Andy Newman has posted quite a disappointing response on Socialist Unity to the debate around Amnesty International parading around Mozzam Begg as if he were a human rights defender (and suspending Gita Sahgal after she blew the whistle when her internal objections were ignored).
Newman’s take? Well…
This seems to have been a shoddy hatchet job by Kerbaj, for example although they contactd Mr Begg and asked his views, they misrepresented him in the article. Mr Begg has announced that he is both referring the article to the Press Complaint Commission, and intending to start libel proceedings. the purpose of the article seems to have been to damage the relationship between Cage Prisoners and human rights organisations, like Amnesty.
Read the rest of it here.
The vilification of Gita Sahgal is well under way now. Let it be on record that the first volley was fired by “Martin Sullivan” at Islamophobia-Watch who smeared the genuine human rights campaigner thus:
“Gita Sahgal is a member of a nutty group called Women Against Fundamentalisms… It appears that Sahgal has now been suspended by Amnesty. Their mistake was in ever employing a crank like that in the first place.”
Disgraceful. I don’t believe it is possible for that section of the Left to disgrace itself any further.
Gene adds: My favorite comment so far on that thread comes from David Ellis:
I’m asuming that this sudden burst of zionist activity on the blog preludes an Israeli attack on some poor civilian population somewhere, probably Lebanon.
Indeed, David. The Israeli government orders Zionists worldwide to increase their activity on Socialist Unity whenever they are planning to attack civilian populations. And that includes such notorious Zionists as Faisal.
