Author, poet, and national treasure Michael Rosen has faced repeated attempts by the Israel lobby to cancel him. He has been targeted even though – or especially because – he is Jewish. Rosen has spoken exclusively to Skwawkbox about the furore manufactured by the Israel lobby around the decision of a Bristol school to cancel an event involving MP Damien Egan, an ardent supporter of genocidal Israel.

Manufactured outrage

Egan’s visit to the school was cancelled by school management after parents said they would keep their children home rather than risk them being fed pro-Israel propaganda. Teachers at the school, backed by the National Education Union (NEU), said they would wear pro-Palestine t-shirts during the visit if it went ahead.

Israel fanatic cabinet minister Steve Reed gave a dishonest account of the schools decision to a conference event of the rabidly pro-Israel ‘Jewish Labour Movement’ (JLM). Reed proclaimed his outrage that people were not prosecuted for icing biscuits with the Palestine flag. He claimed that a member of his family was “vomiting down the toilet in fear” because the biscuits were so terrifying.

He then implied Egan had  told his ‘friends of genocide’ audience that a “Jewish” “colleague” had been:

refused permission to visit a school in his own constituency in case his presence inflames the teachers.

The facts show this to be nonsense, but this didn’t prevent a ‘source close to Egan’ claiming that Egan had been “endangered” by “far-left extremists”. The facts show both claims to be nonsense. This has not prevented the Israel lobby in government and media pushing the fake claim.

Michael Rosen speaks out

Now Rosen has spoken out – and he speaks from extensive experience. Perhaps surprisingly to some readers, he disagrees with the move to prevent Egan attending the school. He told Skwawkbox:

For the record, I disagree with the ban on the MP. My own experience of being banned or of people trying to get me banned is like this: a Jewish school in Hackney booked me and then cancelled. I heard later it was because parents objected. I was booked for JW3, the Jewish community centre, fee agreed. The gig was ‘postponed’ and never carried through. (That’s how some cancellations are done!)

I was booked to do a charity event in commemoration of Windermere Kindertransport. Rehearsed for it. Then cancelled. There have been repeated efforts and campaigns to get me cancelled from eg Jewish Book Week, Show Racism the Red Card, the Ann Frank Trust, the Parkes lecture.

What happens is that people see my name on the pre-event publicity and ply the organisers with letters and social media posts objecting to me appearing. What happens next varies.

On some occasions, I hear from the organisers and I agree to duck out, for the simple reason that I don’t want or need to go places where I’m not welcome. And bear in mind, none of these bookings that I’ve described are ones that I’ve sought out. I accepted them because I was approached. It’s then the pressure on the organisers that causes the cancelling.

But while he may think cancelling Egan’s school event was a misstep, he has suffered much worse and sees the current manufactured storm for what it is:

There was an effort on a tweet in 2019 by Euan Philipps for Labour Against Antisemitism to get me cancelled from BBC Radio 4. This was backed up with a supportive tweet from Simon Myerson QC (KC now.) [Also] Euan Philipps, rumoured to be the person who pretended to be ‘David Gorstein’.

The present kerfuffle is about cancellers objecting to cancelling. Wot?!

Smears

Rosen is too generous to Phillips, one of the main characters behind the notorious Israel pressure group ‘Labour against Antisemitism’ (LAAS). Philipps, who is not Jewish, did pretend to be Gordstein in a series of ‘antisemitism’ complaints to the Labour party, in an apparent attempt to appear Jewish to validate his smears. Myerson, who endorsed the attempted cancellation, was a judge as well as a barrister. Myerson was sanctioned by the judiciary in 2024 for abuse on social media. He “no longer holds office” as a judge.

James Wilson won substantial damages and legal costs against three Israel supporters whose smears put him and his family in danger. One of the three defamers, Peter Newbon, was a serial abuser who had also attacked Rosen to get at Jeremy Corbyn, whom Rosen supported against pro-Israel smears. Wilson called for Myerson to be suspended from other roles for Myerson’s use of “crude dehumanising language of the kind used of Jewish people by the Nazis” in Myerson’s attempt to support the libellers against Myerson:

I am calling on Leeds Jewish Representative Council to immediately suspend and investigate their Chair Simon Myerson KC.

I am calling on them to do this because Mr Myerson has repeated crude dehumanising abuse of the kind used of Jewish people by the Nazis in the 1930s.… pic.twitter.com/1eKWSCPouV

— James Wilson (@per_incuriam2) May 7, 2024

Narrative outlier

Unlike Egan, Michael Rosen was targeted because he is Jewish. His refutations of smears against Corbyn and his anti-Zionist views make Rosen a major inconvenience to the Israel lobby. Like many other Jews, he doesn’t fit the lobby’s frankly anti-semitic narrative that support for Israel is intrinsic to Jewishness. His high profile and popularity make him a particular threat to that false narrative and he has been relentlessly targeted for it, for years, particularly by groups set up specifically to bring down Corbyn and tar the left as anti-semitic, like Philipps’s LAAS.

Just as the Labour party targeted Jewish members who opposed or even failed to support Zionism, so the Israel lobby hates Michael Rosen with a passion. His experience shows that this lobby is not shy of expressing it, or of trying to cancel him, even though it repeatedly fails.

But Israel’s supporters – who are often not Jewish – have no fear of hypocrisy. Indeed, their sense of entitlement is so ingrained that they will eagerly engage in speech and conduct against their opponents that they will rabidly condemn if they can cast one of their own as the victim. This applies to ‘cancellation’ attempts as well – perhaps especially.

As Rosen said: cancellers objecting to cancelling, Wot?!

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

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