27 November 2020 — The Electronic Intifada

Nora Barrows-Friedman The Electronic Intifada Podcast

On Episode 26 of The Electronic Intifada Podcast, we have an in-depth conversation with former UK Labour MP Chris Williamson.

Williamson was the only Labour MP under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership period to acknowledge the truth about the party’s “anti-Semitism crisis” – that it was a manufactured disinformation campaign orchestrated by the pro-Israel lobby and the right.

As a result, he was pushed out of the Labour Party, finally quitting to run as an independent MP in last year’s general election. Now, with Corbyn being suspended as a member of Labour’s parliamentary group, very similar tactics are being used against the former Labour leader.

We discuss the state of the Labour Party and the future for the left.

“I think the Labour Party is going through an existential crisis, to be honest with you, which I don’t think they can recover from,” he says. He argues that “it’s no longer a suitable vehicle to deliver socialism.”

We also pay tribute to Robert Fisk, a veteran war reporter and the author of Pity the Nation, among other books covering the history of western imperialism in the Middle East.

Fisk’s most lasting legacy is how he revealed the truth about the Israeli-led massacre of Palestinian refugees in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon.

Exactly how many were killed between 16 and 18 September 1982 remains unknown, but estimates vary from 800 to 3,500.

Sabra and Shatila, Fisk wrote in The Independent in 2012, “are a memorial to criminals who evaded responsibility, who got away with it.”

Theme music by Sharif Zakout

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