BBC producer shares claim Charlie Kirk’s widow was ‘Zionist handler’
EXCLUSIVE: Jayne Egerton has since removed herself as an admin on the Facebook page 'Actual Gender Critical Left'
A BBC Radio 4 producer shared a social media post on a group she moderated accusing the wife of murdered political activist Charlie Kirk of being his “Zionist handler”.
Jayne (also Jane) Egerton works with Laurie Taylor on ‘The Long View‘, a series in which stories from the past are compared to current events. She has reportedly been a radio producer with the BBC for more than 30 years.
She is part of the 2.3k member, female-only Facebook group ‘Actual Gender Critical Left’ and was, until last week ago, an admin on the group, responsible for approving content.
The group, which has now made itself ‘private’, describes itself as “Open to all persons of the female sex, including transmen and non-binary, detransitioned and reidentified women” which opposes “all alliances, collaboration, and coordination with organisations of the religious right or white nationalist/xenophobic right.”
In one of a series of troubling posts shared over several months, Egerton shared tweets by radical feminist activist Sasha S. Graham, who goes by the social media handle ‘@SeparatistSista’.
Egerton appears to have removed herself as an admin on the group after Jewish News contacted the BBC for comment last week.
In July, she shared a piece on the group called “Debunked: A reckoning with Zionist charges in contemporary left discourse”, with the writers of the piece saying they had been “shocked to see the amount of people defending Israel in the name of feminism” and that they intended to “arm anti-zionist feminist with a useful toolkit of information”. Egerton described the piece as “impressive…deserves wide circulation”.
Earlier this week, she shared a speech by Rahila Gupta, Chair of Southall Black Sisters, referencing a speech at feminist conference FiLiA in Brighton.
Above the post, Egerton writes: “Setting the record straight” before sharing video footage of Gupta saying: “This conference is taking place in the shadow of a genocide. As a feminist, my conscience will not allow me to end this talk without mentioning the unspeakable suffering of our Palestinian sisters and their children who account for over 70% of the war dead.
“As a feminist who has campaigned against religious fundamentalism, I will take no lectures about the evil of Hamas. Nor will I allow that evil to eclipse the evil of the fascist government that is running Israel.”
“The original charter of Netanyahu’s Likud party declared that there will be only Israeli sovereignty between the river and the sea. I say, there must also be a Palestinian state between the river and the sea. Sisters, stand with me. Free, free Palestine.”
The Facebook group also includes posts on Israel and ‘pinkwashing’, (referencing the alleged use of LGBTQ+ rights to promote a positive image of the Jewish state and distract from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), a post on Harry Potter author JK Rowling, entitled “Feminism, Zionism and the Death of Truth” and discussions comparing Israel to Nazi Germany and referencing “ethnic cleansing”.
In a further post, Egerton platforms the author of a report on “femi-genocide” in Gaza, adding: “She says the scale and nature of the crimes inflicted on Palestinian women and girls by Israeli forces are so extreme that existing concepts in legal and criminal frameworks can no longer adequately describe or capture them.”
Egerton, together with Thinking Allowed co-producer Laurie Taylor, received an award from The British Sociological Association for her work in 2019.
A BBC spokesperson said: “We take allegations of breaches of our social media guidance very seriously. We do not comment on individual staff matters, however, if we find breaches we take the appropriate action.”
Jewish News approached Jayne Egerton for comment on Friday but received no response.
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