Parliament Square, London, 8.40am, 4th December 2024

[Rob Ballantyne @RobBallantyne59]

@BernardKeavy I reckon I could do better than Pete Wicks.

[Rob Ballantyne @RobBallantyne59]

#StrictlyComeDancing Why don't we ever get to see what the actual votes are? Why all the cloak and dagger? I think we could all accept the results much better if we could actually see them.

[Led By Donkeys @ByDonkeys]

Nigel Farage loves open borders - for the super rich

[Rob Ballantyne @RobBallantyne59]

@GreatRightAngle @carolvorders @thetimes @JCalvertST The change was no doubt to insulate the royal family from the austerity the rest of us were living under.

[Rob Ballantyne @RobBallantyne59]

@GreatRightAngle @carolvorders @thetimes @JCalvertST What you're failing to mention is that in 1760, the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall were retained by the king for his own private wealth and did not pass to the state as part of the Crown Estates.

[Rob Ballantyne @RobBallantyne59]

@GreatRightAngle @carolvorders @thetimes @JCalvertST Also the arrangement by which a portion of the profits from the Crown Estates pass to the monarch was only introduced by George Osborne under the last Tory government. Before that the royal family were paid an annual grant from public funds.

[Led By Donkeys @ByDonkeys]

It’s time for Labour to remember its roots and reinstate the right to peaceful protest.

Thanks to @ChrisGPackham for the narration

Location: HMP Wormwood Scrubs

[Rob Ballantyne @RobBallantyne59]

@Nigel_Farage Keep up Nige. He already has been.

[Rob Ballantyne @RobBallantyne59]

@GBNEWS @christopherhope Lended? Perhaps he should have 'lended' it to you so that you could learn how to speak English.

[Rob Ballantyne @RobBallantyne59]

Peaceful climate protesters get 4 or 5 years in prison, while racist rioters get less than 3. What are we supposed to learn from that?

[Caroline Lucas @CarolineLucas]

Peaceful climate protesters have just been sentenced to years in jail. And they’re appealing. Join me in telling the new government to scrap Tory anti-protest law now and #StopJailingTruthTellers https://t.co/6jZSNCKWZp

[Trades Union Congress @The_TUC]

There is more that unites us than divides us.

[Harry Eccles @Heccles94]

Peaceful climate activists sentenced to 4-5 years in prison whilst private water bosses get bonus for polluting our planet.

This is a dark day for the UK.

RT if you agree.

[Jonathan Pie @JonathanPieNews]

Election Special 4: The Conservatives.

[Rob Ballantyne @RobBallantyne59]

@Nigel_Farage 85? An invasion? Are you having a laugh? Even if there were that many every day for a whole year, that would be 31025. That's about a football stadium full.