Jonathan Cook – jonathan-cook.net Apr 22, 2024

How to interfere, once again, in British politics and further curtail fundamental civil liberties on behalf of a foreign power, Israel – all egged on by the political and media establishment – in seven easy steps:

1.  Gideon Falter, chief executive of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, an aggressively pro-Israel organisation which led a smear campaign against former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn – one enthusiastically amplified by the establishment media – is back in action.

A week ago he decided to bring a film crew to record his efforts to cross a London street where another enormous march was taking place calling for a ceasefire to end the bloodletting and starvation of the 2.3 million people in Gaza. The march, we should note, is prominently attended every week by Jewish groups to show their solidarity with Palestinian civilians Israel has been slaughtering in their tens of thousands for more than six months, in what the World Court calls a “plausible” genocide. Israel has been ably assisted in its genocidal actions by western governments, including Britain’s. None of the Jewish groups that attend these marches has ever faced a problem for being Jewish.

2. The Metropolitan Police mark off much of the route of the weekly marches with barriers and officers to make it difficult for people to join or leave except at designated points. This is standard practice for big demonstrations nowadays, on the grounds, police argue, that it is their responsibility to maintain public order.

However, the policing of these marches has also occurred in the context of malicious efforts by Zionist groups, and the political and media establishment, to smear those attending the anti-genocide protests as trouble-makers and Jew haters – based on precisely zero evidence. A group of Holocaust survivors that are among the many Jewish groups that attend has stated: “Every major pro-Palestine demonstration in London has included a large Jewish bloc, which has received nothing but support and warmth from their fellow demonstrators. Claims that these protests are no-go zones for Jews are completely untrue.”

3. Filmed by his supporters, Falter made a big show of his desire to cross the march at a location where he knew the police were likely to object. Presumably his skull cap offered an added benefit – in addition to the film crew – that the police were more likely to flag him and try to stop him. Falter, of course, did not actually want to cross the street. He wanted to be filmed being stopped from crossing, so he could protest that he was being victimised as a Jew. The police duly obliged. The whole non-incident was captured on film, which was then hurriedly supplied to the BBC and other media.

4. In the film, an officer is shown providing Falter with two reasons he can’t cross the road at the chosen point. Those reasons were dictated solely by the policeman:

a) The officer calls Falter “openly Jewish”. That does not appear to be what he actually means, though it is exactly what Falter hopes he will say. As noted, lots of Jews – including Jews who are “openly Jewish”, carrying signs declaring their Jewishness – attend the marches every week. What the policeman actually identifies is that Falter is openly Zionist – which, in this context, means that he vocally supports Israel’s “right” to massacre Palestinians in Gaza, including Palestinian children.

Such confusion between “Jewish” and “Zionist” has been careful cultivated in the British public, including in police officers. Any Jews critical of Israel – such as the ones on the demonstration – are deemed to be “the wrong sort of Jews”. That is why the Labour party under Sir Keir Starmer has been able to expel and suspend Jews – the wrong sort – in unprecedented large numbers, entirely unremarked. For a police officer like this one, any Jew attending the march against genocide in Gaza does not count as a Jew because they are seen as anti-Zionist. Only Jews like Falter, the ones who have pinned their colours to a genocidal Israel, count as Jews.

b) The officer, while stating that he is not accusing Falter of “anything”, adds that he is “worried about the reaction [of the demonstrators] to your presence”. Again, the policeman isn’t saying precisely what he means. With the film crew on hand, he does not want to be caught telling Falter that he suspects he will try to shout out provocative pro-Israel slogans in the middle of the march, increasing the risk of a public disturbance, exactly what the police are there to stop. Presumably, the officer is worried that such an accusation may be twisted to suggest antisemitic intent: that he believes the “openly Jewish” Falter is a trouble-maker. So he euphemises in a way that relates his concerns to the marchers. But the truth is, even for this police officer, it is not Falter’s “presence” as a Jew that is the problem. It is Falter’s likely provocations as a pro-genocidal Zionist at an anti-genocide march that concern him.

This is confirmed by the Met’s initial response to Falter’s complaint about his treatment by the police officer. The Met states: “The fact that those who do this [shout out slogans supporting the slaughter in Gaza] often film themselves while doing so suggests they must know that their presence is provocative.” However, after Falter’s group called the Met’s statement “abject victim-blaming”, the force hurriedly retracted its response and issued a second, apologetic statement that “being Jewish is not a provocation”. This second statement apologises for something that the first statement never proposed. The Met did not accuse Jews of being a provocation. It rightly accused Zionists of acting provocatively at demonstrations protesting Israel’s massacre of Palestinians.

5.  One can have a debate about whether it is right for the Met to stop highly charged ideological confrontations in public between groups with opposed political views on grounds of public order. But that is not the debate Falter wants to have, and it is not the one being provoked by his filmed non-incident. One can also debate whether the police officer overstepped his powers. But again that is not the debate the officer’s intervention raised for Falter – or the one being amplified by the political and media class.

There is no evidential basis whatsoever for the police officer’s suggestion that Jews are in any danger, as Jews, from the protesters. Again, lots of “openly Jewish” people attend the marches. There is not even any evidence that Zionists – even the most obnoxious ones – are in danger from the demonstrators. Had Falter chosen to act provocatively, a reasonable suspicion, the most likely danger he would have faced from the marchers is being drowned out by an increase in the volume of their slogans.

6.  Falter secured from the police officer exactly the reaction that he had intended to provoke. With the non-incident recorded, he immediately ran to media like the BBC arguing that he had proof that his rights had been curtailed because he was a Jew. He called for the head of the Met, Sir Mark Rowley, to resign or be sacked. In panic-mode, the Met agreed to meet Falter privately on Sunday night and is due to follow up today by meeting with so-called “Jewish community leaders” to reassure them.

7.  But Falter and “Jewish community leaders” don’t want reassurance. That is not what they were trying to achieve by staging and publicising this non-incident. They have two much bigger, far more insidious goals:

a) The first is a re-run of their playbook against Corbyn. “Jewish community leaders” understand that a willing political and media establishment class – opposed to regular marches that expose their complicity in genocide – can be easily manipulated into turning this from an ostensible story about how the Met polices large demonstrations into a giant smear of the many 100,000s of ordinary people appalled at seeing Palestinian children being massacred by Israel, with their own government’s assistance, day in, day out.

Predictably, the BBC proved Falter right. In an interview on the evening news, he was allowed to swiftly shift gear from speaking about alleged policing failures to demanding a crackdown on supposedly “lawless mobs” terrifying Jews in the street – another iteration of the supposed growing “antisemitism crisis” that did for Corbyn. In now typical fashion, the real story was, in fact, turned on its head by Falter and the media. While Falter claims he is being accused as a Jew of being a dangerous presence, it is actually Falter and his political and media allies accusing Britons marching against genocide of being the dangerous presence.

Or as Falter said of his efforts to get Rowley sacked: “Racists, extremists and terrorist sympathisers have watched the excuses and inertia of the Met under his command and been emboldened by his inaction at precisely the moment when he should be signalling a renewed determination to crack down on this criminality.”

There is zero evidence either that there has been any significant “criminality” associated with the marches or that the police are inactive about it. Falter’s agenda is exposed by the fact that he classes anyone concerned about Israel killing at least 15,000 Palestinian children as a “racist, extremist or terrorist sympathiser”.

In further comments, Falter makes another claim easily refuted – though it has gone entirely unchallenged by the BBC and other media – that the marches have created “no-go zones for Jews”. Except, that is, for all those many Jews carrying banners on the marches declaring themselves to be Jews.

b) The second goal of Falter and “Jewish community leaders” is to put the police on the back foot as they face a concerted campaign from the media and political establishment to ban the marches as a supposed public menace, as proof of a growing tide of antisemitism that just so happens to coincide with Israel’s growing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

The BBC reported that the Met wishes to discuss with Falter “what more the force can do to make Jewish Londoners feel safe”. The BBC’s reporter, Angus Crawford, interpreted this as growing pressure on the Met – pressure the BBC has helped engineer – “to get the balance right between allowing legitimate protest and cracking down on hate speech and intimidation”. Remember, this story has made headlines not because of anything the demonstrators have done but because of the actions of a single police officer.

Falter has created this antisemitism narrative out of thin air, as he and others previously did in claiming that Corbyn was a secret antisemite. In this case, his aim is to outlaw support for a ceasefire and the ending of Israel’s starvation of more than 2 million Palestinians. His earlier aim was to oust from the Labour party a leader, in Corbyn, who would actually have opposed – either as prime minister or as opposition leader – the genocide that currently receives bipartisan support from the British political class.

The goal of Falter and “Jewish community leaders” is, as before, to protect Israel, not to protect Jews from antisemitism. It is to smear Britons of conscience as antisemites and make it easier for Israel to carry out its genocide. And in this goal, Falter and “Jewish community leaders” are once again being all too ably assisted by the overwhelming majority of British politicians and the the entire British media.

Update:

Anyone who underestimates the utter complicity of the British media not only in Israel’s genocide but in amplifying fake antisemitism narratives like Falter’s to silence protest should watch this clip of an interview with him on Good Morning Britain. The two hosts actively buy into Falter’s deception and then cheerlead his efforts to get the right to protest against genocide curtailed:

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