Thread by @luminatus1

A new cache of leaked Labour documents shows how Israel lobby operatives worked against former leader Jeremy Corbyn from within the UK’s main opposition party

electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-wins…

Israel lobbyist Luke Akehurst intervened to help save suspended right-wing Labour activist Luke Stanger from expulsion – despite a series of complaints of harassment & intimidation.
The leaked files also detail how Palestine solidarity activists & left-wingers were investigated

leaked files also detail how Palestine solidarity activists/left-wingers were investigated/suspended /expelled frm the party, while right-wing pro-Israel members were protected by senior party figures.
The documents were revealed on Thursday in the 1st episode of #TheLabourFiles

The documents were revealed on Thursday in the first episode of The Labour Files, a new three-part series by Al Jazeera’s investigative unit – the same team behind the 2017 series The Lobby and the censored 2018 series The Lobby – USA.

The Qatar-based satellite channel describes the trove of internal Labour Party materials as “the largest leak of documents in British political history.”

During the Corbyn years, the files show, the generally left-voting city of Brighton became a focus of clashes btw the party’s

the files show, the generally left-voting city of Brighton became a focus of clashes between the party’s left and right wings.

A leaked 2016 email shows that Palestine solidarity activist and Labour member Becky Massey was secretly reported to the party’s disciplinary unit by

secretly reported to party’s disciplinary unit by Labour lawmaker Peter Kyle

“I would like to direct you in the strongest terms to investigate & to remove the member from the party,” Kyle wrote, then naming Massey. In 1 tweet, Kyle complained, “she calls Israel a ‘sick society’

The lawmaker accused her of being “aggressive” 2him & his staff.
Massey denies this in the episode, saying “I’m not an aggressive person” & recalling thtKyle had been 2her house 4 Labour meetings in the past
Massey ws targeted in part due 2her posting of an article by The Electr

Massey was targeted in part due to her posting of an article by The Electronic Intifada to Twitter.
Despite Kyle’s intervention, Massey avoided suspension in 2016.

But as The Electronic Intifada revealed in 2020, Massey was expelled from Labour after right-winger Keir Starmer became leader, at the request of Israel lobby group the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

The files show that another Labour right-winger who secretly reported Massey was former lawmaker Ivor Caplin.
Caplin would later become chair of pro-Israel group the Jewish Labour Movement – which has close ties to the Israeli embassy in London.

Also active in Brighton was ultra-right Labour activist Luke Stanger, who was supportive of Sussex Friends of Israel, a local extremist Zionist group also with ties to the Israeli government

#BDS
#IDF
#Mossad

Stanger engaged in harassment and abuse of Labour activists both in person and online. His behavior was so extreme that it led to his suspension as a Labour member.

The first episode of Al Jazeera’s series reveals that a letter to the party from Stanger objecting to his suspension was actually authored by Luke Akehurst – a prominent Israel lobbyist who now sits on Labour’s ruling national executive.

Notorious on the Labour left as an arch foe of Jeremy Corbyn, Akehurst is a former arms industry lobbyist and now runs the group We Believe in Israel.

In his appeal to the party against his suspension Stanger was represented by prestigious London law firm Mishcon de Reya,

Stanger was represented by prestigious London law firm Mishcon de Reya, best known for representing Princess Diana in her divorce from her husband, who is now King Charles III.

The firm also has a long track record of acting on behalf of the Israeli government in the UK.

In the episode, Al Jazeera interviews former Brighton Labour member Damian McCarthy, who says Stanger sent him intimidating messages online and even turned up outside his child’s school.

The office was sent “dossiers” about McCarthy, including an online conversation in which one of his anonymous attackers threatened to behead the activist and his family.

McCarthy, visibly emotional in the Al Jazeera film, recalls tht his step father “was very upset about reading all of that. I can’t talk about most of it.”
“My dad read those terrible comments and he was upset about that. And he died not long after that,” McCarthy tells Al Jazeera

Israel lobbyists protected

The Labour Party establishment’s purging of left-wing activists, usually on flimsy or fabricated pretexts, is in marked contrast to how it defends right-wing, pro-Israel activists like Stanger

#Belief in the #Zionist project
#EqualityAct

Another important finding is tht “a belief in the Zionist project or an attachment 2 Israel … cannot amount 2 a protected characteristic” under the Equality Act of 2010

This properly sets a clear red line between Zionism & Judaism (or Jewish identity)

electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-wins…

Another Zionist protected from the consequences of their own bad actions by the party’s bureacrats was the Jewish Labour Movement’s then director Ella Rose, the leaked documents show.

Rose had been hired by the JLM as director while she still worked at the Israeli embassy in London.
The Electronic Intifada was the 1st to expose this link, in 2016.
In 2017 Rose was the subject of complaints by Labour members after Al Jazeera revealed in #TheLobby

after Al Jazeera revealed in The Lobby that she had made comments implying she would like to physically attack left-wing anti-racist activist Jackie Walker

“I can take her,” she told Al Jazeera’s undercover journalist, boasting of her prowess in the Israeli combat technique

The newly leaked documents reveal that Rose acted swiftly, writing to Labour’s disputes team to ensure she would not be disciplined by the party, despite her implied threat as shown in Al Jazeera’s film.

The leaks also suggest that Rose herself may have played a role in the complaint to broadcasting regulator Ofcom against Al Jazeera for broadcasting The Lobby.
The complaint was ultimately unsuccessful

Al Jazeera says 2nd episode of its new series will tell “the true story of party’s anti-Semitism crisis” & how “truth was subverted & reality turned on its head”

Extends versions of each episode r expected 2be available online day aftr each TV broadcast