Tony Greenstein | 08 May 2017 | Post Views:

Campaign Against Anti-Semitism Libels Dina Mulholland, Labour PPC for
Ceredigion and Mike Sivier of Vox
Political

Campaign Against Anti-Semitism attacks Labour PPC Dinah Mulholland
Bogus charity, Campaign
Against Anti-Semitism
, which campaigns making false and libellous
accusations of anti-Semitism, has now stepped up its campaign during the
General Election.  The latest victims are
Dina
Mulholland
, Labour PPC for Ceredigion and Mike
Sivier
, who was suspended as Labour candidate in the elections for Powys
county council.
Campaign Against AntiSemitism Lies About Mike Sivier – naturally Labour nationally suspended him at once when this far-Right charity came a calling
For details on Mike Sivier’s rebuttal of the CAA’s lies see No
council seat for Vox Political writer – because of politically-motivated
interference
In addition to the petition
calling on the Charity Commission to deregister this Zionist libel machine that
masquerades as a charity, [have you
signed yet?
] I submitted a complaint to the Charity Commission nearly 3
months ago.  Despite promises to the
contrary the Commission still have not dealt with it.  
When it comes to complaints from the Right that Student
Unions are supporting Israel Apartheid Week the Charity Commission jumped into
action under their far-Right Chairman William Shawcross, a former board member
of the Henry Jackson Society and a virulent Islamaphobe.  But when it’s a bogus Zionist ‘charity’ the Charity Commission does nothing.
According to the fake ‘charity’ CAA this post on an Israeli Internet Magazine +972 is also anti-Semitic
I have today
submitted a further complaint about the CAA’s outrageous and illegal interference in the general
election campaign.  By defaming Dina
Mulholland, the CAA have also committed a criminal
offence
under s.106 of the Representation of the Peoples Act.  I urge you to bombard the Charity Commission with complaints.  

The CAA is strongly suspected of being funded by a $50m Israeli government slush fund to combat BDS and it is using this to destabilise the Labour Party.
What was the basis
of CAA’s accusation that Dina Mulholland was anti-Semitic? 
She alleged, in an article, that the Israeli military had sprayed
skunk, an evil smelling liquid that is regularly sprayed on peaceful
demonstrators, into water tanks making them undrinkable.  Apparently this was a resurrection of the
ancient libel of Jewish well poisoning!
Demonstrators have testified that skunk is almost impossible to wash off.  It clings to you for weeks.  A BBC reporter testified that “Imagine the worst, most foul thing you have ever smelled. An overpowering mix of rotting meat, old socks that haven’t been washed for weeks – topped off with the pungent waft of an open sewer. . .Imagine being covered in the stuff as it is liberally sprayed from a water cannon. Then imagine not being able to get rid of the stench for at least three days, no matter how often you try to scrub yourself clean.”[8]
A reporter for Reuters described its effect in the following words:
Imagine taking a chunk of rotting corpse from a stagnant sewer, placing it in a blender and spraying the filthy liquid in your face. Your gag reflex goes off the charts and you can’t escape, because the nauseating stench persists for days.[4]
What the CAA are
saying is that allegations against Israeli soldiers or settlers are allegations
against all Jews and therefore automatically anti-Semitic.  By this absurd logic, any criticism of Israel’s military occupation is automatically anti-Semitic. 
Of course this is
nonsense.  People don’t accuse Israel’s
army or Israeli settlers of war crimes because they are Jewish but
because they are war criminals and racists. 
Their religion is irrelevant.
It is the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism
which is being anti-Semitic.  They are equating
the actions of the Israeli Army and Settlers with all Jews.  They are therefore breaking the very
‘International Definition of Anti-Semitism’ that they rely on.  The IHRA definition gives as an example of
Contemporary examples of
antisemitism’

‘Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions
of the state of Israel’
The original
allegation of well poisoning related to the Black Death which peaked in Europe in the 14th
century.  At that time, not knowing about
bacteria, germs etc. people sought an explanation for the death of possibly
half of Europe’s population in Jewish poisoning of wells.  
Once the Zionist Campaign Against Antisemitism spread their libellous poison, the mass media followed up with more lies
It has
nothing whatever to do with the well
documented examples of Israeli military and settler poisoning of the Palestinian
wells on the West Bank.

No doubt Fred Pearce (see letter to CC below) was also anti-Semitic when
he wrote in the Guardian of 1st March 2006, Running
on empty
that Israeli settlers poisoned Palestinian wells. 
According to the Campaign Against AntiSemitism Laurence Brass’s allegations of the poisoning of a Palestinian village well is a medieval blood libel and anti-Semitic – of course it’s also true!
Perhaps Laurence Brass, who resigned as Treasurer of
the staunchly Zionist Board of Deputies of British Jews, in order to speak out against
the abominations perpetrated against the Palestinians is also
anti-Semitic?  Mr Brass was quoted
in the Jewish Chronicle of 20th December 2012 as stating that on a
visit to the West Bank:
‘the abiding memory of his visit would be “the sight of an old rusty car being dumped
down the village well, thus preventing the locals from having fresh water
.’

If accusing any Jew of ever having poisoned water supplies is anti-Semitic then Israeli historian and Ha’aretz journalist Tom Segev’s passage above is grossly anti-Semitic
If allegations that Jews may poison water resources is
automatically anti-Semitic then what does one make of the documented fact that
a group of Holocaust survivors, led by Abba Kovner, plotted to poison the drinking
water of German cities as revenge for the Holocaust?  It is so well documented that even the
malicious liars and perjurers of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism would be
hard put to it to deny it.  It is documented
by, amongst others, Israeli historian and Ha’aretz journalist Tom Segev in his
book The Seventh Million, in a Chapter
entitled ‘6 Million Germans’ (pp. 140-146). 
Perhaps Segev is also anti-Semitic?
What this shows is that the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism
has no hesitation in making the most outrageous accusations of false
anti-Semitism against people.
It is a disgrace that the Labour Party Compliance Unit, in
its case against the Black-Jewish anti-racist activist Jackie Walker, quotes
the racist liar Gideon Falter, Chair of the CAA against Jackie.  If Jeremy Corbyn has any integrity he will
put a stop to the practice of quoting racists against Black anti-racists and he
will fire Iain McNicoll and the head of the Compliance Unit John Stolliday for
having used the testimony of racists in their witch-hunt.
I have submitted a further complaint to the Charity
Commission against the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism.

 Sign the Petition calling on the Charity Commission to deregister the racist ‘charity’ Camaign Against Anti-Semitism.  We now have over 2,800 signatures.  Please share widely and let’s get at least 10,000 signatures.

Also please
submit your own complaint to the Charity Commission against this bogus ‘charity’.

Correspondence to the Charity Commission Concerning the Campaign Against
Anti-Semitism

Jane Grenfell,
Senior Technical Case
Manager, Regulatory Compliance
Charity Commission

8th May 2017
Dear Ms Grenfell,
Thank you for your response to my query as to why
the Charity Commission has delayed responding to my complaints of 11th
Februar and subsequently against the bogus ‘charity’ Campaign Against
Anti-Semitism Registration Number: 1163790.
You say that there has been a reorganisation within
the Commission.  However when Student
Unions organised Israel Apartheid Weeks earlier this year, the Charity
Commission was able to respond to complaints from the Israeli Embassy and
Zionist groups within a very short period of time.  When it is convenient, the Charity Commission
can move very quickly.
The complaints against the Campaign Against
Anti-Semitism are even more urgent given that we are now in the middle of a General
Election.  The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism
is actively intervening to attack certain, mainly Labour, parliamentary
candidates.  This must stop immediately
and you are under a legal duty to act without delay. 
The CAA’s actions also breach Section 106 of the
Representation of the People Act 1983 which specifies that it is a criminal
offence to make or publish a false statement of fact about the personal
character or conduct of an election candidate. 
For further information you might want to consult this briefing
on the defamation of candidates standing for election although it would be
remiss of you not to be aware of it. 
I refer in particular to the case of Dinah
Mulholland, Labour PPC for Ceredigion. 
See their Facebook
page
.  On 3rd May a post
appeared on the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism’s website, Dinah
Mulholland, Labour parliamentary and council candidate in Wales, invokes
antisemitic libel about Jews poisoning wells
.   The
myth that Jews poison wells dates back to the Black Death.  If the CAA’s allegations were true this would
be a serious offence of incitement to racial hatred and a hate crime. 
It would also be incumbent on the Welsh Labour
Party to replace Ms Mulholland as a Labour candidate.  In fact this allegation was a complete and total lie.  A
wicked fabrication.
  the Labour Party
has now investigated this allegation and has found it to be wanting.
A failure to act on your part, given that you are the
regulatory body, will be
seen as making you complicit in the CAA’s unlawful actions. It will also be an act of gross
maladministration and a complaint will be made to the Parliamentary Ombudsman.
The allegation against Ms Mulholland concerns an article published on voicewales.com on 13th November 2016,
which recounted her visit to the West Bank as a delegate for Unite the
Union.  According to the CAA Ms  Mulholland alleged that:
‘the Israeli military has ‘weaponised’ water, spraying
chemicalised ‘skunk’ water into the water tanks of Palestinian protesters,
making it unsafe to use.”
On this flimsy and artificial basis the
CAA concluded that what Ms Mulholland had written was equivalent to ‘the false accusation of poisoning wells
(which) has been used to demonise Jews and inflame violence against Jews since
as early as the Middle Ages and is regarded as one of the gravest age-old
antisemitic canards.
Ms Mullholland’s accusations did not
refer to the Jews, that was the CAA’s interpretation.  They related to the Israeli military
occupation and Jewish settlers on the West Bank.  They do not relate to Jews at all but to Israeli
who happen to be Jews.  This attempt to equate far-Right settlers
with all Jews is itself anti-Semitic according to the very ‘International’
Definition of anti-Semitism that the CAA has recourse to.
If the CAA is correct that an allegation
of poisoning water against anyone who happens to be Jewish is a resurrection of
a medieval anti-Semitic libel, then the Israeli +972 Magazine is also guilty of
the same offence.  In its edition of
November 15 2014 Haggai Matar wrote an article WATCH:
Police spray putrid water on Palestinian homes, schools
.
Perhaps Fred Pearce, writing for the
Guardian of 1st March 2006, Running
on empty
was also anti-Semitic when he wrote:
‘Oxfam’s
Geoff Graves took me to Madama, a Palestinian village near Nablus, where
neighbouring Israeli settlers poisoned the village’s only well and shot at aid
workers who came to clean it. Most villagers now buy water from passing
tankers, but not all can afford it. Ahmed Qot, a poor farmer, told me he spends
three hours every day carrying pots on his donkey to get water from a nearby
village for his nine children and five farm animals.

It is a fact that the rabidly racist Jewish
settlers on the West Bank have poisoned Palestinian wells.  There are dozens of such examples.  This does NOT mean that this is therefore typical Jewish behaviour.  It is the typical behaviour of settler
colonists, whatever their religion.  For the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism to
suggest that the behaviour of West Bank settlers represents normal Jewish
behaviour is itself an anti-Semitic calumny against Jews. The CAA is not only a
rabidly Zionist organisation it is clearly anti-Semitic.
An allegation against a specific group of Jews that
they have tried to or actually poisoned water supplies does not mean that it is
necessarily untrue, still less a blood libel. 
At the end of the second world war, a group of Jewish survivors of the
Holocaust, led by Abba Kovner, planned to poison the water supply of German
cities by way of revenge for the Holocaust. 
This is extremely well documented but Kovner was arrested in time.  This is covered in the chapter ‘6 Million
Germans’ (pp, 140-146) in The Seventh Million (1993) by Israeli historian and Ha’aretz
journalist Tom Segev.  I don’t believe
anyone has accused Tom Segev of anti-Semitism previously but no doubt he will
now be subject to the attentions of the CAA.
I would therefore appreciate your confirmation that
the investigation against the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism will be treated
with the utmost seriousness, without any delay and that they will be told to
avoid all further comment on General Election candidates.
Yours sincerely,
Tony Greenstein

Previous
Correspondence

8th May 2017 16:43

Dear Mr Greenstein

I am sorry that it
did not prove possible to respond as Mr Young had indicated. Due to a
re-organisation within the Commission I have been asked to carry forward your
concerns and will be examining them in detail. It is not possible at this stage
to give any timeframe for the conduct of this case. However, once I have
completed my analysis I will let you know.

I appreciate that
this will be frustrating for you, but I can confirm that I am looking in detail
at the information you have provided.

Yours sincerely


Jane Grenfell
Senior
Technical Case Manager, Regulatory Compliance.

W: https://www.gov.uk/charity-commission

——————- Original Message
——————-

From: TONY GREENSTEIN
Received:
To: PCT – Liverpool (Queue)
Subject: Re: 20170322 – To Tony Greenstein – update – CAMPAIGN AGAINST
ANTI-SEMITISM 1163790 CRM:0162547
To:    Alex Young
           
The Charity Commission
8th May 2017-05-08
Dear Mr Young,
You wrote to me on 22nd
March stating that you were still evaluating my complaint against the Campaign
Against Anti-Semitism and that you were advised it would take a week before a
decision was made.
It is now over 6 weeks since you
wrote to me and I have heard nothing.
I suspect that this matter has
gone up to your Chairman, the Islamaphobic William Shawcross, who is a hardline
Zionist as well as a member of the far-Right Henry Jackson Society and that
this is what has delayed your decision.  In other words political
interference.
Please confirm whether my
suspicions are correct and if not when we are going to get a substantive
response.
In the meanwhile this bogus
‘charity’ is continuing to defame anyone who they consider supportive of the
Palestinians and opposed to Zionism, especially if they are for example Labour
candidates.  
This alone should have got you doing something quickly and it
is a disgrace that you have sat on this for nearly 3 months.
I   attach to this a
petition which at the time this was downloaded had over 2,700 signatures. 
It is now over 2,800 signatures calling for the CAA to be deregistered as a
charity.  I also attach the comments from signatories.
Yours etc.
Tony Greenstein

On 22 March 2017 at 13:09, PCT – Liverpool (Queue) <[email protected]>
wrote:
Dear Mr Greenstein,
Thank you for your emails
of 12 and 13 February and 3 March, and 22 March.
PRIMARY COMPLAINT:
We are still evaluating
your complaints against the charity, and particularly your request that its
charitable status should be removed.  We will examine the further items
you supplied on 20 March.  I am advised there is the prospect of 
decisions on these matters within a week from today, after which we will
communicate to you our view on the issues you have raised.  If we consider
that there are issues we must take up with the charity (for clarification or by
way of regulatory advice) we will advise you that this is our conclusion.
IDENTITY OF THE TRUSTEES:
We are considering this information request in parallel to your primary
complaint, taking into account the Commission’s various legal responsibilities
to inform our decision.  Again I am advised there is the prospect
of a decision on this matter within a week from today, after which we will
communicate to you our view.
Yours sincerely

Alex Young

W: https://www.gov.uk/charity-commission


Dinah Mulholland,
the Labour Party’s parliamentary candidate for Ceredigion constituency in Wales
in the general election on 8th June, and for the Llangybi ward on Ceredigion
County Council in the Welsh local elections on 4th May, has invoked
a classic antisemitic libel about Jews poisoning wells.
An article published on voicewales.com on 13th November
2016 recounts her recent visit to the West Bank as a delegate for
Unite the Union. The article states: “According to Dinah, the Israeli
military has ‘weaponised’ water, spraying chemicalised ‘skunk’ water into the
water tanks of Palestinian protesters, making it unsafe to use.”

The false accusation of poisoning wells has been used to demonise
Jews and inflame violence against Jews since as early as the Middle Ages and is
regarded as one of the gravest age-old antisemitic canards. Mulholland’s
unsubstantiated allegation breaches the International
Definition of Antisemitism
which states that “Using the symbols and images
associated with classic antisemitism (e.g. claims of Jews killing Jesus or
blood libel) to characterise Israel or Israelis” is antisemitic.

WATCH:
Police spray putrid water on Palestinian homes, schools

By Haggai Matar

Published November 15, 2014



Two new videos catch a police ‘skunk’ truck
spraying East Jerusalem neighborhoods with foul-smelling liquid. The smell was
so bad that 4,500 students had to stay home from school.

The “skunk” trucks drives slowly through the neighborhood.
It is evening, and there is no evidence of clashes in the area. The truck
proceeds slowly, sprays putrid-smelling water on a nearby building, continues
on and shoots once again. When it’s all over, the truck has tainted schools,
homes, streets – entire neighborhoods – with its unbearable stink. Just like
that.

Two videos that were filmed this past week by Palestinian
residents of Jerusalem and were given to +972 support claims by residents
regarding the inappropriate use of the skunk by the police. In August, the
Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) filed a complaint to the police
regarding multiple cases of the arbitrary use of the skunk, especially at times
when there are no protests or clashes. It seems that the police has not changed
its ways.

The common understanding among residents and human rights
organizations is that the police are collectively
punishing Jerusalem’s Palestinian residents
, in light of clashes
between youth and police in these neighborhoods
. But the punishment neither
begins nor ends with skunk water; the police block entrances to these neighborhoods
with concrete blocks, detains residents for long hours at checkpoints and hands
out petty fines – all at the behest of the Jerusalem municipality.

Police use the ‘skunk’ water canon to disperse protesters
in Kafr Kanna, a day after Israeli police fatally shot an Arab man in the
village. (photo: Yotam Ronen/Activestills.org)

In the A-Tur neighborhood, the police shot skunk water at
four large schools, forcing the parents of 4,500 students to leave their
children at home due to the unbearable smell. “It was this past Friday, at
around 5:30 p.m.,”
says Khader Abu Sabitan, a member of the parents’ committee
in the neighborhood. “I was on the road and saw them pass with their machine,
and saw how they began shooting water at the school. I’m telling you – there
was nothing there. It is Friday at 5:30 in the evening, and there was no one in
the school or on the streets. Nothing. Everyone was home. They went to all four
schools in the neighborhood, shot the water, and left.”



The skunk water targeted the A-Tur elementary school for
boys, the elementary and high school for girls, a high school for boys and the
“Basma” elementary school for disabled children. All four schools are located
on the neighborhood’s main street.

“After we saw what they did, we told the parents not to
send the children to school on Saturday, which is a school day for us. We
thought that the municipality would be able to solve the problem by Sunday,
since the children didn’t go to school on that day. It wasn’t a strike – we
just could not enter the area because of the smell. We sent letters through the
teachers on Saturday and Sunday, but no one came. So we brought back the
children to school on Monday, and told them to go straight to class ad not
linger outside. The smell even permeated the classrooms, but they closed the
windows and made do somehow. They stayed inside during the lunch break and then
went straight home. It has been a week, and it still smells. Less, but you can
still smell it.”



For anyone who has not experienced it, words cannot express
the smell of the skunk. The Israeli-developed truck is primarily used by the
army in the occupied territories over the past several years, although now it
is slowly making its way to Jerusalem and Israel. The strong stench smells like
a mix of feces and animal carcass – gagging is almost inevitable.

The worst part is that there is almost no way to get rid of
the smell. Showering doesn’t help, and protesters usually deal with it is by
taking a dip in the sea. Objects that have been sprayed with skunk water often
smell for much longer periods of time. After being hit with a few drops of
skunk water, my camera smelled for nearly half a year.

It is difficult to fathom exactly why such large amounts of
skunk water must be sprayed at classrooms and homes, as can be seen in the
second video that was filmed in the Jabel Mukaber neighborhood of Jerusalem.
Like in the video from A-Tur, there are no stone throwers or protesters. The
police act casually, there are no rocks being thrown in the air, no sounds of
explosions, no screaming or bullets that characterize confrontations in East
Jerusalem. Just a skunk truck spraying homes.

“The perception of the residents and organizations is that
the police uses the skunk routinely, regardless of whether they are dispersing
protests, as one can plainly see in the video”
Oshrat Maimon, an attorney with
the Ir Amim NGO. “The problem is that we don’t even know what the police’s
procedure is when it comes to using the skunk. Therefore, we don’t know if the
problem is in the procedure itself, or in the lack of implementation. The truth
is that we’re a bit helpless in this situation.”



Over the past several weeks, activists from East Jerusalem
have met with members of human rights organizations in order to attempt to formulate
a response to the actions of the police and municipality. They, however, found
it difficult to arrive at a solution. “Our field coordinators say that people
are afraid of the police and do not want to provide testimonies,”
says Maimon.
“Even people who were shot, such as someone was hit with a sponge-tipped bullet
in the head or a woman who was shot and her uterus was torn – when our
investigators speak with them, they are afraid that if they speak up the police
will find its way to them and find a way to harm them.

In response to ACRI’s request, the police responded that
the skunk is used according to regulations, but refused to say explain what the
regulation says. ACRI has attempted to force the police to publish the
regulations vis-a-vis the skunk. Meanwhile in East Jerusalem, the occupation
becomes smellier than ever.

+972 asked for a response from Jerusalem Police. Their
response will be published here.

This article was first published on +972′s
Hebrew-language sister site, Local Call. Read it in Hebrew here.

Posted in

Tony Greenstein

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