JLM pro-Israel organiser Velleman ‘forced to resign’ as councillor ‘under cloud of darkness’

Right-winger and mate of ex-Israeli embassy fellow councillor out as Barnet councillor with no explanation from Starmer’s Labour

Right-wing Labour and Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) figure Liron Velleman has resigned from Barnet council as councillor for the Whetstone ward for reasons that have so far not been made public, but which have been described by opponents on the council as being ‘forced to resign’ ‘under a cloud of darkness’.

Velleman is, or was, a senior organiser for JLM – the avowedly pro-Israel pressure group that boasts of being the ‘oldest socialist society’ affiliated to Labour, but was in fact re-formed in 2015, after years of dormancy, specifically to fight then-newly elected party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

He is also close to Ella Rose, also a Whetstone councillor, who made a notorious, tearful appearance in the BBC Panorama ‘documentary‘ titled ‘Is Labour antisemitic’ – without the programme’s makers informing viewers that she was a hardline opponent of Corbyn who had worked at the Israeli embassy and had admitted to being a ‘confidante of an Israeli undercover agent’. The programme has been described as an ‘anti-Corbyn stitch-up’.

Like Rose, Velleman played an eager role in the ‘Labour antisemitism’ smear campaign. When they stood for election as councillors under ‘red Tory’ party leader Keir Starmer in 2022, both claimed that the party under Starmer had ‘healed [the] wounds’ caused by the supposed antisemitism crisis.

Rose also featured in the Al Jazeera documentary series ‘The Lobby’, which exposed the Israel lobby’s targeting of pro-Palestinian MPs and its false accusations of antisemitism, including being filmed talking to an undercover reporter about beating up Jackie Walker, a Black Jewish left-winger then aged sixty-two, using Israeli martial arts:

I saw Jackie Walker on Saturday and thought, you know what, I could take her, she’s like 5’2 and tiny. That’s why I can take Jackie Walker. Krav Maga training. Yeah. I’m not bad at it. If it came to it I would win, that’s all I really care about.

The programme’s revelations were ignored by UK media and Labour right-wingers denied ever having seen or heard of it on the rare occasions they were challenged about it.

Velleman appears to have deleted his Twitter/X account:

Velleman’s departure is the latest blow to the pro-Israel lobby group. In January, JLM’s former chair Ivor Caplin was arrested on suspicion of child sex offences after falling for a ‘sting’ set up by an anti-paedophile group and being filmed turning up for what he thought was a meeting with an underage boy. Caplin had replaced Jeremy Newmark as JLM chair after Newmark resigned over alleged financial impropriety, involving missing documents and thousands of pounds, during his stint at the so-called ‘Jewish Leadership Council’. Newmark claimed his departure was because of diabetes.

And just last month, Sam Gould – a Redbridge Labour councillor who also worked for Starmer’s Health Secretary Wes Streeting, another JLM supporter – was convicted of exposing himself to a 13yo girl and then pursuing her.

Starmer avidly courts the group’s favour despite Israel’s genocide in Gaza and has appointed other ‘usual suspects’ in the ‘Labour antisemitism scam’ to seats in the House of Lords, which he once promised to abolish.

More details about the reasons for Velleman’s resignation ‘under a cloud of darkness’ are expected to emerge.

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