In 2008 Galloway succeeded in getting a tiny London podcast shut down by suing.
London’s only Jewish community radio station has been forced to cease broadcasting after losing a High Court libel case brought against it by the Respect MP George Galloway.
Jcom, a non-profit station which broadcast online and to a small area in north-west London, was wound up after it was told to pay the MP damages of £15,000.
Mr Galloway sued the station after one of its presenters played a spoof character based on the MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, and implied he was anti-Semitic. It was also ordered to pay Mr Galloway’s court costs, thought to be £5,000. Mr Galloway said that the judgment had “categorically crushed the slur of anti-Semitism”.
Well, it crushed Jcom, at least.
During a broadcast in November, a presenter who called himself “Georgie Galloway”, the station’s “Middle East correspondent”, used the catchphrase, “kill the Jews, kill the Jews”. The station immediately sacked the presenter, Richard Malach, saying he was “young and inexperienced” and had made an error of judgment while attempting to present an edgy programme. It also issued an apology on its website and offered Mr Galloway the opportunity to appear on the station, which had a very small audience. Only 36 people were listening online at the time of the offending show.
The programme was also broadcast over the radio to an area in north-west London with a three-mile radius.
But Mr Galloway said he pursued the case as the station’s apology “fell short of the categorical retraction of the imputation of anti-Semitism that I insisted upon”.
Jeremy Silverstone, the head of Jcom, said he was disappointed that the case had led to the downfall of the capital’s only Jewish radio station.
But at least the world was shown to a certainty that George Galloway is absolutely not in any way the tiniest bit anti-Semitic.
Wow. What an asshole!
Galloway is a strong supporter of the Palestinians and a fervent “anti-zionist.” In 2013 he cancelled a debate with Eylon Aslan-Levy because his opponent has dual British-Israeli citizenship. It’s one thing to object to Israel’s actions against the Palestinians. However Galloway makes a point of focusing on the people: Jewish people, Israeli people, sometimes interchangeably; rather than the state. Personally, I think he’s an anti-semite as well as an anti-zionist.
So, turns out that the first impression I got from the name “Respect Party” – that it’s a bunch of authoritarians and not an actual Left-Green-Socialist party as it claims – may have been correct after all. Nothing says, “Leftist Socialism” like censorship through massive fines, amirite? If Galloway is representative of the party (he’s its most prominent member), they sound more like a Right-wing strawfigure of a Leftist party (in the vein of so-called “Communist” parties that are actually Right-wing single-party states with planned economies and state-capitalist ownership structures resembling nothing so much as feudal fascism e.g. PRC, USSR) than an actual Leftist party. I’m now even less shocked by the follow-up post noting that Galloway rakes in money from fascist states.
John, absolutely. I used to blog about how horrible the Respect Party is…then let it slide because there’s always something. But yeah, it’s horrible and always has been.