Presenter of Double Down Newswatch, your one-stop shop for the best of independent media. https://xitter.cf/t.co/pxc7GyOjYx
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Next Wednesday sees the launch of Double Down Newswatch, a new weekly magazine programme that will showcase the best of independent media.
Here I explain why it's needed.
youtube.com/watch?v=O8OBmdrB…
The British media is an embarrassment.
The past 20 days have marked one of the most monolithic pushes by British media to vilify the Zionism is Racism Green Party motion.
Imbalanced coverage would be an understatement.
The papers wrote 447 articles on the Greens' Zionism vote. Israel, pro-Israel groups and the Chief Rabbi got 12,133 words. Palestinians got 3,173.
Any institution that parades as a "news outlet" can no longer be taken seriously if it covers this motion without also covering the people, Palestinians, who have endured, suffered and been oppressed the most by the ideology in action.
What the figures show:
• Israel's government alone got 3,904 words. More than every Palestinian put together.
• 2,422 of the 3,173 Palestinian words came in stories tying Lubna Speitan, the Palestinian who proposed the motion, to al-Qaeda.
• Apart from Lubna, two Palestinians were quoted across 436 articles, for 76 words between them. Nobody in Gaza, the occupied West Bank or Lebanon was quoted at all.
• Lubna told the Telegraph that 56 members of her family had been killed in Gaza. One article mentioned it: the Telegraph's own al-Qaeda story, in paragraph 44 of 51.
• Lubna has received death and rape threats since the vote. Al Jazeera reported it. None of the 447 British articles did.
• 43 articles said, in the paper's own voice, that the motion meant the destruction or abolition of Israel. The motion calls for one state with "equal rights for all".
• 36 headlines said antisemitism. Not one of 447 said genocide.
• 304 of the 436 articles we read in full never mentioned the genocide at all.
• 0 of 89 comment pieces backed the motion.
• The Daily Mail ran 38 articles on the motion, and in that time, just 2 on Israel's ongoing attacks across Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.
Full report: newscord.org/editorials/zion…
Richard Sanders retweeted
Ed has never threatened the Labour Party with non-cooperation for facilitating and enabling a genocide, arresting pensioners for holding signs, or overseeing new restrictions on the right to peaceful protest... despite being the Party of civil liberties. Why is that?
Seems to me the whole political establishment is telling on itself. A motion is a red line, but genocide isn't.
Richard Sanders retweeted
The government has officially blocked my call for a public inquiry into Britain's role in Gaza.
Delaying scrutiny will not make questions about British complicity in genocide disappear - and we will never give up until we have brought about justice for the Palestinian people.
Shami Chakrabarti, meet Ahmed Alnaouq- who lost almost his entire extended family in an Israeli bombing, including 13 small children - and @ghadakarmi - exiled as a child from Jerusalem in the Nakba and forced to live her entire life in exile because she belongs to the wrong ethnicity .
Perhaps you could explain to them why their views are "foolish ... student politics." /1
"For me as a Palestinian, Zionism is racism. Zionism is genocidal. Zionism is sociopathic. Zionism is all about ethnic cleansing for a group of people at the expense of another. If I were not Palestinian, if I just happened to be a Jewish person, I would have lived with all my rights granted. No one would have questioned me, no one would have come after my land, my country, to kill us. So if that is not racism, then what is? Ever since I came to the UK, I've been hearing some bizarre ideas: 'Zionism means different things to different people'. Zionism means only one thing. And it means one thing to the people that it was manifested at. Zionism means genocide and death."
Ahmed Alnaouq, who lost almost his entire extended family in a single air-strike, including 13 children, speaks at this morning's Greens4Palestine press conference./1
"I don't know what the fuss is about. Zionism is of course racist. .... Zionists ... decided to establish their self-determination on the territory of another people. .... There's no way that the state of Israel could have been established without the expulsion of the people already living in the territory ... Why is this so difficult to understand?"
The indomitable Ghada Karmi, driven from Jerusalem as a child, cuts through the crap at this morning's Greens4Palestine press conference. /1
Richard Sanders retweeted
To be clear: both the Lib Dems and Labour are saying that they will refuse to form a coalition with the Greens, even if it as the expense of a Reform or Tory government, because of a Green Party conference motion condemning a political ideology that’s led to genocide?
Really?
This is really quite shocking from Shami Chakrabarti. "This foolish motion" is what the vast majority of Palestinians believe.
Perhaps she could explain to them how it is that she - miraculously - came to understand their own lived experience better than they do.
If you want to debate tactics and strategy, fine. But that's not what she's doing.
Coming from a member of a party that has materially assisted the wholesale slaughter of small children for the last 3 years it is frankly obscene.
Shami Chakrabarti condemns the Green Party’s Zionism is racism motion on #PoliticsLive
“It’s not even fair to student unions to call this student union politics”. She describes the motion as “wrong and highly inflammatory”
Western media played a key role "in marginalizing Palestinian voices and reproducing Israeli narratives, .... which ultimately legitimized atrocities."
Important new UN report on media complicity in the genocide. Startlingly almost entirely ignored by western media. /1
thenational.scot/news/266466…
"The genocide has exposed long-standing ideological biases in media coverage of Palestine/Israel, including across Western traditional media and major digital platforms. It has exposed a system that determines whose voices are heard and whose suffering is recognized. These attempts to influence opinions through content curation, amplification and other forms of distortion have serious consequences for the human rights of the Palestinian people and those who defend their rights." /2
Another odd thing about today's @bbclaurak prog - why have Jo Coburn on the panel, a woman who has spent almost her entire career as a BBC journalist? Hey - outlandish idea - but how about a Palestinian?
Certainly lifted the veil on the political perspective Coburn had been bringing to her journalism all these years.
👏👏👏 In the face of the predictable onslaught from @bbclaurak Zack Polanski turned in a solid performance re Zionism is racism. No apology, no climbdown. Jo Coburn and Nadine Dorris left spluttering with outrage, which indicates he did something right.
Dale Vince, wearing a kaffiyeh, even managed to slip in a reference to “genocide,” without correction. We’re getting there, slowly.
As for Laura, if only we knew what her own views were ...
Richard Sanders retweeted
I will take no moral lectures from a party that is aiding and abetting a genocide
👏👏👏 In the face of the predictable onslaught from @bbclaurak Zack Polanski turned in a solid performance re Zionism is racism. No apology, no climbdown. Jo Coburn and Nadine Dorris left spluttering with outrage, which indicates he did something right.
Dale Vince, wearing a kaffiyeh, even managed to slip in a reference to “genocide,” without correction. We’re getting there, slowly.
As for Laura, if only we knew what her own views were ...
Richard Sanders retweeted
A routine morning update during the “ceasefire”: At least 6 Palestinians have been killed and 26 others injured, including two fishermen off Gaza’s coast, as Israeli attacks continue by air, land and sea.
Richard Sanders retweeted
What? So if you express support for Palestine Action and are the wife of Andy Burnham’s national security adviser Jonathan Powell, you get a free pass from the police? But if you’re a retired teacher, you get 27 hours in custody and your home turned over by the police?
No further action to be taken against the wife of the Prime Minister’s national security adviser for support of Palestine Action
3,800+ arrests of people peacefully holding signs, and 36 counter-terror home raids for social media posts have taken place.
thenational.scot/news/266465…
Richard Sanders retweeted
"Even voters who know little about Palestine will struggle to understand why Labour is turning on its own local administrations.
The impression it creates is not of a party that’s been renewed as a force for ‘hope’, but of one that remains petty, vindictive and self-serving."
The Labour Party’s refusal to work with the Greens unless they renounce anti-Zionism exposes the hollowness of the Burnham project.
tribunemag.co.uk/2026/10/bur…
Thanks due to @CrispinShow for recording and sharing this material.