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‘Anti-Israel’ peace campaigner on panel that found against abused solicitor Mark Lewis
A panel fined Mr Lewis for sending 'offensive' messages in response to a three-year hate campaign against him
December 22, 2018 17:00
A panel fined Mr Lewis for sending 'offensive' messages in response to a three-year hate campaign against him
December 22, 2018 17:00A member of a panel that fined leading Jewish lawyer Mark Lewis for sending “offensive” messages in response to a three-year hate campaign against him has been found to have a history of making anti-Israel comments.
Millius Palayiwa was on the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) panel that ruled Mr Lewis should be fined £2,500 and ordered to pay £10,000 in costs for sending death-wish messages to those who were abusing him, which included neo-Nazis.
An investigation has shown Mr Palayiwa gave a speech in March 2009 to the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies in which he picked out Israel for criticism.
He said: “Will all the waters of the oceans wash off the blood from the hands of the USA, the UK and Israel? Here I am thinking of Guantanamo, Iraq, Afghanistan and Gaza.”
In 2015, when speaking at the Tantur Ecumenical Institute, he asked: "How can Jews, who themselves were victims of racial hatred, treat Palestinians in the way they do?”
He added: “For me, the future lies in peace and reconciliation. This would be achievable through the establishment of a secular, pluralistic democracy that includes all of Palestine/Israel based on justice, fairness and equality of all its citizens.”
Mr Palayiwa, who studied law at Oxford University, has been a member of the SDT tribunal since 2009.
During the hearing, Mr Palayiwa and the rest of the panel heard how Mr Lewis was subjected to “thousands” of antisemitic messages from neo-Nazis.
Some of the messages included death threats and Mr Lewis, who has worked with UK Lawyers for Israel and is best known for representing phone hacking victims, had to increase his personal security as a result.
Trolls also mocked Mr Lewis’s multiple sclerosis and superimposed an image of his face on photographs of a crematorium at Auschwitz.
His attackers included Alison Chabloz, who received a two-year suspended sentence in August after being convicted of posting “grossly offensive” songs mocking Jews who died in the Shoah.
The tribunal found that Mr Lewis’s response — a small number of “offensive and profane” messages posted on Twitter and Facebook, including one in which he “‘wished death” on some of those who were attacking him — merited punishment.
Paul Charney, chair of the Zionist Federation of the UK and Ireland, said: “The existence of the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal is an important part of what keeps the industry just and fair. But for a member of that tribunal that passed judgment over a well-known advocate for Israel to have such […] anti-Israel views […] is outrageous and should be fully condemned. This certainly does not lead to justice."
Mr Charney called on the tribunal to reconsider its appointments and "ensure that this case is re-tested against a backdrop of fairness, rather than merits tested on political bias”.
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