Craig Murray's Blog, page 125

BBC Spread the Hatred

No matter how terrible the BBC is, it constantly manages to get worse. The BBC News this evening appears like an especially rabid Tory Party broadcast. Sarah Smith was just breathtaking, while I thought Laura Kuenssberg must be the Chairman of the Conservative Party.

Sarah Smith’s report from Holyrood was so astonishingly biased that a rather bemused BBC correspondent named Keane followed it with “But after Sarah Smith’s report let’s not forget that the SNP have won an historic third election”. Sarah Smith’s contribution was a voiceover of a photo montage of Ruth Davidson. Smith told us the election was all about Independence and the “stunning” Tory result was evidence that voters were firmly rejecting the idea of any second referendum. Cut to Ruth Davidson saying the Tories were firmly rejecting any second referendum.

Let us for a moment accept Sarah Smith’s contention that the Tories attracted those voters who do not want a second referendum. The truth of the matter is that just 1 in 9 of eligible Scottish voters, voted Tory. 21% of those who voted. So the proper conclusion should be that the Tories came a distant second and most people rather fancy a second referendum. Sarah Smith’s anti-independence tirade was gobsmacking, but then it was topped by some BBC pundit comparing Ruth Davidson’s Tories to Leicester City.

A foreign visitor would have had to be watching very carefully indeed to realise that the Tories had not won, and indeed got half the votes of the SNP. So the Tories are not Leicester, they are Newcastle. Yet the Tories in Scotland got four times the coverage of the SNP on the BBC news.

And so to the rest of the UK. Laura Kuenssberg seems to have a depth of hatred for Jeremy Corbyn which is more generally reserved for Fred and Rose West. She appears to be sponsored to say “anti-Semitism” as often as possible. She opened her report by saying that the results called Corbyn’s leadership into question.

The strange thing is that the results are near identical to Ed Miliband’s 2012 result at precisely the same Council elections. The net loss of Labour councillors is 12 out of over 2000, as I write. Miliband’s result was unanimously hailed in the media at the time as a triumph. Exactly the same result for Corbyn – including winning many councils in Tory Westminster constituencies in Southern and Midlands England – is a disaster.

An opposition party should make gains in council elections. But when that opposition party makes truly spectacular gains, but is still the opposition when they cycle comes round again, you can’t expect it to make further gains exponentially. Keunssberg stated directly that Labour has to be “piling on hundreds and hundreds of net gains” to have any chance. That is simply untrue. 2012 was Miliband’s high water mark. It was all downhill from there. Corbyn is exactly matching Miliband’s best ever performance, and doing so despite being tendentiously branded a mad anti-Jewish racist by the bitter Blairites in his own party. Plus under Corbyn, unlike Brown and Miliband, the London mayor is now Labour again

Miliband went downhill from 2012 precisely because, after his 2012 successes, the BBC and corporate media threw their entire firepower at Miliband. Corbyn has already weathered an even greater media barrage than Miliband ever suffered. It is by no means plain he will follow Miliband’s downhill trajectory from here. In England next year’s local election results – in a tranche of seats last contested when Miliband was already slipping back – will tell us a great deal more.

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All Independence Supporters Must Read This

To try to say this before yesterday was like standing in front of a runaway juggernaut. It had to be demonstrated by actual experience. We came extremely close to the absolute disaster of a unionist majority in Holyrood. Entirely because of this. I know many of you will not like reading this, but you have to.

Regional List Vote

North East Scotland 137,086 SNP list votes 0 SNP list MSPs elected 137,086 pro-independence list votes totally wasted

Central Scotland 129,082 SNP list votes 0 SNP list MSPs elected 129,082 pro-independence list votes totally wasted

Lothian 118,546 SNP list votes 0 SNP list MSPs elected 118,546 pro-independence list votes totally wasted

Mid Scotland and Fife 120,128 SNP list votes 0 SNP list MSPs elected 120,128 pro-independence list votes totally wasted

West Scotland 135,827 SNP list votes 0 SNP list MSPs elected 135,827 pro-independence list votes totally wasted

Glasgow 111,101 SNP list votes 0 SNP list MSPs elected 111,101 pro-independence list votes totally wasted

That is over 750,000 SNP pro-independence list votes completely wasted, electing nobody at all on the list.

By contrast in these regions the Tories got 376,000 – almost precisely 50% of the list votes the SNP received there – and got 19 MSPs for them!

If the SNP list vote which was completely, utterly and entirely predictably useless in these regions had been given to other pro-independence candidates, the number of Tory MSPs in parliament would have been drastically reduced.

We would not have the BBC crowing over “Tory victory” as the result of the election. Despite the fact that only one in 9 eligible Scottish voters, voted Tory, a fact the BBC will not tell you.

With tactical voting a dozen more committed pro-Indy MPs could have been put into parliament.

The Tories have done disproportionately well because of the “both votes SNP” campaign. This campaign was, undoubtedly, extremely successful in securing both votes SNP. Sadly it was – entirely predictably – totally counter-productive in maximising the number of pro-Independence MSPs.

I published yesterday during the voting: “But in the entire central belt and in NE Scotland, I am prepared to state boldly – and twelve hours will prove the case – that a list vote for the SNP in those regions is almost certainly wasted, and could rather have helped elect a different pro-Independence MSP.”

I was 100% right.

It was blindingly obvious in which regions SNP supporters should give the party their list vote, and in which they should vote tactically.

The question is, why did people I generally admire and, in fact, find quite brilliant like James Kelly and Stuart Campbell, get it so wrong and fail to see the obvious? I fear that the answer is one which raises wider concerns. The SNP has managed to achieve near complete identity with the independence movement, so that any questioning of total obedience to the SNP is taken as disloyalty to the nation. Those like me who want independence rather than the success of a political party find ourselves marginalised and despised. Even when we are demonstrably and undeniably correct. Perhaps especially when we are demonstrably and undeniably correct.

We need the second referendum soon. We are now dependent on the goodwill of the Greens to get it. I stated yesterday I do not trust Patrick Harvie’s commitment to independence. That annoyed some people and I am genuinely interested to see comments as to whether others pick up the same vibe from him. I do hope that the Green influence will lead the SNP to be more radical on Land Reform. That would be a great advantage to dig out of an unexpected situation.

Finally, it is not a bad thing that the Unionists are now firmly identified as the Tories. Many of them were Red Tories anyway, and all that has happened is that their allegiance has become plain. The stark choice between Independence and the Tories is now visible. It was always there, but at the referendum many did not see it. Having the Tories leading the unionist opposition simply brings the day of Independence closer. There is only one winner in that battle.

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Support Diego Garcia Football

If you hate the corruption of FIFA and the commercialisation of football, hate the US air base on Diego Garcia, and are ashamed of the British forced deportation of the entire Chagos Islands population to make way for the base, you have an ideal opportunity to do a little good in the world by supporting the appeal to finance the Chagos football team to participate in the Conifa World Cup.

This blog makes a point of never asking for money or taking advertising, yet has asked for donations for good causes twice in a fortnight. I apologise but I love this idea, both for the spirit of football and to support the islanders in affirming their right to be considered a nation and to return to their homeland. I have carefully checked it out and this football team – based in Croydon – really does consist of the Chagos community, and it is important to them in helping the young people preserve their identity.

Donate via this page using the “Sport Fund” option. Alternatively you can donate to the UK Chagos Support Group here.

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On the Dangers of Travelling, and on Elections

I have been travelling on business all week, hence the silence. The dangers of travel were brought home to me on Wednesday when, at the White Hart hotel in Lincoln, I inadvertently found myself sitting next to Nigel Farage at breakfast.

I find myself unable to get back home to Edinburgh today and cast my vote, which is frustrating. In Scotland, I do urge everyone who has not yet done so to get out and vote for Independence. I have been slightly downhearted by the tenor of some of the discussion as to whether it is safe to give the list vote to parties other than the SNP. Certainly for any supporter of Independence to give their constituency vote other than to the SNP is Quixotic. But in the entire central belt and in NE Scotland, I am prepared to state boldly – and twelve hours will prove the case – that a list vote for the SNP in those regions is almost certainly wasted, and could rather have helped elect a different pro-Independence MSP.

But I have no argument with the SNP, with Rise, with Solidarity or with anybody else supporting Independence. Differences on how to cast the list vote are largely over calculations of the best tactic, and for that reason some of the hard words and intolerant attitudes I have seen on social media – including on my favourite sites Wings over Scotland and Scot Goes Pop – are not appropriate. We should save our hard words for our enemies, not those fighting for the same cause who may have a different tactical preference. And we should look in future to change the horrible voting system to STV to give voters real choice.

On the Scottish Greens, I should say it very much differs from person to person but I am unconvinced of the strength of their collective commitment to Independence. I am afraid to say I have always found it hard to believe their leader is committed to anything but his own personal advancement. I confess it is not entirely rational, but sometimes I judge people by the feeling I get about them, and in Patrick Harvie’s case it’s “self-serving weasel”.

In England, for the first time in my entire life I find myself wishing well to the Labour Party. This is because the Blairites are self-evidently hoping their own party crashes and burns so they can launch a coup. I hope Labour does well in England because the media campaign against Corbyn has been absolutely disgusting – and because I hate the blue Tories. But even in England, I could never actually vote Labour myself until they expel all the Blairite and Brownite war criminals.

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Fighting Back for the Right to Support Palestine

Last week, Israel bulldozed twelve Palestinian homes in Area C of the illegally occupied West Bank to make way for new illegal settlement building, while two Palestinian minors were killed by the Israeli Defence Forces.

This makes it a totally unexceptional week for the Palestinians. It has not however been an unexceptional week for Palestinian supporters in the UK, who have suffered the most vicious coordinated media witch hunt in memory. Two things are happening. The Blairites are trying to engineer a coup against Corbyn by sabotaging Labour in forthcoming elections, while the Israeli lobby seek to discredit all supporters of the Palestinians as anti-semites, including people like me who have no connection to the Labour Party.

The Daily Mail’s Jake Wallis Simons has been at the forefront of this campaign. He implied I am an anti-semite on television. Two years ago in Israel he gave an interview to Haaretz newspaper of which this is a snippet

Now consider if we apply this transposition. It makes plain just how astonishing Wallis Simons’ admission is:

“He and his classmates at his Islamic school would debate which side they would support if Britain and Syria went to war. The consensus, he recalls, was that they would throw their lot in with Syria.”

There is no doubt at all that a Muslim who published this would instantly be arrested and taken for police questioning, to see if their extremist religious indoctrination at school and their fantasies of fighting against Britain meant that they remained a threat. There is no doubt whatsoever that the Islamic school in question would be subject to intense investigation – no matter how long ago the incident was. Almost certainly the Governors would be suspended in the interim and the inquiry extended to similar schools. There is no doubt whatsoever that Mr Wallis Simons’ own Daily Mail would be proclaiming in lurid banner headlines about this Islamic danger.

If the Prevent programme were not in fact purely Islamophobic in both construction and content, action would have been taken against such schools which inculcate anti-British feelings and philosophies. Wallis Simons would have been questioned. But no, it appears some religious extremism is OK, and only some is frowned upon. A Muslim could not publish what Wallis Simons publishes, let alone occupy well paid roles in the UK corporate media.

In the Haaretz article, the Daily Mail’s Wallis Simons expresses regret at having published his anti-British views. But note the grounds on which he regrets. Because it is “too personal” and because people “keep digging it up” when he writes on the Middle East. It “undermines everything”: in other words it reduces his influence in the UK.

He does not say in Haaretz that he no longer holds the same views. Rather he shows concern that, because people can discover that view, the value and influence of his pro-Israeli propaganda is diminished in the UK. It is also interesting that in this article Simons refers to the West Bank as Samaria – the term is only used by those Zionists who claim that all of the West Bank is an integral part of Israel.

At this stage I should very much like, in all fairness, to read the Guardian article referenced by Haaretz to see if in that article he says he has changed his mind and, as someone who was born a Londoner and has lived all his life in Britain, his allegiance is firmly to Britain and not to Israel. I can perhaps understand he would not say that to Haaretz while promoting his book sales in Israel. But I cannot find the Guardian article anywhere online.

JAKE WALLIS SIMONS’ INCREDIBLE VANISHING ALLEGIANCE

The article incriminating Wallis Simons appears shortly after his Haaretz interview to have vanished from the internet, even from the Wayback machine and archive.org. Given that it must have been very controversial, it has left astonishingly little trace. You can find the odd tantalising reference here or there, but the link never works, and not only to the Guardian. Here is but one example of am entry we found:

Jake Wallis Simons (biographical details)

cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php...

This is a biographical profile of Jake Wallis Simons. … When British author and journalist Jake Wallis … they would support if Britain and Israel went to war.

But when you try that link, you cannot get the page, and the same is true of everything else online that looks like it is going to reveal Wallis Simons’ once public declaration.

Wallis Simons complained to Haaretz that “whenever I write about the Middle East, people dig it up”. And yet we have found it impossible to dig up. In fact is appears that very substantial effort must have been put in to expunging from the internet all trace that Wallis Simons ever wrote it. That is really hard to do, and requires a great deal of resources, and probably the collusion of The Guardian.

Obviously to preserve Wallis Simons’ effectiveness as an Israeli propagandist, it was considered worth those resources.

I do hope that by now you have been angry with me for not putting a link to the Haaretz article and only giving you highly selective quotations. I have done this deliberately, just to make plain how entirely unfair it is as a technique. Simons used this technique on me on Sky News by selectively quoting one phrase – not even the whole sentence – out of context to show I was an anti-Semite who sneered at the “tribe” of Israel. Out of context this part sentence was so outrageous I did not recognise it, and I called Mr Simons a liar, in which I was wrong. He then went on twitter to tweet around a tiny snippet of what I had written, causing the expected stream of abusive tweets to come my way.

My response was to republish the entire post, acknowledging that Mr Simons did not lie but putting the phrase in its context. Mr Simons has nevertheless said that he will sue me, and I look forward to that. But unlike Mr Simons – who has still never given a link to my full article from which he took the phrase out of context to misrepresent me – I do not cheat and distort in argument, so his full Haaretz interview is here.

Indeed, could I find anywhere that Mr Simons had said that he retracts his view and that he would not fight for Israel against the UK, I would very definitely publish that too in the interests of fairness. But I simply cannot find it.

PERPETUATING THE DIVIDED LOYALTIES TROPE

What is particularly infuriating about Simons is that “divided loyalties” is indeed a trope that has been used against Jews – and against Catholics and immigrant groups – by racists over the years. By his stupid point about once wanting to fight Britain for Israel, Simons reinforces and perpetuates this trope. This is infuriating to those of us campaigning for a peaceful multicultural Britain, just as infuriating as it is when our efforts against Islamophobia are undermined by the occasional Islamic extremist doing something stupid.

In this context, my article from which Simons extracted one phrase is extremely revealing in its subject matter. He chose an article in which I attacked a statement by Israeli economics minister Naftali Bennett. Responding to criticism of Netanyahu by Obama’s White House, Bennett said:

“The prime minister [Netanyahu] is not a private person but the leader of the Jewish state and the whole Jewish world. Such severe insults towards the prime minister of Israel are hurtful to millions of Israeli citizens and Jews all over the world.”

This statement is completely unacceptable. Benjamin Netanyahu is not the leader of British Jews, and Israel does not lead “the whole Jewish world”. All of the British Jews I know would utterly repudiate, and be horrified by, the idea that Benjamin Netanyahu is their leader. Jewish British people are British, just like Black, Asian or other British people. They are British not Israeli. For an Israeli minister to claim leadership of all Jews in the world absolutely cannot be admitted. But – and this is the important point – it is exactly the same argument as the contention by Jake Wallis Simons that he, a British Jew, would have fought for Israel against the land of his birth.

It is exactly the same argument that Israeli and Jew are synonymous, and therefore to attack Israel is anti-Semitism. It is exactly the same argument that Jew equals Israel so anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism. It is exactly the same argument the entire corporate and mainstream media have been drumming into our heads 24 hours a day. And the object is to outlaw any criticism of Israel or active support for the Palestinians. The object is to make Zionism compulsory, at the very least as political correctness, and there are rumblings that anti-Zionism should be made illegal.

It only appears surprising that those of us who have fought all racism – including anti-Semitism – our entire lives, now come under attack. It is not surprising when you look in to the motives of those who lead the attack; they are supporting a racist, apartheid state. We should stop being defensive and shout this from the rooftops. In an appalling article in the Guardian, Gaby Hinsliff listed use of #apartheidIsrael as an indicator of anti-Semitism. Even more astonishing, Jonathan Freedland wrote in the same newspaper that we are hypocrites for attacking Israel, which is only doing what Australia, Canada and the USA did to their indigenous populations. He did not acknowledge that these were appalling crimes, subject of recent historic apologies and the source of much shame. Nor that the world is supposed to have moved on from Imperialism.

The media onslaught against Palestine is as unrelenting as it is intellectually bankrupt.

To finish with Jake Wallis Simons, he is a major figure in the anti-Palestine barrage. Wallis Simons was the author of the highly tendentious Daily Mail article of 7 August 2015 headlined “Jeremy Corbyn’s “longstanding links” with notorious Holocaust denier and his “anti-Semitic” organisation revealed.” The inverted commas are in the original headline and they are sure signs that the Mail’s lawyers have pointed out something is completely untrue – so they indicate the Mail is only “reporting an accusation”. This article was the origin of the joint Israel/Blairite campaign which has been gathering momentum ever since, up until the current explosion of orchestrated media hatred against Palestine supporters.

Precisely what is happening became much more obvious this week with the revelation that Alex Chalmers, the Oxford student who had made the entirely unsubstantiated claims of anti-Semitism at Oxford University, had previously been an intern at BICOM, the oligarch funded Israeli propaganda outfit (officially the British Israel research and Communications Centre). Possibly the best-funded lobby group in UK politics, BICOM has contributed funding and trips to Israel to many of the Blarities involved in the present propaganda blitz.

Chalmers’ claims have been central to all published accounts of “Labour anti-semitism” and were used by Cameron to attack Corbyn in the Commons. University authorities have found no evidence to back Chalmers’ claims and his main complaint was that there had been an Israeli Apartheid week held by students. In fact his claim depends entirely on the notion that to criticise Israel is anti-Semitism. A theme is emerging here. BICOM is also the organisation which funded Adam Werrity to accompany Liam Fox to Israel, and to which Hillary Benn said shortly before his Syria War speech “we must seek to take on those who seek to delegitimise the state of Israel”

Which gives us yet another pointer. The cheerleaders of the current “anti-Semitism” witch-hunt have a 99% correlation with the supporters and cheerleaders of the Iraq war, and their targets are, I believe without any exception, opponents of the Iraq War. This is in part a kind of twisted revenge for having been shown, not least in the last couple of days, to have been hopelessly wrong about Iraq. The wound of being labelled with that monstrous policy failure has fatally undermined the Blairites. Now they delude themselves that they have unanimous mainstream media “vindication”, because all their opponents were just racists all along!

I make not one penny from expressing my views to the public for the purpose of debate. This blog does not even have adverts. I have no official position. There is nothing from which I can be expelled. I am not scared of courts. We face an attempt to make it compulsory to support Zionism. To make it impossible to stand up for the rights of the Palestinians. Yet that campaign is led by a totally self-centred and isolated metropolitan elite, who cannot understand that on Palestine as on so much else they do not represent us. I shall not be intimidated into abandoning my campaigning against apartheid Israel, and nor will many others. The battle for truth is a hard one at the moment, but we will prevail.

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The Pregnant Woman: An Everyday Story from Palestine

Our corporate and state media deliberately fails to report what is happening daily in Palestine. This account from Reuters three days ago was not used in any British mainstream media:

JERUSALEM // Israeli police shot and killed a pregnant Palestinian woman and her teenage brother yesterday at a checkpoint near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, police and witnesses said.

Israeli police claimed the pair approached the vehicles-only lane at the Qalandiya military checkpoint and tried to carry out an attack. They said the woman was holding a knife and both she and the man walked rapidly towards police and security guards in a vehicles-only lane at the Qalandia checkpoint outside Jerusalem.

Alaa Soboh, a Palestinian bus driver who said he witnessed the incident, said the pair had appeared to be unfamiliar with crossing procedures and were swiftly challenged at the checkpoint.

“As soon as the two crossed, [Israeli forces] started screaming ‘Go back, go back’, and then they began shooting,” he said.

“The first one they shot was the girl, the boy tried to go backward, when they fired seven bullets at him.”

A witness told the Palestinian Maan News Agency that Israeli forces fired more than 15 rounds into the woman’s body.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said Israeli forces denied Palestinian paramedics access tothe woman for medical treatment, the agency reported.

The pair were identified as 24-year-old mother of two Maram Abu Ismail, and her 16-year-old brother Ibrahim Taha. The siblings were from the West Bank town of Qatuna.

The victims’ family, interviewed by Palestinian media, said that Maram was five months pregnant at the time of her death.

No Israelis were injured in the incident.

The military checkpoint where the two were killed is a main ­access point for Palestinians to cross from the occupied West Bank to Jerusalem and has been the site of a number of alleged, actual, and attempted attacks since October.

In the past six months, Israeli forces have killed at least 193 Palestinians, 130 of whom Israel said were assailants.

Many others were shot dead in clashes and protests.

* Reuters

Frankly I do not believe that the pregnant woman was walking towards the heavily armed soldiers openly wielding a knife from a distance. If she were attempting to stab a soldier, she would have concealed any knife, and not called attention by walking in the vehicle lane. Even if the account were true, I do not accept that a group of soldiers could not defend themselves against a heavily pregnant woman with a knife, spotted at a distance and approaching on foot, in any other way than by putting fifteen bullets into her, even if her sixteen year old brother was with her – and witnesses say he was backing away when he was himself shot.

The truth is that Palestinian lives simply do not matter. They did not matter to the Israeli soldiers who callously shot them dead rather than try to discover what was actually happening, and they do not matter to the British media who do not report this, yet find massive room for ludicrous accusations against British supporters of Palestine. Reuters tells us that 193 Palestinians have been killed in six months. These two will be added to the 130 whom Israel claim were assailants, a very large number of whom were in reality not. But even the Israeli figure admits Israel has killed 63 Palestinians who were not assailants, and many thousands more have had their homes destroyed to make way for yet more illegal Israeli settlers.

An everyday story for Palestinians. A terrible personal tragedy for the murdered woman, her murdered little brother, her unborn child and her surviving small children.

And here is the secret. The British media are frightened that you will care. That is why they do not tell you.

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How the BBC Stole the Referendum

I suspect the next referendum could be much sooner than generally expected. Documenting and spreading awareness of the astonishing state propaganda campaign by the BBC is an extremely important task in advance of that. I urge you to make a donation, however small, to help Alan Knight finish the documentary How the BBC Stole the Referendum. Filming has been completed and I have seen a lot of the edit in progress, which really is excellent. I only play a very small part among a great many more distinguished contributors, but it so happens I feature in the little teaser of completed work they have put out for the fundraising campaign. I think it gives an idea of the professional production standards they are working to.

Please give something, anything. Many a mickle maks a muckle. In fighting the state and corporate media, we have only ourselves, and sometimes that means the change in our pockets too.

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Where Are the Other 10 Million Panama Papers?

When I posted my scepticism that we would be given the full truth about the content of the Panama Papers by the mainstream media outlets who were controlling them, it went viral and became the first individual article to be read by half a million people on this blog alone, and a multiple of that as it was posted all round the web, translated into several languages.

I also attracted some derision from establishment propagandists. I had contended that the fact the papers themselves were not made available, but we were rather fed selected information by the western and corporate state media, would limit and slant what the public was told. The initial concentration on Russia, Iran, Syria etc seemed to confirm this. But it was urged that more was to come, and I should wait, and it was suggested I would look foolish when they finished publishing. “Wait and see” tweeted the editor of the lead newspaper, the Suddeutsche Zeitung, in response to my post.

Well I waited, and what happened? The story fizzled out.

Take the UK. We got the stuff about Putin, Iran and various “baddies”. We got a story about Cameron’s dad that had been public knowledge already for four years. And we got the BBC chasing one bloke who had sold one house in Islington. And that was it.

We learnt that the majority of dodgy companies were registered in British overseas territories. We learnt that the largest number of dodgy lawyers and accountants working with Mossack Fonseca were in the UK. Yet in these millions of documents, not one major British company or individual not already known was implicated. Do we really believe that? And do we really believe the near complete absence of people implicated from the United States?

I have a clue what is going on. A young lady contacted me from Le Monde newspaper. She was one of the journalists working on the Panama Papers. She had been allocated the task of researching a Russian oligarch, and not knowing I had made any comment on the Panama Papers, she contacted me as I had background information on the man. Her email made plain that the “International Consortium of Investigative Journalists” in Washington was closely controlling the process, and that what she wrote would have to go back to them for “checking” before publication. The ICIJ is funded, as I pointed out, by corporate America. Their donors include:

Ford Foundation

Carnegie Endowment

Rockefeller Family Fund

W K Kellogg Foundation

Open Society Foundation (Soros)

So, in one stroke, the argument that the data was not being controlled because it was “shared with hundreds of journalists around the world” falls. That argument was repeatedly thrown at me but it appears not to be true; hundreds of journalists did not have unfettered access to the entire database or free publication of their findings. It was very much a controlled leak.

Of course I am not claiming there is absolute control. It is a matter of degree. As I pointed out, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation made a documentary which directly implicated and challenged Australia’s biggest company, BHP Billiton, and Australia’s biggest foreign investor. But that only emphasises the problem.

Are we really supposed to believe that in Australia the biggest economic players were involved, but in the UK – where far more lawyers and accountants were implicated – it was just Cameron’s dad and a slightly dodgy geezer in Islington?

The corporate media still claim there are legitimate reasons, apart from avoiding tax and jurisdiction, for using companies like Mossack Fonseca. They will therefore – again contrary to a widespread claim – only be publishing a small minority of the actual documents for the public to search. “The application will not be a ‘data dump’ of the original documents — it will be a careful release of basic corporate information” says the ICIJ. Their words, not mine.

So the fundamental question is, do you trust the corporate media to give you a true picture? By passing the data to the corporate media the leaker has put us back to a pre-WikiLeaks world. My instinct is not to trust them, and the promised revelations that would prove me wrong are yet to appear.

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My Anti-Racist Comments on Israel

I was accused on Sky News of making comments attacking the Jewish tribe. Ripped from its context, the remark appeared so offensive I could not conceive I had ever made it. I find now that in fact I did say it, but in the context of a specific remark by an Israeli minister making a claim that the Israeli Prime Minister leads all Jews worldwide. My remark was part of a post attacking all racism. They could equally well have taken the quote “I wish nothing but good to all people, including all Jewish people” out of the post.

To be absolutely open, I repeat the post here:

Israeli economics minister Naftali Bennett has claimed of Binyamin Netanyahu that “The prime minister is not a private person but the leader of the Jewish state and the whole Jewish world.” Really? Netanyahu is the leader of all the Jews in London, or California, or Ethiopia, who may never have set foot in his state?

This extraordinary remark by Bennett lays bare the fundamental flaw in the very concept of Israel. It is not a modern state, defined as a territory and comprising all the various citizens of whatever descent who live within it. It is rather a vicious racist construct, defined absolutely by race, refusing territorial limits, and with an aggressive theocratic overlay that claims tribal superiority over the entire rest of the world.

Here is a picture of the New Zealand cricket team. In the last twelve months, New Zealand cricket teams have fielded payers including Hamish Rutherford, Peter Fulton, Colin Munro, Dean Brownlie, Ross Taylor, Rob Nicol, Corey Anderson, Grant Elliott, Jimmy Neesham, Kyle Mills, Adam Milne and Mark Craig, not to mention the McCullum brothers. But if I told you that Alex Salmond was the leader of all Scots around the world, including the Black Caps, you would quite rightly call me a nutter.

We would not tolerate the level of racism in any other country that we tolerate from Israel. There was a huge outcry against Labour MP Paul Flynn who dared question whether it was sensible to send a strongly professed Zionist Jew as British ambassador to Israel, but when the Israeli government itself proclaim the political leadership of all Jews all over the world, it is a logical impossibility not to ask the question.

I wish nothing but good to all people, including all Jewish people, but by their increasingly hardline racialist approach, their unceasing encroachment on Palestinian land and their rigorous adoption of all the racist mechanisms of an apartheid state internally, I fear that the window of opportunity for a peaceful future for those Jewish people living in what is currently Israel is closing fast.

It must be universally proclaimed: there is not a single racial group in the whole world from whom worldwide racial claims of political allegiance, or an internal racially based legislative order, are acceptable. Bennett’s remarks are beyond the limit of civilised political discourse.

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Where Angels Fear to Tread

I have accepted an offer from Sky News tomorrow to discuss anti-Semitism in the UK, where I shall argue that opponents of Israeli policy are being tarred with anti-Semitism in an witch-hunt.

I do this with some trepidation, because the media hype has become so hysterical that I am certain to face accusations of anti-Semitism myself for daring to question the narrative that has gripped the corporate media and political elite. But witch-hunts succeed because not enough decent people have the courage to stand against them; I imagine Sky contacted an awful lot of people who refused to do it before they worked all the way down to me.

Nor am I expecting to get a level playing field from the Murdoch media on which to argue my point. As I doubt I shall get a chance to put my case without interruption, this is what I am going to be trying to say.

Real anti-Semitism does exist and is to be deplored without reservation. Thankfully it is much rarer in the UK than in many other European countries.

There is a deliberate ploy by Israel to brand Palestinian sympathisers and critics of the Israeli state as anti-Semitic, in order to delegitimise criticism of Israel, as the settlements programme makes any two state solution completely non-viable.

Support for Israel is a clear dividing issue between Corbynites and Blairites. The Blairites are hopeless and defeated, so are seizing on the meme that critic of Israel equals anti-semite as a means to undermine Corbyn and create a leadership crisis

They have the tool to amplify this as the corporate media, like the political “elite”, are massively more pro-Israel in their sympathies than the great bulk of the population.

I think the chances of my getting to say much of that on air are pretty limited!

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