Hackney Stand Up to Racism drops speaker over ‘racism’ – but defends group linked to Jihadi John
Hackney Stand Up to Racism dropped MPAC UK’s speaker from its event (Photo: Hackney Citizen)
A Hackney anti-racism event has dropped a speaker whose organisation is banned by the National Union of Students for holding “racist views”.
However, the organisers defended another speaker with links to ISIS terrorist Jihadi John.
Hackney Stand Up to Racism’s event in Shacklewell Lane tonight will host Esa Charles, whose son Rashan died in police custody in July.
The speakers list included Catherine Heseltine, chief executive of the Muslim Public Affairs Council UK (MPAC UK) as late as Monday.
But Heseltine was dropped after the Citizen contacted the organisers about MPAC UK being no-platformed by the NUS and its record of anti-Semitism.
MPACK UK’s founder Asghar Bukhari raised money for holocaust denier David Irving, and said of a missing shoe that it had been stolen by Mossad.
A Hackney Stand Up to Racism (HSUTR) spokesperson told the Citizen: “Catherine Heseltine will not be a speaker at the Hackney Stand Up to Racism meeting on Wednesday 20 September.”
No reason was given for the change, either to the Citizen or HSUTR’s mailing list in a “correction” email.
However, the group defended its invitation to Moazzam Begg, a former Guantanamo Bay inmate and director of the group CAGE, which has called Mohammed Emwazi – also known as Jihadi John – a “beautiful young man”.
Stand Up to Racism booked MPAC UK and CAGE (Photo: Hackney Citizen)
A HSUTR spokesperson said: “There is no truth to the claim that CAGE advocates terrorism or that it has connections with racist, terrorist or fascist organisations.
“It has an honourable record of defending human rights and has been itself a victim of Islamophobic racism.”
HSUTR declined to say why it invited MPAC UK in the first place, or whether Esa Charles was aware of the speakers booked to share a platform with him.
Funding for CAGE was suspended by the Joseph Rowntree Trust and the Roddick Foundation in March 2015 over CAGE’s links with Emwazi.
Amnesty International also cut ties with the group in 2015 after its research director Asim Qureshi refused to condemn FGM and death by stoning.
At the time, Amnesty International UK director Kate Allen said his remarks were “completely unacceptable, at odds with human rights principles and serve to undermine the work of NGOs, including Amnesty International”.
Rashad Ali, a counter-extremism expert at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told the Citizen: “I think it is horrific the way people like Begg were treated in the war on terror, and how policies pursued for decades have done little to reduce institutional racism, as [Labour MP] David Lammy’s recent report shows.
“But groups like CAGE, which are apologists for Al-Qaeda affiliates and extremist clerics like Abu Qatada, provide fodder for far-right Islamophobes to demonise both Islam as a religion and also its adherents.”
Dave Rich of the Community Security Trust said: “MPAC UK are banned by the National Union of Students for anti-Semitism and their founder gave money to the holocaust denier David Irving. Nobody who claims to oppose racism should go anywhere near them.
“It was ridiculous that an organisation supposedly against racism invited them in the first place.”
Who on earth is “Hackney Stand Up to Racism”?
Let me guess … yet another SWP “angry party” front? Another guise to suck the young and impressionable into whatever workers revolutionary party what is going to overthrow the government this time?
What are they doing these days, apart from cover up rape accusation under the charade of “not recognising Britain’s ‘bourgeois’ system of justice” (nine separate occasions to investigate allegations of rape against nine different men in the party). Last time Dean Ryan appear he was hding under a Respect! banner. Or was it an Anti-Nazi party banner?
I suppose they think by re-branding themselves (yet again) they’ll suck in a new generation of Hackney-ites who are naive to their history, and wind them up getting them angry about something else … all to end up as a big nothing.
There’s something just a little too “Monty Python” and “Life of Brian” about all these acronymistic “split-ist” dramas. You know things are really bad when even a Daily Mail exposé make it look reasonable by comparison. I mean to say, “Tell me one thing the Muslims ever did for British politics?”
Likewise a Zionist brown shirt “Community Security Trust” leader coming out to attack the Muslim Public Affairs Committee as “anti-Semitist”, in a campaign against Islamophobia.
Doesn’t he mean “anti-Zionist”?
There’s a subtle difference, isn’t there?
Sigh, such are the problem of juggling self-interested, minority identity politics … the term “herding cats” comes to mind.
So much for “diversity” … all of a sudden, a nice civil, homogenous society seems really attractive.
And, FYI, the “no-platform order” at the National Union of Students dates back to 2004 and was a political smear campaign against MPACUK by embassy funded pro-Israel groups. It was achieved by conflating it with two organisations that MPACUK has always vociferously opposed.
No evidence was provided to support the claims, no opportunity was afforded for the organisation to defend itself against them.
Yet you are repeating it as if it was a truth?
As the old saying goes, “Just because you’re a paranoid Muslim, doesn’t mean the Israeli Government/Embassy isn’t out to get you”.
More censorship of discussion by the Hackney Citizen I see … (re the deliberate blurring of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism).
Let’s ignore the smeer for a while to examine the official response from MPACUK, and see if it appears to be reasonable
“MPACUK’s response:
MPACUK exists to fight religious and racial prejudice and discrimination. That is the very reason we oppose Zionism – a racist political ideology that believes in a state for a particular racial and religious group, not for all its citizens equally. An ideology that endorses ethnic cleansing and an ‘ethnically pure’ state, as advocated by the new extreme-right deputy prime minister of Israel, Avigdor Leiberman.
Like every pro-Palestinian advocate, from Ken Livingstone to Christian Aid, we’ve endured the false smear of anti-Semitism. Recently we were accused of anti-Semitism on the basis of an article that was actually written by a Jewish Israeli blogger!
These false accusations are a classic tactic by the Zionist lobby: “The main purpose behind these periodic, meticulously orchestrated media extravaganzas is not to fight anti-Semitism but rather to exploit the historical suffering of the Jews in order to immunize Israel against criticism.”. (Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah, 2005, p.21)
We were therefore shocked but not surprised to hear that one of our members was facing fresh accusations – so we made sure we got the facts of the case straight. And here they are – not neccessarily as juicy as it reads in the newspaper, but reality isn’t always quite sensational enough.
The truth is that an individual who is now a member of MPACUK made a mistake 6 years ago – before this organisation even existed.”
Dave Rich, a brown shirt for Israel … credibility “zero”.
Yes it is an SWP front but I would stay away from the Sturm bit. The left in this country is now irrevocably involved in Jew hating and has lost any credibility that it had.
Would that be Jew as in Norman Finkelstein, or Jew as in Alan Dershowitz?
You appear to read off the same script as the Daily Mail, Evening Standard editorials et al, party to the Zionist Far Right’s attempt to smeering and frighten off any criticism of their Israel as being “anti-semitic” rather than ‘anti-zionist’, anti-human rights abuses.
No, the British Left tends to be anti-Zionist, not anti-semitic and feels a great sense of betrayal at how the dream has become a Right Wing nightmare, fomenting even further troubles in the region.
Most people are wise to what’s going on. I’d say the British Left is doing very well right now and, of course, very concerned about the abhorent human rights abuses going in Palestine, and to Israeli arabs subject to the apartheid state.
Why?
THe increasingly potential Prime Minister Jeremy Corbyn’s long-time supporte of the struggle against Israel’s violation of international law and oppression of the Palestinian people.
The majority of thinking people are becoming very wary and very well informed about the degree of perverting influence the hawkish Israeli Far Right and their Zionist lackies are having in this country. You’d have to be in on the rake off, or a Tory moron to be sucked in by it.
What’s the estimate for sayanim in London alone, two thousand was it?
The Zionist Far Right has British politics, and particularly the British Left, within its sights precisely because of it conscience and leading role in raising awareness about those human rights abuses.
Thank you
And, for the record, I’d say Stamford Hill is somewhere between “neutral” and “negative” towards Israel on religious grounds.
Remember that old caveat about there being no such place as Israel until the Messiah returns and G-ds prohibition of mass migration to the Holy Lands?
There are currently about 7 million homeless Palestinians in the diaspora, descendent of those original 800,000 forced out by rape, violence and terrorism from their homelands, to make way for primarily East European immigrants with no authentic claim on the territory.
The British Left does not forget them, nor who carried the genocide out.
Just seen this so I am late. In 1948 the Jews accepted the partition of the former British Mandate of Palestine which gave then a very truncated state much smaller than that which they ended up with. The Arabs rejected the plan and invaded. They were defeated and in that defeat thousands of Arabs left the former mandate territory, most remained, a point conveniently ignored by the average Jew hater. Israel is the only democratic country in the area with the highest standard of living.