Remember Lauren Booth?

by Hugh Fitzgerald

Remember Lauren Booth? Of course you do. The one who declared that Gaza was the “largest concentration camp in the world” and later was photographed in a well-stocked grocery store in that same “concentration camp”? She’s the dozy bint, or ditzy broad, the sister of Cherie Blair, Q.C., Tony’s wife. While her sister took silk, Lauren Booth took up the Palestinian cause, became a Muslim, traded on that conversion to provide her with a series of well-paid positions in Muslim-related jobs – which for some reason she kept losing nonetheless – as well as becoming the trustee, along with her husband, of a “charity” she co-founded called Peacetrail. Alas for Lauren, she and her husband were then disqualified from holding any trustee positions, after the Charity Commission could not account for about half of Peacetrail’s income.

In 1997, Lauren Booth began writing the column “About Town” for the London Evening Standard. Two years later, she began writing about politics for the New Statesman, continuing there until 2003. She also became a columnist and feature writer for The Mail on Sunday.

The longest Lauren Booth has worked anywhere is four years. There appears, by the way, to be a gap in her resume, between 2003, when she left the New Statesman, and 2006, when she became a presenter on the UK’s Islam Channel. What gives?

In 2006, she appeared as a contestant on a reality show on ITV called I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!. Meanwhile, from 2006 to 2008 she hosted a program called In Focus on that Islam Channel in the UK. She has also began in 2008 to work with Iran’s state-owned Press TV, on a show entitled Between The Headlines. From 2010 to 2012 she also worked on shows called Remember Palestine and Diaspora.

What a whirlwind of different jobs! A journalist at three different newspapers. A TV reality show contestant (once). A presenter on the UK’s Islam Channel, but for only two years before she ws apparently let go. Then, having left that channel, she starts what has been called a “long association” — that is, all of four years — with the Islamic Republic’s Press TV. She presented Remember Palestine — it’s by far her favorite subject — and Diaspora, not the Jewish one, of course, but the “Palestinian” one. Lauren Booth knows that “the Palestinians are the new Jews.” And she wants you to know it, too.

Between 2012 and 2014 there appears to be a blank in her C.V. Oh dear. Even Press TV appears to have lost faith in Lauren Booth, for it let her go in 2012. Why so many disappointments?

Then in 2014, Booth began a job as presenter of her own show on Britain’s new British Muslim  TV: Talking Booth. In 2014, she became a senior producer at Al Jazeera in Doha, but only lasted a few months. My, that was quick. Her “own series” on British Muslim TV began in 2014, and ended, within a few months, still in 2014. And then so did her second job that year, at Al Jazeera in Doha, where she apparently didn’t come up to snuff, for she was let go only several months after landing the job.

Booth visited Gaza in 2008 and said that it was “the largest concentration camp in the world today,” but photos of her in a sumptuously appointed Gaza grocery painted a quite different picture. While she was in Gaza, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya gave her a Palestinian VIP passport. She went back to Gaza the next year as part of the Viva Palestina “aid convoy” that was set up by the British Leftist George Galloway. She has been back several times since then.

Meanwhile, in 2010, Booth converted. On October 23, 2010 she appeared, hijabbed, on the Islam Channel’s Global Peace and Unity event, and said: “My name is Lauren Booth, and I am a Muslim.” She said she had converted because of her experiences in Palestine. In June 2011, became a patron of Cageprisoners, but this arrangement ended in 2015. The reason why is unclear. Did she fall, or was she pushed? Something not quite right about all these jobs and positions held so briefly.

Booth and her husband Sohale Ahmed, the chief executive of Peacetrail, were disqualified by Britain’s Charity Commission from holding any trustee positions; this was the result of the Commission’s inability to account for about half of their organization’s income.

That’s a bit worrisome. What might have been the problem? Is it just possible that Booth and Ahmed had something to do with the missing money?

We get the picture.

No further questions, m’lud.

First published in Jihad Watch.