Faiza Shaheen, stood in Chingford and Woodford, London where she stood in 2019 against former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, and lost narrowly by around 1,100 votes, while increasing Labour’s vote share.

There is no doubt that the Zionist lobby has exerted undue influence in the Labour party candidate selection process.

In the past few days several pro-Palestine candidates have been blocked from running at the July 4th elections on the Labour ticket.

Instead they have airdropped in Zionist extremists such as Luke Akehurst of the Labour’s NEC into safe seats like North Durham.

One of the most high-profile pro-Palestine Muslim candidates to be dropped on false antisemitism accusations is Faiza Shaheen. This looks like an orchestrated campaign against her by pro-Israel zealots who support the genocide in Gaza.

What is her crime? She ‘liked’ a tweet on X – this is the tweet:

• We often hear Zionist Jews calling non-Zionist Jews, self-hating Jews.

• The Israel lobby does influence or at least try to influence policy, just like the lobby of any other country does. It is why lobbies exist!

• Lemoine’s tweet says: “Basically, every time you say something even mildly critical of Israel, you’re immediately assailed by scores of hysterical people who explain to you why you’re completely wrong, how you’re biased against Israel, more or less explicitly accuse you of antisemitism, etc. and it just never stops.” – this is the lived experience of so many critics of Israel, Israeli policy and the Zionist ideology that fuels it all.

• He adds: “Moreover, you can’t easily ignore them, because those are not just random people, they tend to be friends or people who move in the same circles as you. Those people are mobilized by professional organizations, but to a large extent, that is organic.” – this too is the reality. The “mobilised by organisations” part was recently evident when the sham organisation ‘Campaign Against Antisemitism’ began mobilising a gang of pro-genocidaires to harass pro-Palestine protests in London. And more recently, when CST organised a gang of racist thugs in Finchley to intimidate a pro-Palestine protest.

• Lemoine concludes with: “This nonstop harassment is just exhausting and, since most people don’t really care about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they’ll usually stop talking about it or, if they’re a politician, do whatever those people want them to do, rather than having to put up with it because in the end it doesn’t cost them much.” – again, this too is accurate and what we see regularly – voices that speak up are hounded and intimidated into silence. Their right to free speech is harassed away from them, their work places and associates are harassed, their families and businesses are all fair game for Zionist extremists.

Labour, by saying ‘liking’ this tweet is problematic, is feeding the beast – the beast has an insatiable appetite though, and can never be satisfied.

Zionists prove Lemoine’s point.

A tweet today by Lemoine proved the point, that his original tweet was an accurate characterisation of radicalised Zionist behaviour:

“A couple of weeks ago, I wrote this tweet in which I explained what I think is probably the main way in which the Israel lobby operates (which I think is widely misunderstood), using a sketch by

@jonstewart that perfectly illustrates the mechanism I was describing. This tweet was apparently liked by

@faizashaheen, which led the party’s national executive to block her from being Labour’s candidate in Chingford and Woodford Green, despite the fact that she had previously won the parliamentary selection with more than 50% of the vote in the first round. In that tweet, I explained that every time you’re even mildly critical of Israel, you’re immediately assailed by scores of hysterical people who make wild accusations against you. I added that, since those people tend to be your friends and it’s exhausting to be constantly arguing about Israel with them, most people just avoid the topic. (I call this theory the Nagging Wife Model of the Israel Lobby.) So what happened after it transpired that

@faizashaheen had liked that tweet? Well, scores of hysterical people sent complaints to the party about it, making wild accusations against her:

I guess it must also have been hard to ignore those complaints, since they came from friends and fellow party members. Man, I hate to say it, but those people really proved me wrong!

More seriously, it’s kind of hilarious that the irony of the whole thing is apparently lost on them and that I find myself in the middle of a national controversy in the UK because of a tweet, but I guess I should thank the Labour’s national executive and the people who complained about

@faizashaheen for illustrating my point.”

Philippe Lemoine.

What Labour are demonstrating here is that they do not believe in free speech and expression if it upsets the Zionist lobby and / or “a number of” Jews find “the tone” concerning. That is utterly absurd. No other group is afforded this favourability. This really is insanity, and no other group even goes down this route – it is anti-democratic. Anti-British values of freedom of speech and expression.

The Zionist lobby is often thought of as exclusively consisting of fanatical Jews, but in actual fact it consists of non-Jews too.

The tweet Ms Shaheen was suspended for ‘liking’ is not only not antisemitic, it does not even come close to being antisemitic; hate against Jews. It doesn’t come close to being Jew hate by any professional definition of antisemitism.

The accusations made against Ms Shaheen are based on the figments of the imaginations of some Zionists, and Labour has buckled under pressure from them.

That is a real danger for democracy – because as we know too well from history, when extremists start going after people who have not done anything wrong other than be different – they do not stop there.