Jamie Stern-Weiner is an independent researcher and editor for OR Books, based in Cambridge. A dual British-Israeli national, he has written extensively about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for The Nation, Jadaliyya, Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) and Le Monde diplomatique.[1]
Excluding the Forewords, Executive Summary, & Recommendations, the entire "report" runs to... 2.5 pages.
The 2.5 pages (including pictures and big pull-quotes) comprise a "Background" section and a two-paragraph "Conclusion".
The "Executive Summary" just repeats the "Recommendations".
And the "report" is bulked out with fully 16 pages devoted to titles or just left blank.
These "findings" got national media coverage but, to judge by the 2.5-paragraph "report", don't actually exist.
Mann and Mordaunt say their experience chairing the commission left them "stunned into silence".[2]
It would seem so!
Stephen Pollard hails the report as "a vital... work". He doesn't specify which of the two pages this refers to.
He adds that "there is not a word or a finding in it that will not be entirely familiar to any Jew". Alas, the last nine words are redundant.
The BBC reveals possession of high-powered electron microscope (The report, seen by the BBC).
The Telegraph, ITV, and others have referred to the so-called report as "government-backed".
But the report doesn't describe itself this way. And while Lord Mann advises the government on antisemitism, his position is "Independent" and he does not speak for the government.
Below is how Vanessa Feltz introduced her LBC item on the "report".[3]
She refers to an article in The Telegraph headlined: "Anti-Semitism 'Normalised in Middle-Class Britain'."[4]
A couple of minor, trivial problems here:
Minor, Trivial Problem 1: There is no 'government-backed report', just some recommendations commissioned and published by the Board of Deputies.
Minor, Trivial Problem 2: The 'report' did not find that antisemitism is 'normalised' in 'middle-class Britain'. That's from a Telegraph headline that appears to be quoting a misrepresentation of the 'report' by the paper’s own reporter.
See below for similar hallucinations. Again, that quote appears nowhere in the so-called 'report'.
He appeared on the BBC during Israel's 2012 assault on Gaza, introduced as a neutral-sounding Middle East expert. His former advocacy role was not disclosed. When Sacerdoti's lobbyist background was revealed, evidence of it was hurriedly scrubbed from the internet.
Contrarian sceptic Brendan O'Neill told Sky News: 'Yeah, it's a really shocking report, from what we know so far. The whole report is coming out shortly. The snippets we've seen in The Telegraph are really disturbing'.
Given the 'whole report' is barely longer than those 'snippets', shouldn't it be henceforth referred to as the Non-Government-Backed Snippet?[5]
Academic publications
Books
How to Solve the Israel-Palestine Conflict (New York: OR Books, 2016), with Norman Finkelstein and Mouin Rabbani
Chapters
‘Chapter 1. Pass-Through Organisations’, in Spinwatch, Funding Israel’s Occupation (forthcoming)
Articles
‘Palestine after the Arab Spring‘, with Norman Finkelstein and Mouin Rabbani, Insight Turkey 17.3 (Summer 2015), pp. 23-32
