Labour's big lie - #41
New film project will expose the anti-Semitism smear -- and more big stories this week.
Trade union movement film maker Chris Reeves of Platform Films is raising money to make a new documentary, narrated by leftie legend Alexei Sayle. It is provisionally titled Labour - The Big Lie.
From the long trailer — which you can watch in the video above — this looks to be a really important project in the making. Reeves says all of the principle interviews have been done but they are making a last push to complete the project.
You can donate to make this project happen on their GoFundMe page. It’s doing well so far, with almost £6,000 of of the £20,000 target raised as of this writing.
While you’re at it, remember my own mini-documentary on the same topic, How Israel helped bring down Jeremy Corbyn.
Probably the biggest Palestine story this week was Amnesty International’s new report, which finally named Israel as an apartheid state. You can read my take on it in my Middle East Monitor column:
Why are the well-documented and reported experiences of Palestinians themselves not enough? Why are the words of Palestinian rights groups like Al-Haq, Addameer, the Palestinian Centre for Human rights, and many others, not enough?
Is it the deeply embedded nature of racism within our societies or our media? Or even within the human rights groups themselves?
Over at The Electronic Intifada my colleagues have done extensive coverage.
Michael F. Brown wrote a news report giving a full run down of the Amnesty report, the political reaction to it in the US and the Israeli government’s absurd smear that Amnesty is “anti-Semitic.”
Secondly, take a look at my colleague Maureen Murphy’s must-read analysis. Maureen is an expert on what has been termed the NGO Industrial Complex and so casts her critical eye on the report:
What makes Amnesty International’s new report determining that Israel practices the crime of apartheid against Palestinians any different from those that came before it?
Certainly, Israel’s “hysterical” reaction – (in the words of one Haaretz headline) – to the Amnesty study is notably different from its relatively understated response to similar reports recently issued by B’Tselem, a human rights group in Israel, and the New York-based Human Rights Watch.
Finally, check out Ali Abunimah’s first appearance on Ben Norton’s new website Multipolarista.
Ali and Ben talk in depth about Amnesty’s apartheid report. It’s a great discussion and well worth watching or listening to in full.
I mentioned it in passing last week, but let me take this opportunity to congratulate Ben on founding his new outlet. I’m looking forward to him continuing to do brilliant work.
Lastly in this week’s newsletter, check out the latest episode of The Electronic Intifada Podcast which my colleague Nora Barrows-Friedman and I released this week.
Returning guest Shir Hever gives us a wide-ranging discussion, covering BDS, Israel’s relationship with China, Elbit and Palestine Action and Israel’s cyberwarfare mercenary industry.
Tweet of the Week
For context, here’s the tweet that Chen “Absolute Legend” Weihua was replying to:
