April 27, 2024 (EIRNS)—British independent journalist Jonathan Cook, in a column in Middle East Eye yesterday, called out fake anti-Semitism as a provocation and cover for Israeli genocide in Gaza, in particular the recent discoveries of mass graves containing hundreds of bodies outside the hospitals in Khan Younis and Gaza City. In the British press, Cook reports, these discoveries hardly caused a ripple.
“It was quite extraordinary that the discovery of mass graves in the enclave was almost completely drowned out by an all-too-obvious hoax pulled by an Israel lobbyist,” Cook writes. “Gideon Falter, chief executive of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, has been trying to shut down the peaceful London marches calling for an end to the butchering of men, women and children in Gaza since Israel began its military assault more than six months ago.”
According to Cook, Falter characterized the protesters—"including a large block of Jews”—as “lawless mobs” posing a direct threat to Jews like himself. “There is precisely no evidence for any of these claims,” Cook continues. “In fact, according to police figures, Glastonbury music festival goers were nearly four times more likely to be arrested than those attending the London marches. Which has left the continuing mass marches a major embarrassment to both the U.K. government and the opposition Labour Party by highlighting their continuing complicity in what has become—with revelations like the discovery of mass graves—ever more clearly a genocide.”
Falter is a provocateur who specializes in creating “incidents” at protests, which he then can claim “proves” that his life is in danger because he is “openly Jewish,” as he did at a recent London protest.
“The problem wasn’t that Falter is ‘openly Jewish,’” Cook writes, “it was that he is a vocal, openly Zionist supporter of Israel, one who makes excuses for its genocide and vilifies those who are opposed to the bloodletting. It is not his ethnicity or religion that are a provocation, it is his ugly politics.”
But Falter’s tactics, which Cook describes in great detail, have an objective. “Falter has played an invaluable role in bolstering Israel’s favorite tactic. He has deflected attention in the U.K. away from its war crimes—including the mass graves in Khan Younis—to squabbles entirely divorced from reality about whether Jews are safe from the anti-war movement,” he writes. “Precisely the same dynamic is playing out in the United States, where the establishment—from President Joe Biden down—is painting peaceful protests on college campuses against the genocide as hotbeds of hatred and anti-Semitism.”
The claims of anti-Semitism “keep Western publics focused on evil humanitarian aid workers and evil anti-war protesters rather than the kind of evil that dares in broad daylight to kill 15,000 children, destroy hospitals, and hide bodies in mass graves,” Cook concludes.
