Right, so the moral vacuum that is former Labour MP and career Israel lobbyist Joan Ryan has popped up again announcing her brand new role, which has to be heard to be believed, it’s utterly bonkers, which is very much the same as her entire parliamentary career, which consisted of advocating for Israel full-time in any way she possibly could, though it’s a strange time to be announcing this when the public opinion of Israel is so low and when it’s so easy for someone in alternative media like me to come along and go Oh, is this what Joan Ryan is doing is it? Be a shame if I told everyone what she’s got up to in the past and how deranged her announcement about her new job, on video, actually sounds because it isn’t just about trying to extol the virtues of her job, the organisation she’s now working for, but she had to drag Corbyn into the equation as well, she couldn’t resist it, slandering him, repeating the scam of how much of an antisemite he was when he was no such thing and rather than pay any heed, let alone money to this grifter for an apartheid state, she needs to be told where to go and be consigned to the dumpster of history.
Right, so Joan Ryan, let’s refresh some memories for some people and introduce her to others who might not know who she is, because she is a proper piece of work. She is the former Labour MP for Enfield North from 1997 to 2019, barring one occurrence of losing her seat in 2010. She lost her seat incidentally, following an expenses scandal involving flipping her constituency home in Enfield for her main home in South London after using expenses to do up the constituency property, and also the year before that conspiring against then PM Gordon Brown seemingly with leadership intentions herself, which got her sacked from her then party roles. Despite losing in 2010, she stood again for 2015 to the disgust of the local Enfield Labour Party, who hadn’t forgotten about the expenses, but she got in, got re-elected and became Chair of Labour Friends of Israel shortly after which of course speaks volumes for her Israeli sensitivities in and of itself. It’s worth noting that like so many others in volved in that group and in Israel advocacy and lobbying, she’s not Jewish.
Scandal again followed shortly afterwards when in 2017 she got caught on film appearing to accept bribes for supporting the bringing down of certain MPs it was felt were not helpful to the Israeli cause, in the Al-Jazeera documentary The Lobby, which was collated through use of undercover footage, bodycams and the like to investigate the influence of the Israel Lobby on British politics. Joan Ryan was a star of the show, seen discussing the bringing down of MPs with a then Israeli embassy official called Shai Masot and a £1m pot of approved Israeli government funding to bring UK lawmakers on junkets to Israel.
This was used by her CLP to try and deselect her ahead of the 2019 General Election, she quit the Labour Party in 2019 over this in reality, but instead chose to publicly blame Jeremy Corbyn for it, claiming he was demonising and delegitimising Israel. He resignation statement included mention that Corbyn was responsible for a “culture of anti-Jewish racism and hatred for Israel” and a government led by him “would be an existential threat” to the Jewish community. So, quite the piece of work.
That she’s now gone to work for a pro-Israel group and has put out a video grifting for funds and attacking Corbyn yet again then shouldn’t surprise many. She’s carrying on with what she’s always done and if anything got worse because her video bragging about her new job is just unhinged. She said:
‘It’s almost four years now since I left the Labour Party. I left in protest at the virus of antisemitism that was being allowed to infect the Labour Party. To destroy the Labour Party and the leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, would do nothing about it, would take no action, if anything he was a perpetrator. I’m proud of the action I took, in it’s highlighting to the British public, the toxicity of this kind of politics of hate and the damage it does to democracy and to our communities. I’ve never regretted my action. We learnt some tough lessons, not least of which is that you can’t fight antisemitism unless you also fight antizionism. And that antizionism is just the latest iteration in that centuries old hatred. Standing up to antizionism and building and strengthening relations between Europe and Israel, between the UK and Israel is crucial. And I’m very proud now to be the first executive director of Elnet UK and we work to strengthen that relationship. Resigning from the Labour Party and standing up to antisemitism, that’s my legacy. And by supporting the Elnet legacy fund, you can ensure the future of Elnet’s mission, to strengthen bilateral relations between Israel and Europe. It’s crucial work. We could not do what we do without your support. Without your commitment. So thank you. Thank you for all that you do.’
Well don’t thank me too fast Joan, you aren’t gonna like what I have to say on this. Corbyn bashing, grifting, shilling for Israel and didn’t even have the decency to once acknowledge the hell they are inflicting on Palestine right now while asking for your money. She’s a one person tyre fire of bigoted idiocy. You left the Labour Party under a cloud, your own CLP couldn’t stand you. You clearly still think bashing Corbyn is a winner, it isn’t, the scam has well and truly been blown open, the cost of what we lost being measured in every failure and every lie that comes out of Keir Starmer’s regime, that replaced it, far from for the better. That you call Corbyn a perpetrator of antisemitism has me on one hand asking what did he say himself that was directly antisemitic and two is clearly slander. But if you really need a lesson on what Corbyn has done to fight antisemitism, how about that time before he became an MP where he stopped then Islington Council leader Margaret Hodge from levelling a Jewish Cemetery for development? Or that time he organised a counter demonstration to Neo-nazi march through Wood Green? Or when he led commemorations on the anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street, or him challenging David Cameron at PMQs to do more on antisemitism? Here’s a list of 50 examples Joan, of Jeremy Corbyn opposing antisemitism. Here’s another 10 examples of what he did in Labour to combat and deal with antisemitism as commented on by the EHRC, which clearly you must have missed too, or just wilfully ignored.
Now she’s selling us the vision that criticising Israel is racist in and of itself, just as the US have symbolically passed a resolution in the House of Representatives over this. How many Jewish people will have been incensed by you, the non-Jewish sellout in your words here? I’m not Jewish and I’m incensed, you cannot have a state placed above criticism especially given the atrocities it is committing right now, ethnic cleansing of Gaza, but of course you can, you’re now being paid to! Elnet UK, I thought they made hairspray! Well it’s not that Elnet obviously, this one is all about, as Ryan said, strengthening ties between Europe and Israel, which is the opposite that should be happening right now, Europe should be placing embargoes on the place until it stops trying to flatten Gaza entirely, stops breaking international law and starts being held to account for that. Joan Ryan, by what she said in her video, by being the head honcho for this organisation shows what it is really about. It is Labour Friends of Israel PLC, complete with more weaponisation of antisemitism as if we don’t already see enough of that, from MPs advocating for the Lobby, to all manner of groups already in existence from the Board of Deputies, to the Jewish Labour Network, the Jewish Labour Movement, the Community Security Trust and more.
Fundamentally though what I get from this story is that Joan Ryan is the sort of person who takes a job from committers of genocide to rescue their image and not challenge them. That’s the sort of MP she was as well. If I was loking for an advocate to rescue my image she’d be the last person I looked at, but I don’t suppose Israel these days, given what they’re doing in Gaza, have many options these days.
Thanks for watching, I hope you found this video useful, please like, share and subscribe if you did, more content out daily, Please do have your say on this story in the comments below and be part of the conversation. Meanwhile, here’s a video recommendation where the national treasure and very definitely Jewish author Michael Rosen has long been a Corbyn supporter and has suffered the same attacks over antisemitism that many of the rest of us have, Jew and non Jew alike, but this was still happening to him as recently as last August, accused of having driven a man to his death even and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.