Catalan film-maker Jordi Oriola Folch analyses the run-up to Catalonia’s elections next week Exiled Catalan politician Carlos Puigdemont (image courtesy of Albert Salamé, www.vilaweb.cat) On 12 May next week, elections will be held to choose the government of Catalonia. Four years ago, Catalan pro-independence parties won with 52% of the votes and 55% of the seats. A Catalan pro-independence government of ERC and JUNTS was formed with the support of the CUP. But different strategies in the face of constant Spanish judicial repression meant that ERC was left alone in the government. In these C ..read more

MIT campus sees another ridiculous smear attempt A US-based Israeli military officer has embarrassed himself on camera in the latest of a series of feeble – and filmed – attempts to smear protesters. The man walked into the middle of a student encampment at MIT in the US and started calling for help – before later telling far-right station Fox News that he was ‘truly afraid’: Video by Hidden Palestine Whatever his emotional state, he is presumably not very bright if he didn’t realise how he would look when the video inevitably came out. Still, at least he didn’t claim to have been ‘stabbed in ..read more

Image: Palestine Action Twitter Activists from Palestine Action (PA) have again targeted Israeli weapons-maker Elbit’s Leicester drone factory, UAV Tactical Systems. One contingent used an articulated lorry to smash through a fence and act as a platform for two protesters. At the same time, another group scaled the building and currently occupy the roof of the drone production facility. Red paint has been sprayed across the building to symbolise the company’s involvement in spilling Palestinian blood. Those on the roof are said to have used tools to break through it.  UAV Tactical Systems ..read more

Simon Myerson The President of Leeds Jewish Representative Council, Judge Laurence Saffer, is facing calls to suspend and investigate its hard-line Zionist Chair, Simon Myerson KC for crude and abusive social media posts. The call for Myerson’s suspension comes from James Wilson, who published his letter to the President of Leeds Jewish Representative Council on Twitter/X on this week. In April 2023 Myerson re-posted a tweet by Twitter/X user Tom Doran which accused Wilson of being ‘the scum of the earth’ and in some way responsible for the death of Pete Newbon, a director of anti-left pressur ..read more

‘Unsafe’? Nonsense. Watch exclusive video Anti-genocide campaigners staged protests outside Barclays bank branches in London last weekend against the bank’s investments in apartheid Israel and Israeli weapons manufacture, for example the 2.7 million shares that the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) says it holds in military drone manufacturer Elbit Systems. And while headlines were made last month by stunts by pro-genocide right-wingers who claim that supporters of Palestine are a threat to Jews – despite the clear fact that Jewish demonstrators are prominent at all the protests – a video c ..read more

Netanyahu’s political survival and potentially freedom from prison depends on continuing slaughter Israel has rejected a ceasefire deal, brokered by Egypt and Qatar and accepted by Hamas, that earlier saw jubilation among Palestinians currently kettled in Gaza. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, whose political future depends on continuing the war and who faces the resumption of criminal proceedings for alleged corruption as soon as he is out of office, is unsurprisingly putting his own interests ahead of the lives of Palestinian civilians and Israeli troops and prisoners of war. Israel’s invasio ..read more

Security camera footage reminds voters of Labour’s entrenched Islamophobia and racism under Keir Starmer The Labour party under Keir Starmer has been an unrepentant hotbed of anti-Muslim, anti-Black and anti-Gypsy racism – and that racism reared its ugly head again during the party’s ‘get out the vote’ operation in last week’s West Midland’s mayoral election. Labour expected to lose the contest because it haemorrhaged Muslim votes to independent candidate Ahmed Yaqoob because of Starmer’s support for Israel despite that country’s mass murder of Palestinian civilians, including tens of thousan ..read more

Seizure of broadcasting equipment and blocking of Israeli citizens’ access to website as Israel adds assault on dissenting voices in Gaza to its slaughter of journalists in Gaza Israel has banned Arab broadcaster Al Jazeera from its territory – and blocked Israeli citizens from accessing the station’s channel and website – as it continues its assault on dissenting voices examining its mass murder of Palestinian civilians. The move comes as global support for Palestinians, and condemnation of Israel’s slaughter and maiming of more than 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza, continues to grow and Israel ..read more

University of Michigan graduates walk out holding Palestine flags Student graduates at the University of Michigan have walked out of their graduation ceremony, holding Palestinian flags an challenging Israel ‘How many kids have you killed today?’, in protest at Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The protest is part of a growing trend of students protesting at their graduation that has been added to the student encampment movement, holding placards and calling out the horrors being perpetrated on Palestinian civilians despite increasingly brutal state repression of students, including many Jewish stud ..read more

‘Extraordinary position’ taken by general secretary in bid to avoid testimony and cross-examination Unite union general secretary Sharon Graham has taken the ‘extraordinary position’ that she is not ‘amenable’ to Irish law, lawyers acting for senior trade unionist Brendan Ogle have told a Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) tribunal. Unite’s lawyers had first used the term during February’s session of Ogle’s discrimination case against Unite, when Ogle’s barrister Mary Paula Guinness BL raised the topic of WRC adjudicator, former UN prosecutor Elizabeth Spelman, issuing a subpoena to compel ..read more