One week on from the controversy over Leanne Mohamad’s award-winning speech, ‘Birds not Bombs‘, the Independent has picked up the story: ‘London schoolgirl targeted with ‘appalling’ online abuse after winning competition with pro-Palestinian speech: Leanne Mohamed was accused of “blood libel”, antisemitism and even supporting Isis after footage went online.’
Bloggers writing on the Israellycool website called it an “Isis recruiting video” that amounted to “blood libel”. Other critics said Leanne did not give evidence for some of her claims, particularly on children’s deaths, and failed to balance her argument with information on terror attacks against Israelis.
The Wanstead High School pupil received widespread support on Twitter but was also labelled an “antisemite” and “advocate for suicide bombers”. “If the Islamist scum is old enough to be on Twitter and spout lies she’s old enough to be ridiculed,” one person wrote.
Responding to the Independent article, Israellycool appeared rattled:
Israellycool were already notorious for defaming respected pro-Palestinian activists and writers, including Richard Silverstein. The extremist Zionist bloggers crossed a line, however, when they made a 15 year old their target.
The Independent failed to mention the name of another blogger, Edgar Davidson: it was his letter accusing the Speakers Trust of ‘supporting vicious blood libels against the State of Israel” and the grovelling response from the CEO, Julie Holness, that was picked up by the Jewish Chronicle. JC then erroneously reported that Leanne Mohamad had been disqualified as a direct result of Davidson’s complaints.
I’ve changed my twitter account name from EdgarDavidson81 to Cant_fool_me. Profile name is Confront the Hate
— Confront the Hate (@Cant_fool_me) May 31, 2016
Holness has since told the press that despite the explicitly racist content of Davidson’s letter, she believed his claim that he was “a well-known academic from the Jewish community. He even gave a home address and appeared to copy in his wife,” she told The National. “I thought, ‘This is serious, the Jewish community are livid’, and I dropped everything and answered him very seriously.” Holness added that when Davidson forwarded her reply to the Jewish Chronicle, “some words had been changed… He added the words that Leanne ‘had breached competition rules’, but that didn’t happen. There are no competition rules that anyone can breach, just the basic rules of public speaking.” You can read the exchange between Davidson and Holness in full here.
The CEO’s positive response to Davidson’s letter served to embolden Leanne Mohamad’s abusers who then unleashed such a torrent of vile online abuse over the bank holiday weekend that Speakers Trust panicked and took down the YouTube video of her speech, provoking accusations of censorship. A Rabbi living in an illegal settlement on the West Bank, Mottle Wolfe, then added his own contribution with a video entitled ‘Future Suicide Bomber.’ Stung by warnings that he had been reported to the police for cyberbullying, he responded with a second video labelling the schoolgirl, little miss ISIS:
Update on little miss ISIS https://t.co/3E8qdhb7QK #LeanneMohamad #LetLeanneSpeak
— Reb Mottle (@rebmottle) June 7, 2016
We can confirm that complaints about the abusive blogs and videos have been forwarded to the police by the NSPCC.
These thugs are still on Twitter spreading their anti-Arab racism whereby the only reason one might support Palestinian human rights and international law is so called ‘Jew hatred.’
Talking about Israli Human rights violations & killings of innocent Palestinian citizens specially children is NOT antisemitism. I am glad these pro Israeli fascist thugs have been reported to NSPCC for bullying school girl Leanne Mohammad
My information indicates that “Edgar Davidson” is likely a false name. He is mone other than Brian Thomas aka “Brian of London.” I have spoken to others who say they have screennshots confirming this. If you or readers have any further infirmation on this, pls be on touch.
Sarah brown from harry’s place stirred up hate for the girl sneakily in the comment section.
There is NOTHING cool about cyber bullying a 15 year old girl! That group of Zionist bloggers are vile and dangerous. They should be held accountable for their online crimes. I hope their “itsreallycool” blog gets shut down. It is only there as a vehicle to harass and bully anyone who opposes Apartheid Israel.
after he abused me on twitter, I researched him…. his page is funded by the Israeli military
As someone who has been verbally abused by @Israellycool and labelled antisemite and other filthy names simply for supporting Palestine, I find it disgusting that this foul mouthed abuser has not had his Twitter nor Facebook pages taken down!
To verbally attack a minor child in such a disgusting way is vile and most certainly in no way JOURNALISM- what a joke.