Hoffman Exposes Anti-Israel Judge

In January 2009 during Israel's Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, seven people broke into a factory in Brighton, England, and caused £180,000 of damage, later confessing to their crime.

But this week, after their trial, they walked free. The factory was exporting military equipment to Israel, and their defence was that although they had committed a crime,it was justified as they were doing so in order to prevent the greater offence of Israeli 'war crimes'.

The judge, George Bathurst-Norman, said "You may well think that hell on earth woud not be an understatement of what the Gazans suffered in that time." He was born in Arab Jaffa and was brought out of retirement to try this case. The local MP Caroline Lucas supported the defendants, claiming that "all democratic paths had been exhausted" before they destroyed the factory. Lucas had previously blamed Israel for the Mumbai massacre, and supports boycotts of Israeli products. More on the judge's bias on EoZ blog.

Yet again Israel is denied it's right to self-defence, this time because of corruption in British courts. As Robin Shepherd puts it:

"Bigotry against the Jewish state is now so entrenched in contemporary British society that juries have begun to acquit criminals merely if they can show they acted against Israeli interests. No other defence is necessary."

Now Jonathan Hoffman has fisked the evidence, the 87 page transcript of the judge's summing-up of the case - comments he made to the jury before they decided to acquit the defendants. Through a combinaton of the omission and distortion of facts, blatant lies, and antisemitic analogies, the judge succeeded in manipulating the jury with his demonisation of Israel. Hoffman observes that Bathurst-Norman was more a member of the defence's legal team than the judge, and this is no exaggeration. Read Hoffman's brilliant piece in it's entirety; that the biased, hate-filled rantings that he examines come from a judge is almost beyond belief.

On the whole affair, Melanie Phillips concludes: 

"for a judge to abuse the task of summing up evidence to a jury by turning it into a platform for his own personal prejudice is startling even by the standards of Britain's degraded and vicious Judeophobic public discourse." 

"If the senior judiciary does not institute action against this judge for such a gross abuse of his position, we shall have to conclude that they too see nothing wrong with it - and thus have abandoned all claim to objectivity, fairness or due process in the justice system. We shall have to conclude that, for the English judiciary, there is now one law for the gentiles and another law for the Jews."

Hoffman calls for action: 

"The bottom line is simple. Judge Bathurst-Norman behaved more like the Defence Counsel than the neutral Officer of the Court that he was supposed to be. The role of a Judge - far from advancing his own political agenda - is to clarify points of law to the lay members of the Jury. Bathurst-Norman's comments reveal that he has an extreme anti-Israel agenda. This case must therefore be declared a mistrial and retired under a neutral Judge. And Bathurst-Norman should be prevented from ever presiding over such a case again."

"Please complain to the Office for Judicial Complaints here. [Use the above quotes from Hoffman and Phillips to help form your argument]. The case is R vs Robert Nicholls and others at Lewes, case number t20097131. Please also ask your MP to write to the Justice Minister and Lord Chancellor, Ken Clarke."