We are a group of Liberal Democrats proud of the recent growth in support for our party, but seriously concerned that our leaders’ repeated utterances about alleged antisemitism have not been based on sound evidence. We have tried to raise this issue with them and get it discussed within the party, but much to our disappointment, have encountered a total refusal, as if the topic were taboo. The experience has led us to publish this article.
UK Liberal Dems call on party leaders to reinstate group suspended for criticism of Israel →
Authors: Jonathan Coulter, Peter Downey, John Hall, Roger Higginson, Denis Mollison, John Payne,
Penny Rivers, Denise Watkins & 4 others not wishing to go public
Editor’s note: What follows is a letter by 12 members of the Liberal Democrat party in the UK to their party leadership about restrictions on the discussion of Israel, which they titled “Open letter: please tell the truth about alleged antisemitism.”
The Liberal Democrat party holds 12 seats in the British parliament and formerly served in the Conservative governing coalition of 2010 to 2015. This center party was a big winner in the recent European Parliamentary elections, getting more seats than the Conservative and Labour Parties combined.
Journalists, check your evidence on antisemitism! →
Authors: Jonathan Coulter, Dr Alan Maddison and Tim Llewellyn
In the face of a near three-year political and media campaign alleging rampant and institutional antisemitism in the Labour Party – especially on the left – we present here hard statistical evidence that the allegation is wildly exaggerated or based on misinformation. The relevant data we present below has been almost completely ignored in media reporting and commentary and the findings rarely if ever referred to, or reflected upon.
Britain’s acquiescence with the weaponisation of antisemitism; can we really be so daft?
I recently launched a Judicial Review of the press regulator IPSO (Independent Press Standards Organisation) for failing to heed a group complaint about two Murdoch newspapers which had grossly misreported a House of Lords meeting to launch the campaign for Britain to apologise for the impact on the native Palestinian people of the Balfour Declaration of 1917. Between them, the newspapers had smeared a whole meeting of Palestine sympathisers as ‘antisemitic’ and, by implication anybody who spoke at or attended similar meetings.
IPSO'S Latest season of calamities →
Author: Brian Cathcart
IPSO, the sham regulator operated by the big newspaper corporations since 2014, has never enjoyed much credibility. After all, it was set up in defiance of the reforming recommendations of the Leveson Report by press bosses openly determined to keep their freedom to lie and bully, and ever since then their papers have been breaching its code of practice with impunity almost every day.
Letter to supporters
I am sorry to tell you that the Judge has rejected my case against IPSO; you can see his judgement on https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/coulter-v-ipso-2018-ewch-919-qb.pdf.
This is a severe disappointment to my legal team and me, and to the Hacked Off Campaign which has assisted me over the last year. Significantly, my legal team had assessed that I had good prospects for success and was an ideal test case; I would not have proceeded otherwise.
Read moreHow IPSO Cherry-Picks complaints →
Author: Brian Cathcart
If you are a regulator sworn to uphold standards in a given industry, it's vital that you know about any possible breaches of those standards, right? In other words, you should be grateful to anyone who tells you about such breaches, whoever they are.
Where does the buck stop in the South Hebron Hills? →
Israeli PR typically portrays the army of occupation (IDF) as acting in the interests of security, when it is really confiscating property in the interests of settlers. In area described in this paper, IDF has no such "security fig leaf", because Palestinians resist in an entirely peaceful manner. At the end, I ask who is really responsible for the lamentable situation faced by the people, even as they resist peacefully.
My Oslo paper
The author/Jonathan reports on the two day conference marking 20 years of the Oslo Accords, and concludes that the problem is more about the West than about the middle-eastern parties (Israelis and Palestinians). The various speakers showed that the accords had failed the Palestinians, had proved a major disappointment to the host country, Norway, and had allowed Israel to manipulate international opinion favour of a long-standing Zionist agenda of controlling the territory and resources of historic Palestine. The solution lay in western leaders making rational decisions and holding in check overbearing lobbies representing foreign powers.
Source: Journal of Palestine Refugee Studies, Vol. 3, Issue 2, Autumn 2013, ISSN 2046-7060.
How to be right – – – when you are wrong? →
Jonathan Coulter writes about James O’Brien who runs a well-known chat show for LBC, and has just published: ‘How to be right – – – in a world gone wrong’.
He takes a progressive position on a range of issues, from the position of Muslims to the fixed-odd gambling terminals, but is what I would call Progressive except on Palestine (PEP). Moreover, he sometimes treats people deplorably, as I found in two clips where members of the public questioned views he had been propagating about antisemitism in the Labour Party.