Richard Sanders

Our Al Jazeera Investigative Unit film GAZA was released precisely a year ago. It is absolutely unbelievable that a year on we continue to witness the same scenes. youtube.com/watch?v=kPE6vb…

Here again is Owen's original article - which does much to explain why BBC online has been so appalling on Gaza. dropsitenews.com/p/bbc-civil-wa…

Congratulations @owenjonesjourno. The initial article was a superb piece of journalism and this is an important victory. /1

- @adamlangleben's attack on @ZackPolanski and Paul Holden endorsed by disgraced MP who spied on journalists and Starmer's Jewish opponent in his constituency and then tried to smear them as antisemites.

- @adamlangleben attacks @ZackPolanski for citing Paul Holden's book "The Fraud" in rejecting the mainstream narrative about Labour's "antisemitism crisis" In fact, The Fraud is now just part of a whole body of work raising fundamental questions about that period. "Get In" - by Times journalists @Gabriel_Pogrund and @patrickkmaguire - tells much the same story of how the antisemitism issue was cynically exploited to destroy Corbyn. For example they reveal Langleben himself worked "secretly" with Morgan McSweeney to recruit @RachelRileyRR to front a campaign accusing The Canary of antisemitism - an accusation later rejected by the independent regulator Impress, but not before they had effectively destroyed The Canary's advertising base. I would also point people towards my own film, the second in Al Jazeera's series The Labour Files, which drew on the recollections of numerous Jewish Labour Party members and officials who entirely rejected the accusations against Corbyn. Read too the report by Martin Forde KC, who was commissioned by Keir Starmer to look into bullying and racism in the Labour Party and enraged the party leadership by failing to endorse the prevailing narrative. His report has been buried. I'm puzzled by Langleben's claim that "about 1/3 of all Jews in the Labour Party had experienced antisemitism and reported it." I read through the entirety of the party's disciplinary folders in making The Labour Files and this is simply untrue. The number of complaints by individuals claiming they had personally experienced antisemitism from other named individuals was tiny. The crisis consisted almost entirely of a small number of groups and individuals scouring social media for evidence of what they believed to be antisemitism. Incredibly 23% of all complaints in the Corbyn era came from a single person. At the height of the crisis in the first six months of 2018 this individual accounted for 44% of complaints. Shortly after Starmer took over as Labour leader the party decided to designate this individual a nuisance complainant and stopped accepting communications from him. Antisemitism existed in Corbyn's Labour Party. In a party of over half a million members it would be astonishing if it didn't. But the crisis was in large part created by redefining anti-Zionism as antisemitism. Post genocide the British public is no longer falling for this sleight of hand. youtube.com/watch?v=5DTMF0…

Israel executed Amal Hamad Al-Shamali in Gaza today. Amal was a mother and a journalist, documenting genocide. She was a voice for her people. Not a combatant. Keep in mind: Israel is still dropping bombs on Gaza. Don’t stop talking about Palestine EVER.

Grotesque.

More than twice as many kids killed in Lebanon just this week as were killed in Israel on Oct 7th. But no one cares. Arab lives have no value.

"The British media think that you're an idiot" @obornetweets picks apart media coverage of the Iran war for @DoubleDownNews youtube.com/watch?v=4BlXzB…

I used to wonder how it was possible that Trump could have won in 2016, and then again in 2024, given how emotionally toxic and depraved he is. I don’t wonder anymore. I think he won for that exact reason. Because he carried at least one broken shard to reflect the broken shards in millions of others. If you’re a racist, you found your guy. If you’re a misogynist, you found your guy. If money is your only religion, you found your guy. If your heart is armored shut, you found your guy. If you mock the disabled, you found your guy. If intelligence makes you insecure, you found your guy. If you’re a sexual predator, you found your guy. If you trade in humiliation and conspiracy and filth, you found your guy. If you’ve never done a single hour of emotional inventory, you found your guy. If you cheat, stiff contractors, bankrupt your obligations, and call it savvy, you found your guy. If you lie as easily as you breathe, you found your guy. If cruelty feels like strength, you found your guy. If white grievance is your comfort food, you found your guy. If your ego is a black hole no title can fill, you found your guy. If warmongering fuels your ego, you found your guy, If empathy feels like weakness and dominance feels like oxygen, you found your guy. If he’d only carried one or two of these pathologies, he might have been dismissed as just another loud, damaged man. But he carried a buffet of them. That was the appeal. Millions could locate themselves somewhere in the wreckage. They didn’t have to agree with all of it. They just had to recognize a piece of themselves in it. It was never really about him. It was about the validation. The absolution. The permission. He didn’t invent the resentment; he amplified it. He didn’t create the cruelty; he normalized it. He gave millions the intoxicating relief of hearing their ugliest impulses echoed back at rally volume. Trump is a symptom. The deeper illness is collective. If there’s one sentence that defines his power, it’s this: “He says the things I’m thinking.” And that’s the part that should chill us. Because what does it say about us that so many were thinking those things? That tens of millions of Americans harbored resentments so deep, so seething, that they were simply waiting for a demagogue to baptize them as virtue? That after decades of supposed progress on race, gender, and equality, so many white men felt so threatened, so displaced, so furious, that cruelty became a political platform? Maybe we were living in a fool’s paradise, mistaking silence for healing, politeness for progress. Now the mask is off. Now we know. And knowing is a far more dangerous place to stand. – Michael Jochum, Not Just a Drummer: Reflections on Art, Politics, Dogs, and the Human Condition.

Israel still presents itself as a western democracy. It claims the religious fanatics are Hamas and Iran. But, increasingly, Israel itself is fighting a religious war. Lubna Masarwa reports for Middle East Eye from Jerusalem: middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel…

Israel is still murdering journalists.

🚨 Israeli strikes over the past five days in Lebanon have killed 394 people, including 83 children, and wounded at least 1,130 others, according to Lebanese health authorities. ▪️An overnight airstrike on a building in Seer al-Gharbiyeh municipality, north of the Litani River, killed at least 19 people, most of whom were women and children, according to Naharnet news. ▪️Journalist @cbonneauimages reports from Lebanon's third-largest city, Sidon, located on the Mediterranean coast about 25 miles south of Beirut. At approximately 4:30 p.m., the Israeli Navy launched missiles targeting the northern entrance of the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp on the city's southeastern outskirts. The strike hit a house resulting in several injuries among civilians and Lebanese Army soldiers stationed nearby. Reports indicate the missiles may have been fired from a frigate at sea. ▪️Earlier this morning, an Israeli strike on a building in Ghazieh (Saida district) killed at least two people, including a retired brigadier general from the Lebanese army. ▪️Additionally, a dawn raid in the nearby town of Teffahta killed eight people, seven of whom were members of the same family. Watch 👇

We all know that the Labour Party is now the nasty party, but @RedbridgeLive @redbridgelabour treatment of a blind disabled councillor from the beginning of her tenure 8 years ago is despicable. And why?! Because she’s a socialist and supports Palestine - and the thing they hate most is that she’s popular amongst residents. What Rosa details here isn’t even half of the ways they have found to continually humiliate and punish her - these people are lower than low. And they aren’t even good at their jobs. I hope the good people of Redbridge use their vote wisely in the May local elections.

There is a dangerous silence surrounding what is happening in Palestine right now. As international attention has shifted to Israel’s wars across the region, state-backed settler militias are intensifying their campaign of terror in the occupied West Bank — such systematic terror attacks are being almost entirely ignored by UK and global media. Last night, three Palestinians were murdered in Abu Falah. Days earlier, settlers killed two brothers — Mohammad Taha Maamar (52) and Faheem Taha Maamar (48) — in Qaryut. Let us be clear: these settler militias are acting in accordance with the policies of the government of Israel. Operating under cover of occupation forces, they are an arm of the Israeli state, advancing a single goal: the annexation of the West Bank and the systematic erasure of Palestinian national life. While regional wars dominate the headlines, Israel is accelerating its assault on Palestine — a genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank — shielded by the deafening silence of the global media. History may not repeat. But it definitely rhymes. Demand your media covers Palestine. Demand your representatives act. Silence is complicity. #Palestine #Gaza #WestBank english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/…

"To you we're just a headline, a tragedy to consume, not colleagues to defend. We are being hunted & killed.. while all of you watch in silence.. Israel is killing us one by one, and not just us, our families too.." @Hind_Gaza with a message to international journalists

BREAKING: At least 394, including 83 children, killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon, Health Ministry says 🔴 LIVE updates: aje.news/64yl8m?update=…

Not sure I'd be drawing attention to this given that minutes earlier @bbclaurak had entirely failed to confront the Israeli President Isaac Herzog about Israel's slaughter of 70,000+ people in Gaza.

The contrast between the way @bbclaurak interviews the Israeli President and the Iranian ambassador should be studied by journalism students for decades to come. "Thank you on behalf of us all" - says Penny Mordaunt.