UPDATE 05/11/23: Following correspondence from Katy Colley, this article, which previously stated that she was the chairperson of her local branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, has been updated to reflect her statement that she no longer holds that position, having stepped down at the end of 2022.
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Holding a placard specifically identifying herself as a Jew supporting the Palestinians, this protester stood out amongst the massive crowd of people who joined a “pro-Palestinian” demonstration in the heart of London on Saturday.
There’s nothing the media like more than to find those few Jews who will vocally castigate Israel and Sky News correspondent Adele Robinson couldn’t help herself.
“You’re a Jewish lady who has come down from Hastings,” Robinson said, introducing Katy Colley on live TV.
“What we are seeing today is undoubtedly a genocide in Gaza,” said Colley followed by accusations against Israel of “collective punishment,” “war crimes” and the charge that “the root of this violence is occupation.”
She referred to Israel as a “settler colonial state imposing apartheid and oppression on an indigenous people” in an interview that was later repackaged for the Sky News website.
But Katy Colley is hardly representative of Jewish opinion in the UK where some 71% of the Jewish community have family living in Israel and almost 90% have visited the country at least once according to a recent poll. Another poll published in 2015 found that Israel plays a central role for British Jews, with 93% saying the Jewish state plays a “central,” “important” or “some” role in their Jewish identity, and 90% supporting Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.
Colley may have succeeded in getting on live television by virtue of self-identifying as a Jew but she isn’t just “a Jewish lady” from Hastings in the south of England. She also used to be the chairperson of the Hastings and Rye branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign – an organization that is a leader and chief proponent of BDS and anti-Israel campaigns in the UK, which frequently invoke the “apartheid” libel.
At an anti-Israel demo in London, @SkyNews interviews "a Jewish lady who has traveled down from Hastings."
What @SkyNewsAdele didn't say is that Katy Colley, is chair of the Hastings branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign – a vicious anti-Israel org.
She's a seasoned… https://t.co/Az4s3GuuTw
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) October 14, 2023
Colley wasn’t simply a concerned member of the public plucked out of the crowd. She was interviewed “as a Jew” instead of a dedicated activist on behalf of a viciously anti-Israel organization.
Sky News owes its viewers an explanation as to why someone who represents such a tiny fringe of the UK Jewish community is worthy of this amount of attention.
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