WhatsApp messages show talk of wiping Israel off the map, support for the Iranian regime and claims that anti-Jewish hostility is understandable

Sophus Magill, a Green Party parish councillor, created the private WhatsApp group where the messages were shared

Green Party activists claimed British Jews were a “weapon” of Israel and described hostility towards Jews as “understandable”, leaked messages show.

Participants in a private WhatsApp group used by Green members discussed “killing Zionists” and described the majority of Israeli Jews as “genociders”. Separate comments on the party’s conference forum defended “violent resistance” and “armed struggle” by Palestinians.

The group, Greens Against Imperialism, was created by Sophus Magill, a Green Party parish councillor in Wootton Bridge on the Isle of Wight.

During one discussion, Magill wrote that “Zionism has to go”, adding: “The only solution is one equal state.” When another participant asked whether that meant wanting Israel “wiped off the map, in essence?”, Magill replied: “Yes, I would like that.”

He later said he did not think it was violent to want “an illegitimate apartheid state gone from all maps”, comparing Israel to Rhodesia. Magill said that Israeli citizens who were not war criminals and agreed to coexist peacefully with Palestinians had a right to live there.

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Another group member wrote: “I think a lot of British Jews have been heavily exposed to the propoganda [sic].” They added: “British Jews are a brilliant weapon for the Israeli state to help with the use of antisemitism as a justification in the UK…”

The group was used by members and activists to discuss party campaigning, conference motions and foreign policy. The messages threaten to reignite a row over antisemitism in the party.

One participant using the initials “AT” described Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as “by definition part of a national liberation movement”. The account wrote on June 16: “They are part of the Islamic Revolution of Iran. They liberated themselves from a US puppet regime of the Shah in 1979. The IRGC were one of the organisations leading that.”

AT also claimed that protests against the Iranian regime this year “were instigated and armed by the Americans and the Zionists”.

The Times understands AT is Ashley Tubb, who stood for election to the Green Party’s campaigns committee last year. Evidence linking the account to Tubb included a Word document uploaded to the WhatsApp group on June 23 whose metadata named “Tubb, Ashley” as the last person to modify it. In a separate Whatsapp group the number appeared alongside the name “Ash Tubb”.

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The Jewish Chronicle had previously identified AT as Tubb in a report about opposition to banning the IRGC and published a response from Tubb defending their opposition to the measure. When approached by The Times the account did not deny being Tubb or making the comments.

The June comments predated the IRGC’s formal designation as a threat to the state on July 17 under new powers. It is not suggested that the comments were illegal.

Another participant wrote: “I suppose an extreme anti-zionist could mean that you support killing Zionists. But that is not specifically racist…” In the same message, they said that “lumping all Jews in with the majority of Israeli Jews as Genociders” was “wrong” but that such anti-Jewish hostility was “understandable”.

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David Taylor, the Labour MP for Hemel Hempstead, said the comments were “sickening” and “just go to show how extreme the Green Party has become”. He added: “The Greens must identify these members immediately, expel them from the party and report them to the police.”

Lord Walney, the government’s former extremism tsar, added: “This sinister justification of political violence from Green Party activists puts British Jews in increased danger of attack, and highlights the virulent antisemitism infecting much of the so-called progressive left in the UK. If the Green Party continues to deny the extremism they are stoking, they should be treated in the same way as far right parties who excuse or promote violence.”

The private group also included members with formal roles inside the party and its affiliated groups.

Animah Kosai, who is the membership officer of Global Majority Greens, an official Green Party special interest group that includes Mothin Ali, the party’s deputy leader, invited members of Greens Against Imperialism to join a Global Majority Greens review of conference motions.

Animah Kosai

She wrote: “I know I’ve asked this before — who wants to join the GMG & Allies review of the motions. Basically it’s for this group too, but given that GMG is a formal special interest group, we are happy to provide cover.” Kosai also promoted the “Zionism is Racism” motion in the group and later referred to it as “our motion”. 

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At least one member of the WhatsApp group eventually left because of its atmosphere. They wrote: “I’m now having to leave this group for my own sanity … I cannot handle the amount of energy and anger within this WhatsApp group.”

Magill, Tubb and Kosai were all approached for comment. A spokesperson for the Green Party said: “We do not comment on internal party forums or discussions on WhatsApp groups that are not official party group channels.”

Inside the Green Party group chats that discussed ‘killing Zionists’

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The mosque is in danger

The toxic libel by Palestinian Muslim extremists that “Al-Aqsa Mosque is in danger,” and Jews are to blame, has been used to incite antisemitic violence for over a century.

So, it’s not surprising that Hamas leaders named their Oct. 7 invasion and massacre in southern Israel “Al-Aqsa Flood,” creating the false rationale that the mass murder, rape, torture and mutilation on that day was an act of defense against a putative Israeli scheme to destroy or take-over the mosque.

One of the earliest uses of this libel – which is used to this day by Palestinian leaders to fuel violence – took place in the city of Hebron, Judaism’s second holiest city, in 1929.

Background

As CAMERA previously documented, in September 1928, a small group of Jews erected a mechitza (a divider to separate men and women during prayers) for Yom Kippur prayers at the Western Wall. The British dismantled the divider, but Haj Amin al Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and future Nazi collaborator, used the incident as a pretext to incite Muslims, accusing Jews of attempting to seize their holy sites, including the al Aqsa Mosque.

A propaganda campaign calling for jihad against the Jews resulted in the frequent attacks on Jews worshipping at the Wall and culminated in widespread, deadly riots across Palestine in August 1929.

Hebron Massacre

August 15, 1929 was Tisha B’Av, the day on which Jews commemorate the destruction of the Holy Temple, as well as other Jewish tragedies which took place on that date in the Hebrew calendar. Thousands of Jews marched to the Wall, peacefully protesting British restrictions on Jewish prayer there, and to reaffirm their Jewish connection to the holy site.

On August 17, a Jewish boy was killed by Arabs, in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Bukharan, who were inflamed by antisemitic sermons.

According to contemporaneous reports, including in the Davar newspaper of August 20, 1929, anti-Jewish incitement was rampant, especially in Jerusalem and Hebron. Rumors were spread that Jews had cursed Islam and intended to take over their holy places, while Muslims were told that it was their duty to take revenge. “Defend the Holy Places,” became the battle cry.

On August 23, more than 1,000 Arabs launched attacks on Jews throughout Jerusalem. Forty-seven people were killed. This was followed by widespread attacks on Jews throughout Palestine. The British forbade Jews to organise armed self-defense units and within several days, 133 Jews had been killed and 339 wounded.

According to Dutch-Canadian journalist Pierre Van Passen who was in Palestine at the time, fabricated pictures of Muslim holy sites in ruins were handed out to Hebron Arabs as they were leaving their mosques on Friday, August 23. The captions on the pictures claimed that the Dome of the Rock was bombed by the Zionists.

That evening, armed Arabs broke into the Yeshiva and murdered the lone student they found. The following day, an Arab mob wielding knives, axes, and iron bars destroyed the Yeshiva and murdered the rest of the students there. A delegation of Jewish residents on their way to the police station was lynched by an Arab mob. The mob then proceeded to Hebron, where Jews who had lived peacefully with their Arab neighbors for years.

Elhanan Zelig Roch, Victim of the 1929 Hebron Massacre, via Wikimedia Commons

The violence escalated, and mobs went door to door screaming, “Kill the Jews,” breaking into Jewish houses and torturing, castrating, raping and murdering the inhabitants – a deadly orgy of libel-fueled Palestinian violence foreshadowing the antisemitic barbarism we’d see – albeit on a much larger scale – on Oct. 7 2023.

Much like the Hebron rioters of 1929 praised Allah as they slaughtered men, women, and children, wrote Yardena Schwartz, author of “Ghosts of a Holy War”, so too did Hamas fighters, in footage they uploaded to social media.

In total, sixty-seven Jews in Hebron were killed and 60 were wounded over a two-hour period, while dozens more Jews were murdered in Jerusalem and in other cities. The Jewish community in Hebron – where Jews had lived since biblical times – was destroyed.

The Guardian

An Aug. 4 report at the outlet by Julian Borger (“Jerusalem’s most important Muslim religious site facing ‘imminent’ threat of Israeli takeover, says Jordan”) doesn’t merely legitimise the latest propaganda by Amman about the mosque being in danger.  It also uses the incendiary language of extremists in the journalist’s own voice:

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Though the article later acknowledges that the Temple Mount is Judaism’s holiest site, which an editor’s note suggests came as the result of a complaint, it’s remarkable – even by Guardian standards – that they used the term “stormed” and “incursion” to describe what were peaceful Jewish visits to the Temple Mount/Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

Such terms are typically used by PA-controlled and terrorist-friendly ‘news‘ sites to convey the dangerous lie that Jews are interlopers at the Temple Mount and that the mosque is in danger.

The article then reaches what we can confidently describe as a new low for the outlet in its coverage of Jerusalem:

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It seems almost certain that the journalist is referring to the 1929 Hebron riots, as, though there were other periods of violence during the period between the wars, that was the only major incident that involved the alleged “infringement” by Jews on the Temple Mount.

While nothing much shocks us anymore about the Guardian’s institutional hostility to Israel and Jews, it’s important to stress that, until now, we’ve never previously encountered an inversion of the 1929 Palestinian pogrom that frames Jewish victims as the culprits at any other British outlet.  They effectively endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory that resulted in the barbaric slaughter of Jewish civilians in Hebron – a libel that continues to fuel jihadist violence against Jews to this day.

There is literally no moral line within their pathological antizionist campaign that the Guardian won’t cross.

Guardian suggests 1929 Hebron massacre was the fault of 'Jewish extremists' - CAMERACAMERA

Its founding charter called only for the elimination of Israel.

If this conflict had always been about creating a Palestinian state, why wasn't Jordan's control of the West Bank or Egypt's control of Gaza considered occupation?

Sometimes history asks uncomfortable questions.

https://x.com/EllaTravelsLove/status/2086828862910939614?s=20

In Montenegro , two Israeli teens say they were attacked by a large group of people while on vacation.

The two 18-year-olds befriended a man at a casino. The man asked where they were from, and when they answered "Israel", the man's behavior shifted.

After deciding to leave, a group of about 15 people ambushed them. They ran and separated, one hiding in a private yard for about two and a half hours, while the other was caught and kicked by the mob, eventually escaping to his hotel.

One word made a man and a whole group decide it was OK to attack them. They did not need to say anything more, nor did the man need to hear any more. This is unacceptable.

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https://x.com/HenMazzig/status/2086909227231047898?s=20