The astounding facts that Louise Ellman 'forgot' to mention

When a right-wing Murdoch propaganda rag decided to run another anti-Corbyn hatchet job the BBC and the Labour right-wingers rolled into action immediately to join forces.

Before the Times article had even been published BBC Newsnight were broadcasting an outraged interview with the right-wing Jewish Labour MP Louise Ellman to bolster the story.

The crux of the criticism was that back in 2010 Jeremy Corbyn had been involved in an event where one of the speakers compared the Israeli occupation of Palestine with the Nazi Holocuast (a comparison which falls foul of the IHR definition of anti-Semitism that Labour are under immense pressure from the pro-Israeli lobby to adopt into their disciplinary code).

In the Newnight interview the right-wing Labour MP Louise Ellman expressed her shock and outrage that Jeremy Corbyn had attended the event.

Nowhere in the entire segment did Ellman, (the bitterly anti-Corbyn) interviewer Emily Maitlis, or the Times reporter think to mention that the guy who made the Israel-Nazi comparison was actually a Jewish Auschwitz survivor called Hajo Meyer who compared the suffering of the Palestinian people to his own lived experience of the Holocaust.

An unbelievably brazen omission, but as we'll see, not the only ridiculously brazen omission of the segment.

The fact that the Murdoch-Labour right-BBC nexus sought to smear a Jewish Holocaust survivor as an anti-Semite just goes to show how shockingly unfit for purpose the whole IHR definition of anti-Semitism actually is.

If this warped definition allows non-Jews to police the language of Jewish people, and even Holocaust survivors, there's something catastrophically wrong with it (which is why it is the subject of such fierce debate, and why it's even been strongly criticised by the guy who actually drafted it).

Another example of a Jewish person who made Nazi references in relation to Israeli oppression was the late Labour politician and relentless peace campaigner Gerald Kaufman.

If the Labour right-wingers and pro-Israeli lobby had had their way back then, Kaufman would have been expelled from the Labour Party as a result of this speech in 2009.



Just think about it. Right-wing non-Jewish Labour supporters of the Israeli occupation like Stephen Kinnock are demanding harsh new anti-Semitism rules that would have seen the Jewish peace campaigner Gerald Kaufman unceremoniously kicked out of the Labour Party for expressing his own opinion.

How anyone can think it's acceptable for non-Jews to use accusations of anti-Semitism to thought police Jews is absolutely beyond me.

Returning to the absolutely atrocious BBC Newsnight segment and the other omission I referenced earlier, another thing the outraged Labour right-winger 'forgot' to mention about the event in 2010 she was so outraged about is that she was actually there for the entire duration of it.

Spewing synthetic outrage that Jeremy Corbyn was involved in an event that Ellman herself actually attended has to be one of the dirtiest, most opportunistic, and least honest bastardisations of the whole anti-Semitism debate so far.

So not only did we have the Murdoch-Labour right-BBC nexus obscuring the fact that the victim of their anti-Semitism witch hunt was actually a deceased Jewish Holocaust survivor, the outraged Labour right-winger also obscured the fact that she was actually there in person at the event she was howling faux outrage about.

The fact that she was actually there at the event also makes the first omission even more glaring because there isn't the slightest possibility of confusion over the identity of the man being smeared as an anti-Semite. She knew that he was a 90 year old (now deceased) Jewish Holocaust survivor and actually played along with it.

Amazingly the presenter Emily Maitlis went on to deliver a segment on the influence of "fake news" with a straight face later in the episode!

Nobody expects the BBC to get everything right all of the time, but this Newsnight segment was an absolute abomination of utterly biased reporting and the deliberate and cynical omission of crucial facts.

Here's a link to the BBC's complaints form

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