Asa WinstanleyEvery podcast appearance, updated as new ones drop

Interview with Asa starts at 19:37 How did the "Israel" lobby bring down Jeremy Corbyn and stopped an anti-war, anti-imperialist progressive becoming the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom? What parallels can be drawn to the political climate of today, especially in the Swedish context? We discussed these and more with Asa Winstanley. Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist and author who writes primarily about Palestine and the Israel lobby. He lives in London. He is an associate editor with The Electronic Intifada ( http://electronicintifada.net/people/asa-winstanley ), the world’s leading Palestine news site in the English language. He is co-host of The Electronic Intifada Podcast ( https://electronicintifada.net/blog/electronic-intifada-podcast ). Subscribe to his bestselling Substack newsletter, Palestine is Still the Issue( https://asawinstanley.substack.com/ ). There you can get all his original reporting and analysis about Palestine and the world — straight to your email inbox. Hosted by: Mehmet Ali Arslan (@mumasmusic) & Fredrik Söderholm (@genietsoderholm2) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Asa Winstanley has been an associate editor and reporter with the award-winning website The Electronic Intifada for more than a decade. And he is also the co-host of their Podcast. Asa is the author of the best-selling book “Weaponizing Anti-Semitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn”, published in 2023.

When the socialist Jeremy Corbyn became the leader of the Labour Party in Britain in 2015 and mounted a grassroots campaign in 2017 to become the British Prime Minister the ruling corporate elites, along with the war industry, panicked. They conspired with the Israel lobby to mount a vicious campaign of character assassination against Corbyn and his supporters, accusing them, even if they were Jewish, of anti-Semitism. Corbyn has been a long-time champion of Palestinian rights. The media did its part to crucify Corbyn as a bigot while Labour party officials ruthlessly purged the party of Corbyn supporters. Corbyn was eventually driven out of the party in 2020 after the snap election loss against Boris Johnson. The neutralization of Corbyn is an ominous precedent. The purging of Corbyn and his supporters effectively emasculated the left within the Labour Party. This was its goal. The unholy alliance between Israel, the war industry and the corporatists raise the question of whether it is possible in Britain or the United States to reform the system from within. Joining me to discuss these issues is Asa Winstanley an associate editor and reporter with the website Electronic Intifada and the author of “Weaponizing Anti-Semitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

The election of longtime peace activist and anti-imperialist Jeremy Corbyn to the position of leader of the U.K. Labour Party inspired hope and dread across the nation. Hope from millions of ordinary people, who, for once, saw a politician that represented them, and dread from the British establishment, who feared what a radical like Corbyn could do if he were elected prime minister. Corbyn was subjected to one of history's most prolonged and intense propaganda campaigns. He has been labeled everything from a terrorist sympathizer a communist spy , and a national security threat . However, the most sustained attack on Corbyn was that he was a raving anti-Semite. We now know this was in no small part down to a coordinated smear campaign from the Israeli government and its supporters. Here to talk about the forces working in harmony to destroy Corbyn’s movement is returning guest Asa Winstanley. Asa notes how the movement to topple Corbyn started by targeting his allies. “People around Corbyn started to be picked off, one by one. And that, ultimately, just a few years later, led to Corbyn's political assassination and the movement's decapitation. It was a war of attrition,” he noted. Unfortunately, Corbyn did not see the danger and “appeasement became a knee-jerk instinctive response” from the people around him. While Asa’s work has shown how the Israeli Embassy was intimately involved in the skulduggery, the British deep state was also a key player. In 2015, a senior British Army general claimed that if Corbyn were elected, this would precipitate a military coup. Mike Pompeo, head of the CIA at the time, said that the U.S. would take measures to prevent Corbyn from reaching power. Support the show The Watchdog is 100% independent and listener-supported. We don’t take corporate ad money. We don’t have billionaire backers. Episodes like this are only possible because of you. If you value fearless journalism and critical conversations, please consider joining our community of supporters: 🔗 Support us on Patreon Together, we can keep this work going. Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times.

Israel is currently engulfed in strife, as hundreds of thousands have come out to protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial power grab. Netanyahu is attempting to overhaul the judicial system and has dismissed defense minister Yoav Gallant, a move that ignited a storm of indignation. But as returning “Watchdog” guest Asa Winstanley notes, observers should not mistake this for a liberatory movement. “The protests are not for democracy as they claim. They're for preserving the Jewish citizens of Israel's own privileges within the settler colonial entity. That's what they're for,” Winstanley told Lowkey today, adding: They're not advocating for an equal state, even of all its citizens. Even of all the Palestinian citizens of Israel who live within Palestine, not even advocating for equality for them, let alone the equality of the majority of the population between the river and the sea…they're not seeking equality.” Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist who has been writing about Palestine and the Israel lobby since 2005. He is also the author of the new book “Weaponising Anti-Semitism: How the Israel Lobby Took Down Jeremy Corbyn.” It focuses on the Corbyn era and how an effective smear campaign against him destroyed the movement that brought him to power. Nevertheless, the scale of the protests and the fact that they have so much support from among the establishment makes this something worth watching, argued Lowkey, who notes that Mossad chief David Barnea has broken protocol and allowed his agents to join the movement and publicly protest. For many, Netanyahu’s attempts to bend the judicial system to his will signal a dangerous descent into authoritarianism. Winstanley, however, is not convinced, telling Lowkey: Some are trying to kind of posit what's happening as a slip into fascism. But the fascism was always there. You don't get much more fascistic than the cleansing and displacement of three quarters of a million people simply for existing from the land that they were in!” The United Kingdom, where both Winstanley and Lowkey are from, has long collaborated with Israel, even before it was established. The Balfour Declaration, which the British government signed in 1917, paved the way for the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine. Since then, the U.K. has been a close ally of Israel, promoting its interests and defending it from criticism to this day. This collusion includes, if Winstanley’s new bombshell report is to be believed Support the show The Watchdog is 100% independent and listener-supported. We don’t take corporate ad money. We don’t have billionaire backers. Episodes like this are only possible because of you. If you value fearless journalism and critical conversations, please consider joining our community of supporters: 🔗 Support us on Patreon Together, we can keep this work going. Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times.</em

This week Lowkey is joined by Asa Winstanley, an investigative journalist living in London, who writes about Palestine and the Middle East. He hails from the south of Wales and has been visiting Palestine since 2004. He writes for the groundbreaking Palestinian news site The Electronic Intifada, where he is an associate editor, and also writes a weekly column for the Middle East Monitor. Winstanley explores the post-WW2 period of European history and reveals examples of Nazis being rehabilitated, subsumed into the U.S. machinery of empire, and dispatched as Cold Warriors. Support the show The Watchdog is 100% independent and listener-supported. We don’t take corporate ad money. We don’t have billionaire backers. Episodes like this are only possible because of you. If you value fearless journalism and critical conversations, please consider joining our community of supporters: 🔗 Support us on Patreon Together, we can keep this work going. Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times.