Zionist attempt to force cancellation fails, pro-Palestine event goes ahead tomorrow

Attempts by pro-Israel pressure groups to intimidate Community Base into cancelling Unite4Palestine event fail

An attempt by pro-Israel pressure groups to intimidate a Brighton venue into cancelling an event organised by anti-genocide union members appears to have failed, after the management of Community Base said the Unite4Palestine event will go ahead.

Unite4Palestine – members, many of them Jewish, of the Unite union disgusted with the refusal of the union’s general secretary to show solidarity with Palestinians facing genocide by the Israeli occupation or even to implement Unite’s member-agreed policy of support for oppressed Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank – had arranged an event with an array of leading speakers for 6pm on Sunday evening.

But Fiona Sharpe – who both acts as spokesperson for the right-wing group that styles itself ‘Labour against antisemitism’ (LAAS) and speaks for the so-called Sussex Jewish Representative Council, which operates from a Brighton post-office box – wrote to Community Base smearing the anti-Zionist group as ‘a group of anti-Jewish racist supporters’ and supporters of Hamas and demanding the urgent cancellation of the ‘offensive meeting’:

Sharpe also tried to apply pressure through her LAAS-focused Twitter/X account.

Other leading LAAS figures have attacked and even threatened left-wing Jews in the UK who spoke out against the unfounded ‘Labour antisemitism’ smears, including renowned author Michael Rosen. One of the group’s founding signatories was kicked off Twitter for a stream of racist posts, including a comment that an orphaned child in Gaza was ‘better off without a mother’. The group has also been accused of serious data breaches in its misuse of Labour members’ personal information.

However, the attempts at intimidation to silence anti-genocide voices appear to have failed badly. Event organisers have told Skwawkbox that the venue’s management has confirmed that the meeting will go ahead.

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