EDO: LEND ME YOUR SMEARS

After the historic victory of the EDO Decommissioners earlier this month (see SchNEWS 729), the judge in the case, George Bathurst-Norman, has become the target of a concerted smear campaign by a number of right-wing columnists. The Zionist Federation and the Board of Deputies of British Jews have both claimed that his summing up of the case was ‘anti-semitic’.

As a result of organised lobbying by Zionist groups, the Office of Judicial Complaints (OJC) has opened an investigation into his handling of the case. The inquiry is at an early stage and it’s likely the already retired judge will receive nothing more than a ticking off, but the news has been spread via news outlets, like the Daily Mail, who were remarkably uninterested in the original verdict.

SchNEWS couldn’t care less what happens to Bathurst-Norman, who in his day was a fearsome hander down of harsh sentences - he once sent down Paul Kelleher for three months for knocking the head off a statue of Maggie Thatcher (see SchNEWS 394). But the fact is that this smear campaign is really aimed at the defendants and anyone else who wants to run a similar defence.

Smash EDO told SchNEWS “The charge of anti-semitism is a cynical attempt to undermine the achievement of the Decommissioners. There is nothing anti-semitic in putting evidence of Israeli war crimes to a jury.”

Helpfully the Jewish Chronicle has stuck up the full transcript of the summing up here for you to make up your own mind. www.hejc.com/35771/judge-bathurst-norman-full-summing