EXCLUSIVE Firm calls police on protestors branded ‘Palestine idiots’

_{Recall recall recall!}

A law firm which called the police on pro-Palestine demonstrators has distanced itself from an email calling them “idiots” which was accidentally sent to the whole office.

Activists appeared in the lobby of JMW Solicitors’ Manchester office as part of a city-wide demonstration understood to have been organised against Barclays Bank, which shares premises at 3 Hardman Street with a number of other businesses including the firm.

Groups such as the Palestine Solidarity Campaign have called for a boycott of Barclays because it “provides more than £3 billion in loans and underwriting to companies whose weapons, components, and military technology have been used in Israel’s armed violence against Palestinians”.

Although no damage was reported, the protest on 26 January was sufficiently disruptive that JMW called the authorities.

A spokesperson for the Greater Manchester Police told ROF that "officers attended reports of a protest at a premises on Hardman Street" at just before 9am, but when they arrived they "discovered that the group had left and moved on".

“Community tensions are high”, said Rebecca Young, the head of JMW’s media law team, but they were raised even higher at JMW when one of its staff accidentally sent an unsympathetic email about the protestors to the entire office.

The fat-fingered lawyer, whom ROF is not naming, slipped up when an employee working from home asked what was causing the commotion.

“A load of Palestine idiots in the foyer!” replied the lawyer. “One muppet with a megaphone the irony being you couldn’t even tell what he was saying!”

Even mild language risks being inflammatory when it comes to the Israel/Palestine conflict, and one of the email’s unintended recipients told ROF that dismissing the protestors as idiots and a muppet had “managed to upset a lot of colleagues”.

When ROF asked JMW for comment, its response from Young included threats to sue this reporter and RollOnFriday. However, the partner also said, “we are disappointed that this incident ever occurred and as a firm we are taking it very seriously. The Email does not express a view representative of our firm, or our people".

She continued, “The Email does not meet the firm’s expectations of how we expect our people to engage with one another or when representing the firm”, and said it would be “quite wrong... to suggest in any shape or form that this firm condones the conduct in question".

JMW isn't the first firm to trip over that pesky reply-all button. It has previously ensnared Linklaters lads who copied a partner into their football banter, a recruiter who failed to blind copy candidates, and Bond Dickinson when it included a job applicant in a discussion about his rejection.

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Comments

Most protestors are idiots - often bored rich kids

It's difficult to know which to dislike more - the aggressive, anti-democratic protestors, or the aggressive, demonstrably [redacted] JMW.

Make Palestine Great Again

The email, although sent in error, seems to be quite an accurate description of the protesters

RoF really scraping the barrel on a slow news day. Non-story.

Oh come on, RoF, why redact my comment? A quick perusal of your own archive on the firm would disclose a clear defence of substantial truth.

Pro-Palestine protestors are muppets and idiots. JMW isn't wrong.

How is a pro-Palestine or more likely a pro ceasefire less murder protest anti-democratic?

Why is the author of the email not being published?

@what: perhaps you've not been keeping up with current events in Parliament. Plus, the chant that these protestors have been using, which I shall not repeat, calls for the annihilation of a democratic state (Israel).

Slow news day at RoF towers...

"How is a pro-Palestine or more likely a pro ceasefire less murder protest anti-democratic?" - Yes, how could one possibly construe a protest in favour of the side of a conflict which is championed by a theocratic terrorist group, which oppresses women, murders homosexuals, openly calls for the genocide of its neighbour, and hasn't held an election since first coming to power almost two decades ago, as being in any way anti-democratic? It's a real puzzler.

Not really sure what there is for JMW to investigate. The people in question were protesting about Palestine, and were making it quite clear that they were idiots. There being little reason to imagine that honking slogans in the reception of a Manchester based firm of solicitors would have any material impact on the issue they alleged to be concerned about, therefore making that activity a complete waste of their time and of everyone affected. Palestine + Idiots = Palestine Idiots. Give the sender a raise and a fast-track to management already, they've clearly got something about them.

For real though, does anyone really think that Gazans would be less happy if we just bused them all off to Jordan and handed them $10k and a passport as they passed over the border? It'd cost like a couple of years of UNRWA's running costs, which we can wind up at the same time to help find the cash. Then let Israel have the Gaza strip and we can all just forget about the whole thing ever existing. We're forever being told what a miserable destitute place it is, and how the people in it are the world's saddest and most oppressed on earth. Do we seriously believe that, after a year or two, they wouldn't be much happier somewhere nicer?

Was it the infamous ‘Yappy Dog’ who sent the email or was that where the threat to sue came from?

Credit to JMW's PR team where it's due, sprinkling this section with 'slow news day' comments is preferable to the Streisand effect of carrying out mad threats to sue.

If only s/he had projected it on to the side of Big Ben instead.

@9:38 Or maybe more than one person thinks that a slightly embarrassing “Reply All” isn’t really news, and that it’s distasteful to use the Israel/Palestine conflict as click-bait because it leads to the kind of angry comments that appear above.

the amount of zionist apologists and flat out reactionaries in the comments section... lawyers siding with oppression and disparaging demonstrators , smh,

The SRA may be interested in investigating Young's threats to sue RollOnFriday's reporter and RollOnFriday...please send them the information in order that they can perform their function.

"the amount of zionist apologists" - I'm not apologetic about being a Zionist. To be a Zionist is to believe that Israel has a right to exist. That's what the word means. It's what most people believe. 'Anti-Zionism' is a fringe position held by racists who don't think that Jewish People are entitled to a nation. If you aren't a Zionist then you need to ask yourself some hard questions about why.

@10.10 - What about Palestinians right to exist and have a state? Israel's government (and far too many Israelis) are determined to wipe them all out. Just to be clear, I do think Israel has a right to exist in peace though.

The days when you could get away with that dishonest ethno-nationalist nonsense as a cover for blatant wholesale war crimes and genocide are most definitely coming to an end Anon 10:10. There is only so much decent people can stomach.

@ Roscoe P. Coltrane

Yes, the SRA are definitely going to be interested in a legitimate request not to use information leaked in breach of a person’s employment contract. I’m sure they will get right on this most important case.

After that they can investigate the billable hours being wasted by people reading this “news”, which I think we can all agree is the real crime here.

Interesting to note that when the police arrived they "discovered that the group had left and moved on". I was wondering if they might’ve left but not moved on. Or equally, whether they had moved on but had not in fact left. Glad it was confirmed that they had both left and moved on, leaving us in no doubt about their whereabouts and movements. Thank you for reading this. It’s a slow Friday.

@LondonLife - What about it? Palestinians existed with no fighting on 06 October, with nobody trying to "wipe them out", and can have that again if they return the hostages they took while murdering 1,200 of their neighbours (and if they stop their constant rocket attacks on civilians, the naval blockade can go too!). Likewise, Palestinians can have statehood as soon as they are seriously interested in it. If you know the history of the region then you will know that Palestinians rejected a two-state solution in 1947 and have been turning it down ever since. In most recent times, the refusal has been because they were unwilling to recognise Israel as a state in its own right as part of the bargain (i.e. they wanted to be recognised as a state, but to keep calling Israel illegitimate). Peace is available as soon as Palestinians can accept the fact of having Jewish people as legitimate neighbours.

@LondonLife - for those who aren't aware of how many times Palestinians have declined the offer of statehood, a potted history is available here: https://besacenter.org/palestinian-rejectionism/ or even over at this article here: https://www.camera.org/article/palestinians-rejected-statehood-three-times-claim-frustration-with-israel/ which was written way back in 2011 when tempers were somewhat cooler.

I am quite sure that Israel has committed crimes in its war against Gaza, and I would as an Israeli and Jew describe the situation in the city of Hebron as a form of apartheid. I am against the civilian settlements of the West Bank. I am not going to say Israel is always right: often it is wrong.

When Hamas tells you they want to commit a pogrom "again and again and again" it is indeed a luxury peculiar to Gentiles living 2,000 miles away from both river and sea to be able to shrug it off, from a standpoint which is ignorant even of which river and what sea.

A policy of kneejerk ceasefire is a policy of "mowing the lawn". More rockets, more hostages, dead Palestinian children every two or three years. Unsustainable ceasefires leave the Islamic State in place. An Islamic State in which one in 10 of the 500,000 adult males is a combat trained terrorist; where hospitals, mosques and schools are used to store weapons, and where the only major export is rocket fire, subsidised by the world's most ridiculous aid budget. The only way out of this mess is the destruction of the rule of Hamas over 2 million people, and the reinvention somehow of a Palestinian polity in which national identity is not wrapped up in a death cult of "martyrdom", and anathema to peaceful coexistence as "collaboration"

I was most chilled on 7 October not by the pogrom, the rapes, beheadings, the murder, and the hostage taking. As a Jew I always knew hate is my heritage and that of my children.

What saddened me was the sight of ordinary Gazans (and Londoners) celebrating in the streets and abusing hostages. Paunch bellied civilian Gazan men were captured on Kibbutz Be'eri CCTV looting, Hostages were held in schools in full view of Palestinian civilians. Civilians recaptured escaped hostages and returned them to Hamas. A Palestinian Centre for Policy Survey and Research showed a majority of Gazans supported the pogrom and even more in the West Bank. And that saddened me, because it narrowed the scope for a political solution and increased the amount of violence and destruction that achieving legitimate military targets required. It meant raiding hospitals and schools permeated by terror. It meant a lot of Gazans were necessarily, lawfully, and with particular regrets for the innocent children and babies, going to die.

"The days when you could get away with that dishonest ethno-nationalist nonsense as a cover for blatant wholesale war crimes and genocide are most definitely coming to an end Anon 10:10" - In which I'm supposed to think that 'Palestine for the Palestinians' is somehow not ethno-nationalism; that the murder of 1,200 civilians in cold blood, and the continued holding of 150+ others (including infant children) as hostage bargaining chips in underground bunkers isn't the egregious war crime; and that the openly genocidal terrorist organisation, Hamas, can legitimately complain about 'genocide' here after its murder spree on 06 October. But sure, let's have a ceasefire now, and then we can talk about how much free stuff we need to give terrorists before they let the hostages go home. That's the Right Side Of History to be on.

Heh at a firm being crass enough to try and SLAPP RoF.

Jamie, you should notify the SRA. Or get Dan Niedle onto them…

Whoever is moderating these messages is a cuck and couldn’t make it as a solicitor

And they say Lindsay Hoyle has it tough

"Whoever is moderating these messages is a cuck and couldn’t make it as a solicitor" - on balance though that does mean that they are probably happier than the people who did make it as solicitors and are obliged to sleep with their own wives.

Spotty Lizard “It's difficult to know which to dislike more - the aggressive, anti-democratic protestors, or the aggressive, demonstrably [redacted] JMW. ”

Why the redaction? Couldn’t be that you were being antisemitic could it? Terrible you can’t say antisemetic things without being called an antisemite these days, eh?

You know a law firm is in a happy, confident place when it threatens to sue the press over a small, jokey little story

No spotty lizard wasn’t, 14:20, it was a claim about the firm that needed more justification.

Thanks Jamie!

But don't you mean "it was a claim about the firm that [redacted]"?

I don't think it's unreasonable to call someone who aggressively intrudes on your office premises an "idiot".

So a bunch of noisy disruptive strangers push their way into the reception of a privately owned building and someone has the temerity to call them idiots. Shocking. Obviously anyone and everyone with nothing better to do should be allowed to go anywhere they like including on to private premises and disrupt those who have paid for the privilege of being there to be able to actually work, and work without distraction. How dare anyone ever call these noble souls idiots. The bigot.