The Anglo-Israeli historian, essayist and documentary maker Haim Bresheeth, a media expert and author of books on Israel and Palestine and a recognized authority on the Israeli army, was arrested by the London Metropolitan Police on November 1st to be released the following day. The accusation: incitement to hatred.
Bresheeth had just spoken at a weekly rally outside the residence of Israeli Ambassador to the UK Tzipi Hotoveli, to protest against the genocide in Gaza and call for her ouster. A video portrays the scholar reacting in disbelief to the officers’ accusation of having held a hate speech and therefore punishable under the Terrorism Act.
In his speech he said that Israel will not be able to defeat Hamas. He remains under investigation for “supporting” a banned organization. The main national newspapers, radio and television were careful not to report what happened. Bresheeth, sixty-eight, is one of the founders of the Jewish Network for Palestine.
Already a victim of the recent cleanup/purge of the Labor Party against anti-Semitism, he defines himself as “a professor, author and director, a former Israeli Jew active for over fifty years as a socialist, anti-Zionist and anti-racist activist”.
He is the son of Polish Jews who survived Auschwitz. His mother was liberated by British forces at Bergen-Belsen, his father by the Americans at Mauthausen. After serving in the IDF and fighting in ’67 and ’73, he became a convinced pacifist. Having moved to Great Britain, he joined Labor in 1970 where he fought against apartheid and for Palestinian rights.
The episode is the latest in a series which sees, in defiance of the equidistance on the conflict trumpeted by the authorities and the mainstream media, the persecution of activists and journalists aligned against the massacre: in August Richard Medhurst (The Grayzone) was arrested at Heathrow on the same charge as Bresheeth; Asa Winstaley (Electronic Intifada) had his house searched in October and journalist Sarah Wilkinson was also arrested shortly afterwards.
“The Bbc he interviewed me four times during demonstrations in London. No interviews aired. They don’t want to hear what Jews like me have to say,” Breshreeth said, interviewed by manifesto in June.
The fact is that the institutional duplicity followed by all the British newspapers and the Bbc in covering the ocean of blood that flowed from October 7th is indubitable. In addition to the Bbc – whose correspondent, Clive Myrie, was recently challenged by students during a meeting at the university, of which he (inexplicably?) became rector due to the bias of his reporting – particularly shines Guardianwhich recently censored a piece by Palestinian writer Susan Abulhawa (Every Morning in Jenin) until she decided to withdraw it.
Discontent spreads in the newspaper, as well as on state television: 230 journalists – including a hundred from the same Bbc – they wrote to Tim Davie, the director, complaining about the pro-Israeli bias of the station.
