I’m not grumpy - I’m furious. I’m disabled so know only too well how the tories roll. Retweets without comment speak for me, others depend on my pithy comments.
One for @bbclaurak who asked on air "Why would Israel lie?"
A leak has revealed the IDF actually has a programme to train its people in the “fundamentals of psychological warfare, propaganda, deception, legitimacy and public diplomacy." https://t.co/yW2WeZakYA
Roger Waters, Pink Floyd co-founder:
"I'm ready to admit I break down in tears every morning for Gaza."
"Because I'm 80 years old — and I've never witnessed the genocide of an entire people before my eyes every single day." 🎸🇵🇸💔🔥
Andy Burnham says he "can't judge" if the Israeli military's crimes in Gaza are a genocide.
The experts already have.
A UN commission, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and leading rights orgs all agree: it's genocide.
Andy, why won't you call it what it is?
After her brilliant Question Time performance, looking forward to joining Sarah Wakefield campaigning in Makerfield tomorrow.
Looking forward to hearing voters' views about what they want for THEIR community
https://t.co/Tvcc6xVK9t
Just to put this out there with clarity: Robbie Gibb, who is responsible for turning the disgraced JC into a right-wing Pro-Netanyahu propaganda rag, is one of five people - including the Director General - on the @BBCNews editorial guidelines and standards committee. It’s on the BBC website.
Minutes of the last meeting show they discussed complaints about Israel/Gaza. Quite apart from the fact he is not remotely impartial on the Middle East, how can the owner of a paper with such poor journalistic standards have a role over the BBC’s?
Robbie Gibb gets to censor the BBC's Middle East coverage. He needs to resign today.
https://t.co/SnaJNlkH8w
Revealed: Israel’s curriculum for ‘influencing public consciousness’
A leaked Defense Ministry tender lays out the army’s training program for manipulating public opinion in Israel and abroad.
@ha_makom
https://t.co/5C1yc8quJj
An unelected Lord, appointed “antisemitism adviser”, now feels entitled or even qualified to explain antisemitism to a Jewish national party leader.
To add to all this - he's not Jewish.
Truly rabbit hole stuff.
Palantir now has the names and addresses of every person who holds a gun in the UK
They have the records of every Police Officer
They have access to everyone's Medical Records
These are people who are using AI to murder in Gaza and Lebanon
They cannot be trusted
Since the claimed ‘ceasefire’ in Gaza 🇵🇸
Israel 🇮🇱 has annexed 70% of Gaza 🇵🇸
Israel 🇮🇱 has murdered over 900 Palestinians
There is no ‘ceasefire’
It’s an apocalypse
It’s a land grab
It’s genocide
Expel 🇮🇱 from the UN now.
Today is Naksa Day.
It commemorates Israel's expulsion of 300,000 Palestinians & 130,000 Syrians from their homes in 1967.
This is a brief history of Israel's Ethnic Cleansing of the Palestinians and Syrians in 1967, my latest: https://t.co/T98GYaJlAZ
I am horrified that a car has been deliberately set alight outside the home of the family of Salma Yaqoob, a wonderful prominent anti-racist and peace campaigner in Birmingham.
I hope the police take this shocking incident seriously. Sending my solidarity to Salma & her family.
On 5 June 1967, Israel launched a war of aggression against Egypt, Syria and Jordan, and came to occupy the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza, territory intended to form part of a future Palestinian State.
Within weeks, a young legal adviser at Israel's Foreign Ministry, Theodor Meron, set out the legal consequences with remarkable clarity. In a memorandum I recovered during archival research in 2019, he affirmed the applicability of the 1907 Hague Regulations and the Fourth Geneva Convention to the newly occupied territories, and recalled the prohibition on annexation.
Two months later, writing to Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, Meron advised that the establishment of civilian settlements in the occupied territories would be, in his words, in "contravention of explicit provisions" of international humanitarian law.
History has a habit of leaving breadcrumbs. Meron would later become President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and decades later advised the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on atrocity crimes committed by Netanyahu and others in Gaza. The legal position he articulated in 1967 has not changed. What has changed is that nearly six decades later, the warnings were ignored, the occupation entrenched and metastasized into unlawful presence, and the consequences are before us all.
More than 210 nationalities make up the NHS workforce. Among them are Palestinians or those of immediate Palestinian descent/heritage.
Claims that Palestinian flags endanger the safety of Jews is not only nonsense, its also a glaring example of anti-Palestinian racism dressed up as safeguarding for Jews. It equates a national flag/symbol of identity/solidarity with automatic hostility, without evidence of any kind that a specific staff member has acted unprofessionally. This framing also falsely suggests that all NHS staff members who support Palestinian rights would hold their Jewish patients responsible for the actions of Israel, thus they would feel justified in discriminating against Jews.
This really needs to be properly unpacked from both ends because of all the serious implications it has regarding antisemitism, anti-Palestinian racism and the very real manipulations at play designed to shield Israel from criticism/accountability.
We are in real danger of entering the territory of quite literally suggesting that Palestinians, as well as any symbols representing Palestinians, are to be automatically viewed as threatening towards Jewish people. Any Palestinians working for the NHS thus cannot be trusted to treat or even be near Jewish patients.
These are positions that nobody should accept. The portrayal of Palestinians and their supporters as vicious and violent Jew-haters is not only untrue but in itself a racist trope.
Framing this as being about Jewish safety has the added impact of promoting ignorance around what is and is not antisemitism and conflates British Jews with Israel.
Protecting vulnerable patients from bias & discrimination is entirely legitimate. Our NHS has a duty to ensure impartial care regardless of patient ethnicity, religious background, or political views. We should not be denying Jewish vulnerability or dismissing the real instances of discrimination (e.g. where kosher requests have been denied or ridiculed) as trivial matters as this ignores legitimate concerns.
I am very concerned that the rhetoric of Karen Newman, as well as the proposals & conclusions of Lord Mann, portray Jews as being irrational and paranoid, unable to coexist with Palestinian symbols, and demanding exceptional protections beyond appropriate measures. This feeds tropes of Jewish "hypersensitivity," power ("controlling" NHS policy), and dual loyalty. It also has the effect of chilling free speech and restricting criticism of Israel.
This is a weaponisation of both antisemitism and Jewish vulnerability in order to erase Palestine & Palestinians from the NHS.
I'm extremely worried that this entire debacle will further stigmatise Palestinians, manipulate antisemitism discourse to limit criticism of Israel, and worse of all it will ironically heighten divisions, causing resentment and ignorance that directs the blame for these measures onto Jews—potentially worsening the very vulnerabilities cited.
It is the CONDUCT and PROFESSIONALISM of NHS staff that should be our concern as opposed to their political beliefs or display of symbols. Any actual bias incidents must be investigated rigorously and full training should be provided so that accommodations for religious needs (e.g. halal & kosher) can be made without politicising displays of identity/solidarity.
We need to really investigate the anti-Palestinian racism that results in Jews experiencing fear/concern/vulnerability when confronted with symbols of Palestinian identity. Who is telling British Jews that this is how they should react when they see Palestinian flags or other symbols and why?
Swiss court shames UK by refusing to criminalise anti-genocide protest
A court in Geneva has ruled that peaceful opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza is a legitimate right in a landmark decision and that nothing justifies sanctioning peaceful activists.
https://t.co/lBxwMUeRui