On the 15th of June 2010 Corbyn said the following in the House of Commons:
I was at a meeting last week when an al-Jazeera journalist, who had been on the vessel, described in excruciating detail what he had observed. He clearly has a vivid and photographic memory. That account needs to be told because it was of an incident taking place on the high seas in international waters.
At this Palestine Solidarity Campaign meeting held on the 9th of June 2010 where those who had been on the Mavi Mamara Flotilla told their stories.
There Jamal Elshayyal from al Jazeera spoke as did several others including Laura Stuart. She said the following:
“I happened to live in the Finchley area and sometimes when I was looking at the soldiers on the boat pointing their guns at me I was thinking do any of you have dual passports? Do any of you live just down the road from me? And I think we need to know that, were British passport holders in the IDF pointing guns at British citizens?”
She adds:
“But really this is the one thought that I have on my mind, when I pass people on the street perhaps these men were part of operation Cast Lead perhaps they were on that ship, who are these people?”
This is the antisemitic Laura Stuart who is no stranger to Harry’s Place. Shortly after the meeting she wrote that:
Some statements of appeasement to Zionists have been made by PSC leadership. This immediately led to an article on Zionist blogs which condemned the statement, twisting it’s words and saying it was not enough. Even more worrying is the fact that PSC leadership have released a statement saying they do not work with Gilad Atzmon. Why? What possible reason is there for that statement? The immediate result was further comments on Zionists blogs asking, well, if the PSC is distancing itself from Gilad Atzmon, why didn’t it distance itself from Sheikh Raed Salah? In reality, Gilad Atzmon has huge support at PSC branches around the UK.
And that:
Gilad Atzmon is not anti-Semitic – if he were, his book, The Wandering Who?, would not be have been endorsed by some of the top humanists and academics of our time.
Naturally it took Labour until November last year to suspend her from the Party. Bearing in mind how close Atzmon and Stuart were it will come as little surprise to learn that Atzmon was at the meeting along with her and Corbyn. He blogged about it.
I like to imagine Jeremy, Gilad and Laura all sitting in a room together. It reminds me why it is that PSC still can’t bring itself to admit that one of its directors Tapash Abu Shaim shared grossly antisemitic material on his social media and no one in the organisation cared. Or took action on it. Indeed Jeremy Corbyn was, is and will remain a patron of the organisation that just cannot root out antisemitism from within its ranks.
Eventually they got rid of Atzmon, how long will it take them to get rid of Abu Shaim and why hasn’t the lifelong anti-racism campaigner Jeremy Corbyn insisted he be removed from his position? Maybe his sense of irony is preventing
