Smear starts with falsehood and goes downhill from there
Anti-Corbyn rabbi Zvi Solomons has smeared widely-loved Jewish author Michael Rosen, as the right’s propaganda assault on Rosen and their attempt to link him to the suicide of an academic who was sued and repeatedly disciplined by his employer for his vile social media output continue.
Solomons published a tweet claiming that Rosen sued Dr Pete Newbon, who committed suicide last year facing potential financial ruin in the face of legal action from another man he had smeared and put in danger. But Rosen never sued Newbon – Newbon tried to sue him, for daring to object to Newbon’s disgusting tweet bastardising Rosen’s famous ‘Bear Hunt’ book into a notorious antisemitic text:
After starting with an outright falsehood, the tweet manages to go even further downhill. Rosen never ‘set his followers on’ Newbon, but simply objected to Newbon’s abuse of his work and blatant insult to Rosen’s Jewishness – Newbon’s supporters eventually gave away that this was an intentional, targeted decision by Newbon against Rosen.
And there is absolutely no credible connection between Rosen’s objection to Newbon’s smear and Newbon’s suicide eight months later. Apart from the two-thirds of a year between the end of that argument and the suicide, Newbon was being sued, along with two other smearers, by James Wilson for defamatory comments that put Wilson in physical danger and the case was going badly for the defendants, leaving Newbon likely to face huge costs – his widow sacked the lawyer advising him shortly after his death. And the coroner noted that Newbon killed himself immediately after a row with his wife, over an issue that has not been made public.
So unconnected was Rosen to the suicide that he was not once mentioned by the coroner or others during the recent coroner-led inquest that ruled Newbon’s death a suicide.
And Newbon had been disciplined on multiple occasions by his university employer for bringing them into disrepute through his persistent foul social media comments, not just for his abuse of Rosen and Rosen’s work.
Worse still, Solomon’s tweet appears to risk what he tried to accuse Rosen of, a pile-on by his followers targeting a 77yo man who only recently almost died from Covid and is still recovering.
To complete the set, Rosen has done a programme on the language of Communism – in fact he has done two: one on the language of the GDR (former East Germany) another on the language of secret satire and humour under the Soviets, which repeatedly critiqued the language of the Soviets.
Skwawkbox wrote to Rabbi Solomons:
Media enquiry re libel against Michael Rosen
Rabbi Solomons, you have published a tweet claiming that Michael Rosen sued Dr Pete Newbon and ‘many think drove him to suicide’.
Mr Rosen never sued Dr Newbon, in fact Newbon tried to sue Rosen. The coroner made no link whatever between Newbon’s death and Rosen’s objection to Newbon’s social media post, nor is there any indication Rosen ‘set his followers’ on Newbon.
Questions:
- Given that your comment appears to be straightforwardly libellous, will you retract it?
- How is you tweeting that false comment to your followers not ‘setting them’ on Rosen in the same way you criticise – and in fact worse, given its falsity and Rosen’s well-known poor health?
Please respond no later than 8pm if you wish to have your comment included at publication.
Thank you,
Steve Walker
Skwawkbox
No reply had been received by the time of writing, some four hours after the expiry of the press deadline. Solomons’ tweet remains online at the time of publication and there appears to have been no retraction or apology.
Solomons’ problematic social media output is not limited to his attack on Rosen. He has referred to gay singer Sam Smith as an ‘it’ and a ‘freak’ after Smith cancelled a planned appearance in Israel in response to a mass petition from Palestinians, gay and trans groups pointing out that to go ahead would legitimise Israeli apartheid:
Solomons has attacked Arabs by claiming that there is no Christian community in Iraq – when in fact there are some 500,000 Christians in that country, whose communities go back two millennia to the time immediately after Jesus:
And he has repeatedly misrepresented the ‘Nakba’, the ‘catastrophe’ of the brutal 1948 expulsion of hundreds of thousands of unarmed Palestinians from their land, as an ‘Arab war’ on Israel’:
For a fuller analysis of the right’s assault on Rosen and misrepresentation of the circumstances of Dr Pete Newbon’s death, go here.
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These people smearing Rosen really don’t care about the holocaust. Or antisemitism. Vile.
Reply to Ben L
I agree with you Ben. The Holocaust was one of the greatest crimes in the history of humanity and it is totally disgusting to see people exploit it for their own ends.
I think one of the worst examples of this exploitation was when Margaret Hodge referenced it when she faced disciplinary action by the Labour Party for her foul mouthed tirade against Jeremy Corbyn in the chamber of the House of Commons.
She said in effect that being investigated by the party over her behaviour made her understand how Jews in Nazi Germany felt and she added that her father had always said Jews needed to keep a suitcase ready. Her suitcase reference was particularly offensive as studies have shown that traumatised holocaust survivors frequently associate(d) suitcases with Nazi terror and murder.
By shamelessly exploiting the unspeakable horrors German Jews suffered under the Nazis in order to get off the hook for her vile behaviour Margaret Hodge trivialised the Holocaust and all that went with it. In my opinion what she said amounted to Holocaust denial. Furthermore her remarks made it absolutely clear that she has neither respect for herself nor the 6 million Jews (and approx 5 million others) who were murdered by the Nazis before and during the Second World War.
Margaret Hodge is a disgrace.
What a thoroughly horrible excuse for a man.
An allegedly religious one at that. I’ll bet he complains about the ayatollahs without any sense of hypocrisy or irony.
AFAIC mouths like Solomons are why some find Jews as undesirable
Michael Rosen ought to take him to the f***ing cleaners. Maybe that’d shut Solomons up.
Anybody who calls Rabbi Solomon out and exposes his intolerance, bile and hypocrisy will be be denounced as a Jew hater and racist, they will lose their jobs if they work in an area where pressure can be exerted on their employer to sack them e.g. the media, higher education etc and if they are a member of the Labour party they will be expelled for “antisemitism”.
Rabbi Solomon on the other hand is immune from criticism and free to vilify his co -religionist Michael Rosenwho and cause him hurt and reputational damage. The Rabbi is also able to make untrue and racist statements about Arabs, all without consequence.
Like I posted before the Israeli /Zionist lobby have it all sewn up.We are becoming a nation scared to open our mouths about bigots like the Rabbi in case we get the same treatment that Michael and others such as Jeremy Corbyn , Ken Loach, Jo Bird, Naomi Idrissi Wimborne,Audrey White, Peter Wiseman to name a few have been subjected to.
Its a standard approach used against anyone who openly challenges any Official Narrative.
Apparently, lists are back in fashion (if they ever went out of fashion):
One of which is detailed here:
https://wingsoverscotland.com/lets-get-tattoos/
With links, via BTL comments, to the actual list of over 40,000 names and with this salient observation:
“But wait a minute – a great big list of bad people, all gathered together in one place and given numbers? We can’t help thinking we’ve heard of that before, and it seems a bit, well, on the nose coming from people who love to shriek “NAZI!”, “FASCIST!” and “GENOCIDE!” at everyone else every five seconds.
(While shouting down and attacking women’s meetings, dressing like paramilitaries and roaming the streets in mobs screaming and threatening opponents with knives and baseball bats and axes and guns, like a well-known group of men from history whose name we can’t quite recall right now.)”
Another which………
……can be found here from last year which includes the current elected leader of the largest country in South America – which may by now have other names added:
https://archive.ph/50otS
Anybody who calls Rabbi Solomon out and exposes his intolerance, bile and hypocrisy will be be denounced as a Jew hater and racist
Let them do it. Their argument is easily torn apart by the “wisdom” of Solomon’s decision to publish on twitter.
They have to defend that before they call anyone else.
Reply to Toffee
You are right but mud sticks Toffee and many people having seen the way so many people’s lives have been torn apart following what have invariably been false accusations of antisemitism are too afraid to speak out. That is the whole object of the exercise.
Toffee, in Spanish language we have a say that goes along the lines: “slander that something will remain”
Rabbi Solomon and others like him know what they are doing; unfortunately most people would stick to “their isn’t smoke without a fire”.and would in the best scenario ignore Solomon or believe what he says.
Sadly, I have to agree with Smartboy the road of taking Solomon and others to court for slander is very costly and most decent people don’t have that type of money available to them.
Look at Corbyn, the case against him collapsed before going to Court but it let him with legal cost of over a million pounds. Thanks to people supporting his crowdfunding Corbyn has managed to pay most of this debt but still around £400K short.
Maria
I’m sorry but I really can’t get my head around that case, why was there not an application for costs, at very least it was a vexatious claim
Surely there’s a precedent for such abuse of the system
Dough, I believe it is a question of whom has the bigger pockets.
We have a precedent on Tony Greenstein’s case in which the Court ruled that although the opinion of the defendant was untrue, it was the defendant “honest opinion” after all and Tony lost the case.
Thus, no clear whatever the Court would have awarded cost to Corbyn even after Corbyn winning the case.
The Court could have concluded that it was “the honest opinion” of the plaintiff and the plaintiff would have to cover its own cost of over a million pound too.
In this scenario, with Corbyn already unable to meet his own cost on the tune of over £400K in debt to his solicitors and with no more money coming, I believe Corbyn’s solicitors most likely recommend to him to settle rather than to incur higher costs.
The lesson from the case is that the other side was prepared to spend over a million pounds on a vexatious claim in the knowledge that their complaint was never going to be heard in a Court of Law but, could possibly bankrupt Corbyn.
Reply to Doug re costs
A court can make an award for the costs incurred in preparing and presenting any case which comes before it. However if the case never comes to court then the court is not involved and therefore cannot make any award.
With the local elections now over and with a general election coming up, it is vitally important that the progressive voice is heard loud and clear.
The threat of nuclear warfare is very real and so we need to act to prevent this obvious danger.
As a first step, there is the important issue of plans to return U S nuclear weapons to Britain for the first time since 2008.
Please ask your MP to sign the EDM by clicking on the link below:
https://cnd.eaction.org.uk/EDM98
Thank you.
There is less chance of the Planet being bombed back to the Big Bang
Only the MIC believe nuclear weapons deter anything
It’s called the ‘Just in case scenario’
If one side launches then we want to be able to destroy the planet as well
Great question for any warmonger, would you press the button to end life on earth
If they answer yes, do what the Royal family used to do with uppity Princesses