Why the Palestine solidarity movement should have nothing to do with Peter Gregson

Statement from Palestine solidarity activists and organisations concerning Peter Gregson

IF YOU WISH TO ADD YOUR NAME TO THE STATEMENT BELOW PLEASE EMAIL ME AT tonygreenstein111@gmail.com

For a number of years Peter Gregson has been an activist on the fringes of the Palestine solidarity movement. Whereas previously he has been treated as a nuisance today his activities pose a threat to the solidarity movement and should be treated as such.

Gregson is notorious for setting up his own ‘campaign’ groups such as LAZIR (Labour Against Zionist Islamophobic Racism) and the Campaign Against Bogus Anti-Semitism. Now it is the One Democratic Palestine [ODP].

In setting up ODP he is deliberately misleading people into believing that it is the same as the One Democratic State Campaign and One Democratic State Initiative.

Gregson was initially expelled by Labour Against the Witchhunt in 2019 for posting a petition linking to an article by Ian Fantom that defended a holocaust denier Nick Kollerstrom, who Gregson described as a ‘holocaust sceptic’. Fantom wrote that Kollerstrom ‘had been targeted in a witch-hunt for a literature review he wrote on ‘The Auschwitz “Gas Chamber” Illusion and a… swimming pool at Auschwitz.’

When requested to take this link down Gregson refused. Fantom and Kollerstrom are co-founders of the Keep Talking group which has hosted a variety of conspiracy theorists like Piers Corbyn and anti-Semites such as Gilad Atzmon.

Gregson’s reasons for participating in the ‘Keep Talking’ group’ was that ‘we need to use every single platform we can find to get our message out.’ This included the anti-Semitic far-Right. The Jewish Chronicle published an article based on correspondence which Gregson had made public detailing what had happened.

Gregson has since been refused membership by Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Jewish Network for Palestine and a host of similar groups.

Recently Gregson has espoused openly anti-Semitic arguments seeing the source of the government’s support for Zionism as being due to the undue influence of Jews. In an article on the anti-Semitic Redress site, he stated:

The people who foisted the IHRA definition upon us were the Jews in the UK who support Israel, so the question arises: do Jews in the UK have significant leverage within the bodies that represent our interests – our courts, our media, our trade unions, our political parties, our government?

Gregson answered his question in the affirmative. In a section ‘Rich Jewish bankers’ Gregson declared that ‘Right from the outset, rich Jewish bankers such as Lord Rothschild backed Zionism. It is unlikely we would have Israel now were it not for his influence.’

The suggestion that Israel owes its existence to ‘rich Jewish bankers’ is a classic anti-Semitic stereotype. It is also untrue. The Rothschilds were a house divided with the majority of the British family opposed to Zionism. For example the President of the anti-Zionist League of British Jews, formed in the wake of the Balfour Declaration, was Sir Lionel Rothschild, a Tory MP.

The Jewish bourgeoisie were overwhelmingly opposed to Zionism. The only member of the Lloyd George cabinet who opposed the Balfour Declaration was its only Jewish member, Sir Edwin Montagu. However facts rarely disturb Gregson.

Gregson wrote that ‘Plenty of politicians too… are Jewish and support Israel.’ Support for Israel is common to all politicians, Jewish and non-Jewish. Gregson singled out Jon Lansman and Rhea Wolfson who ‘used their tribal background shamelessly in 2018 to successfully remove our freedom of speech on Israel.’ Gregson completely ignores non-Jewish and Christian Zionist support for Zionism.

Gregson asserted that ‘it was the wealthy and influential Jews in politics and the media who foisted the IHRA definition upon us’. Gavin Williamson, who threatened universities with a loss of funding if they didn’t adopt the IHRA, is not Jewish. In conflating being Jewish with Zionism and Israel, Gregson echoes Zionist propaganda and the IHRA itself.

The struggle for Palestinian liberation and against Zionism is an anti-racist struggle. There is no place in the Palestine solidarity movement for those who spread anti-Semitic propaganda under the guise of support for the Palestinians. In so doing Gregson plays into the hands of the Zionists and Israel’s supporters.

We advise supporters of Palestine to reject Peter Gregson and keep a wide berth from his many and varied organisations. 

Representatives of religious Zionist youth group Bnei Akiva Meet Jewish Racist Bezalel Smotrich in London

Gregson’s Anti-Semitism Doesn’t Hurt Jews But It Does Hurt Palestinians

As Palestine solidarity activists are well aware, accusations of anti-Semitism are the only defence that apologists for Israeli Apartheid have left in their armoury. With Jewish neo-Nazi Ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich in Israel’s coalition government and the reign of terror that is being conducted by the military junta in the West Bank, ‘anti-Semitism’ is their only answer to the call for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions.

It is with extreme reluctance that I circulated the statement below to activists asking them to sign a call for people to avoid Peter Gregson and his increasingly bizarre anti-Semitic statements such as his remark that

The people who foisted the IHRA definition upon us were the Jews in the UK who support Israel

Those of us with longer memories than the day before yesterday will recollect that it was the distinctly non-Jewish Gavin Williamson who foisted the IHRA fake definition of anti-Semitism upon universities by threatening their funding.

Jonathan Freedland - Led the Fake 'Antisemitism' Campaign Against Corbyn

Even worse was the remark of Gregson that the Zionist movement supported the annihilation of European Jews. Such hyperbole is totally unnecessary. As I show in my recent book Zionism During the Holocaust the Zionists did many terrible things, from blocking routes of escape for Jewish refugees to entering into a trading agreement with the Nazis that destroyed the Jewish Boycott but there is no evidence that they supported Hitler’s final solution.

until 1940 most Jews refused to move to Israel on religious grounds. These were the people that Hitler gassed. With Zionist support. Proof? Over the period 1942-44, Rabbi Weissmandl of Hungary made a deal with Adolf Eichmann whereby the Germans would “sell” the Jews to him

Weissmandel made no deal with Eichmann, that was Rudolf Kasztner, the leader of Hungarian Jewry. If Gregson is referring to the Europa Plan of Weissmandel it was with Dieter Wisliceny not Eichmann. To accuse any Jew, even Zionists, of having supported Hitler’s extermination of the Jews is clearly anti-Semitic because it is blaming the dead for their own murder. The Nazis did not distinguish between Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews in the gas chambers. See A Political Health Warning - Why Palestine Solidarity Activists Should Have Nothing to do with Peter Gregson

As Boris Johnson demonstrated with his racist and anti-Semitic novel 72 Virgins the Zionist movement has no objection to genuine anti-Semitism. Instead it seeks to redefine opposition to racism as racism in an exercise of double think that Orwell long ago predicted.

Jews in Britain are overwhelmingly White and suffer no discrimination on account of being Jewish. Jews in Britain are a largely middle class community as Jewish historians Geoffrey Alderman and William Rubinstein have documented. Of course not all Jews are prosperous but on average they are. Nor do they suffer from state racism.

Nonetheless anti-Semitic prejudice is to be condemned, not because of its effect on Jews but because it is extremely damaging to the Palestinian cause. It lends weight to the false accusations of the Zionists that support for the Palestinians is anti-Semitic.

It is welcome that Asa Winstanley, author of Weaponising Anti-Semitism, which documents the scurrilous ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign waged against the left and Jeremy Corbyn, has signed the statement. Altogether 63 people and organisations have added their signature, representing a cross section of the Palestine solidarity and Jewish anti-Zionist spectrum. It is regrettable that noone in the Jewish Socialists Group signed the statement although people are welcome to add their signatures by commenting on the article or emailing me.

Although national PSC declined the opportunity to sign the statement activists from 7 PSC branches have added their signature in addition to two branches, Norwich and Cambridge. Mick Napier, founder member and former Chair of Scottish PSC has also signed.

Palestine Action Activists Picketing Court Hearing

Five activists from Palestine Action, including founders Huda Ammori and Richard Barnard as well five members of Jewish Network for Palestine have added their names as has John Tymon of Football Against Apartheid.

The Rev. Stephen Sizer - Victim of Justin Welby and the Zionists

Especially welcome is the Rev. Stephen Sizer, who was defrocked earlier in the year after false allegations of anti-Semitism from the Board of Deputies were upheld by a rigged Church of England tribunal. Justin Welby, the most right-wing Archbishop of Canterbury since George Carey, presided over the campaign against Stephen. Carey was later found to have covered up child abuse in the Church of England as Welby has also done.

The statement below conveys a very simple message. The cause of Palestine is an anti-racist one and when anti-Semites take up the cause we will act to isolate them in just the same way as we did Gilad Atzmon a decade ago.

Unlike the Zionists and the multiplicity of lobby groups such as the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism/CST/Board of Deputies etc. we will not tolerate racists in our ranks and we will call them out.

Speaking of which Joseph O’Neill’s Interfaith for Palestine based in Chester also needs to be ostracised. As this report of a speaking engagement by Alain Alameddine of One Democratic State Initiative shows,

Joseph O’Neill’s Interfaith for Palestine group is stuffed the most appalling bigots and anti-Semites. They invited me to speak a few years ago but when I took a look at their other speakers, who included holocaust denier Israel Shamir I declined.

Tony Greenstein 

Shop Steward Expelled for ‘anti-Semitism’ by a Racist and Corrupt Trade Union

The GMB Expels Pete Gregson using the IHRA Definition of ‘Anti-Semitism’ which even its author, Kenneth Stern, has Disavowed

When Labour’s National Executive decided on September 4^th 2018, to adopt the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which conflates anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, Peter Gregson launched his own petition:

The IHRA has been savaged by a host of academic and legal scholars. It is incoherent, open ended, uncertain, illogical and barely literate.

The petition which attracted the ire of the GMB and Rhea Wolfson

According to Geoffrey Robertson QC, the renowned human rights barrister, the IHRA definition is, ‘not fit for purpose’.  Sir Stephen Sedley, the Jewish former Court of Appeal Judge wrote that the IHRA ‘fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite.’ Hugh Tomlinson QC declared that the IHRA had

a potential chilling effect on public bodies which, in the absence of definitional clarity, may seek to sanction or prohibit any conduct which has been labelled by third parties as antisemitic without applying any clear criterion of assessment

The GMB under Gary Smith has acted as a scab union effectively inviting Peter's employer to dismiss him

The actual IHRA definition itself is 38 words, the salient part of which states that ‘Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews which may be defined as hatred of Jews.’ What is a ‘certain perception’? Who knows. If anti-Semitism may be defined as hatred of Jews what else might it be defined as? And if anti-Semitism is to be defined in terms of hatred what about someone who simply dislikes Jews but doesn’t hate them. In short the definition is useless as an analytical tool. It is no wonder that David Feldman, who was Vice-Chair of the Chakrabarti Inquiry and Director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism described the IHRA as ‘bewilderingly imprecise.’

The IHRA definition provides 11 illustrations of ‘anti-Semitism’ such as ‘Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.’

In order to make their case stick, the GMB has to lie about Peter's beliefs accusing him of being  a holocaust denier - this accords with Zionist attempts to invent holocaust denial where it doesn't exist

This is the section that Peter Gregson defied with his petition. This illustration is a good example of the incoherence of the definition. There is no connection between the first and second halves of the example. It is a non-sequitur. It is quite possible to support a Jewish right to self-determination and still believe that Israel is a racist state. The language is a good example of bad fourth form English. How can the existence of anything be an endeavour?

Criticism of a union official is impermissible for a cossetted bureaucracy

There is a simple definition of anti-Semitism in the Oxford English Dictionary which, unlike the 500+ words of the IHRA is only 6 words long: ‘Hostility to or prejudice against Jews’ which also catches attitudes that fall short of hatred. As Tony Lerman, a distinguished expert on anti-Semitism and former Director of the Institute of Jewish Policy Research wrote:

‘The more the definition is held up to the light and subject to public scrutiny, the more we see holes and cracks in its flimsy fabric. Not only is there now overwhelming evidence that it’s not fit for purpose, but it also has the effect of making Jews more vulnerable to antisemitism, not less...’

The drawback of the OED definition for the Zionists is that it doesn’t mention Israel. As the inauguration today of Yair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s new President shows, most fascists, racists and bigots are also ardent supporters of the Israeli state.

Even the person who drew up the IHRA, Kenneth Stern, has become disillusioned at the misuse of his definition, which was never intended to brand people as anti-Semites. In written testimony to the US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee he wrote that:

The definition was not drafted, and was never intended, as a tool to target or chill speech on a college campus. In fact, at a conference in 2010 about the impact of the definition, I highlighted this misuse, and the damage it could do.

Labour’s NEC adopted the IHRA as a way of buying off its Zionist critics. What it has done is to create a whole new set of problems around the rights of free speech. It is no accident that the GMB, which has traditionally been pro-Zionist has been the first to try and implement the IHRA. Traditionally the GMB has been corrupt, racist and politically backward.

Rhea Wolfson

Peter Gregson was suspended because of his petition when former Labour NEC member and the Glasgow GMB Organiser, Rhea Wolfson put in a complaint about ‘anti-Semitism’. He was accused of ‘anti-Semitic’ harassment of Ms Wolfson.  It is very clear from his statement that all he ever did was engage in political polemic. Nothing that he said was remotely anti-Semitic or indeed abusive.

Gary Smith - represents all that is wrong in  British Trade Unionism - the idea of a fair hearing is alien to someone who acted as judge and jury in his own cause, having organised the kangaroo court too

I wrote on the 28^th November to the GMB’s Scottish Regional Secretary, Gary Smith, who was handling the case offering to be a witness in the case.  I happened to know Gary some years ago in Brighton when, as Secretary of the Unemployed Centre, we had organised support for the workers at the Hollingdean Refuse Depot who had occupied the site as part of the campaign to get rid of SITA, a French company which the Labour council had brought in to run the refuse collection. The dispute was successful. At that time Gary was a radical young organiser.  Clearly as he has climbed the GMB’s greasy ladder he has abandoned his radicalism which included support for breaking the law.  Now he is just another apparatchik.

I pointed out to Smith that he could not be both the Prosecutor, the person organising the hearing and deciding who could be called and what would be allowed by way of a defence. I received no reply to this or another email.  Smith had clearly decided that Peter was guilty and he was not going to allow ‘grandstanding’ i.e. any attempt to mount a defence. On the day of the hearing a Rabbi who had travelled up from Manchester at his own expense was barred from the hearing.

The whole procedure that Peter faced has been wholly unfair as the letter from his solicitor Daniel Donaldson explains. Donaldson explicitly calls the GMB disciplinary  tribunal a ‘kangaroo court.’ In his letter of 17^th December to Smith he states, reiterating my own correspondence that:

You are a member of the GMB regional committee, you have conducted the investigation, you have determined the procedure and you are also prosecuting my client before the same committee. This approach to a disciplinary is inherently unfair and therefore unlawful.

This is the kind of justice that they are used to in Rhea Wolfson’s racial paradise in Israel , but it is contrary to British notions of natural justice and due process.

As I said to Smith, this hearing would make a kangaroo hang its head in shame. Gary Smith has become just another right-wing official in the GMB, a union which is a byword for corruption. Peter Gregson is the only shop steward for 24,000 members in the whole of the Lothian NHS. If Gary Smith was actually doing his job instead of harassing the only shop steward that does exist he would ensure that the GMB had some measure of shop floor organisation in peoples’ workplaces. Smith seems completely unconcerned about the effect of expelling Peter on the GMB’s own (lack of) organisation.

In reality GMB officials have never been particularly concerned about the effectiveness of representation for their members. Their main concern has been such mundane matters as how best to claim and inflate their expenses. Living on a far higher salary than their members they are cut off from life on the shop floor.

What is particularly reprehensible is that a member of the union has been expelled for calling out a state which is clearly racist.  I gave as examples to Smith the fact that in Israel Palestinian (but not Jewish) children as young as 12 are routinely detained, usually in night time raids on their homes.

We have recently had the obscene case of the lynch-mob murderer of an asylum seeker sentenced to 4 months imprisonment whereas a 16 year old girl, Ahed Tamimi, was sentenced to 8 months for daring to slap a heavily armed soldier.

As the National’s Martin Hannan reported Pete Gregson was suspended for describing Israel’s actions in ethnically cleansing Palestine of some 700,000 refugees as racist. To the corrupt and racist barons of the GMB ethnic cleansing by a settler colonial state is perfectly acceptable whereas criticism of it is racist. 

This is the upside down world of Gary Smith and the GMB’s General Secretary Tim Roache who on the basis of a fraudulent ‘election’ in 2016 backed Owen Smith in his challenge to Jeremy Corbyn.

Peter Gregson’s petition has now secured over 1,200 signatures from members of the Labour Party. Given that Israel’s Knesset earlier in the year passed the Jewish Nation State Law which explicitly grants national rights to one section of the population, Jews and denies them to non-Jews, it is difficult to know how else to describe the GMB’s decision to expel Peter Gregson other than racist. In the words of Ha’aretz’s Mordechai Kremnitzer, the ‘Jewish Nation-state Law Makes Discrimination in Israel Constitutional’.  What is it that Gary Smith or Tim Roache don’t understand about that? How else do you describe opening fire on unarmed demonstrators in Gaza, killing over 200 and wounding 20,000 with the use of high velocity ammunition?

Although Labour Against the Witchhunt didn’t support Peter’s petition because of problems with its wording we recognise that it represents a significant opposition in the Labour Party to the attempt to curtail if not abolish freedom of speech.

Of course the corrupt and racist GMB has never had freedom of speech. The regional barons ruled without opposition. The union exists primarily for the benefit of its highly paid officials not its membership. However even Roache and co. will have difficulty defending this particularly iniquitous decision. If Peter’s expulsion is not revoked then GMB members should join another, genuine trade union.

To see Pete’s website and his page on the IHRA and his Petition please click here

The letter of expulsion is here.  It is fundamentally dishonest. It alleges that Peter is guilty of ‘accusing Israel of inventing or exaggerating the holocaust’ and goes on to say that ‘For our Union holocaust denial or claiming the holocaust was exaggerated is simply unacceptable.’ The only problem is that this is a lie. Nowhere has Pete denied that the Holocaust occurred or that it was exaggerated. Peter specifically refers to the 6 million who died (though the actual figure will never be known). What he has said, which is true, is that Israel uses the Holocaust for political purposes and that it is used to counter Palestinian claims to justice. Which is what Jewish academic Norman Finkelstein, amongst others, wrote in The Holocaust Industry.

Tony Greenstein

Peter's press release on his expulsion

My third email to Gary Smith

The Zionist War on Free Speech – The IHRA is Being Used to Chill Free Speech NOT Combat Anti-Semitism

Twitter’s Twisted Values – Telling anti-Zionist Jews They Should have Died in Auschwitz is Fine – Comparing the Siege of Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto is ‘Hate Speech’

Robert Festenstein of Jewish Human Rights Watch stars in a Tommy Robinson propaganda film

The Zionist movement in Britain today is a threat to free speech.  It is also a danger to Jews since every atrocity it defends is in the name of Jews, not Zionists. For example the Board of Deputies, a tame establishment body that has repeatedly told Jews NOT to oppose anti-Semitism from the fascists actively supports Israeli war crimes whilst claiming to represent all Jewish people.

The Board of Deputies took great exception to a recent post by me, NW Friends of Israel, Tommy Robinson and the EDL, are Holding a Demonstration Against ‘Anti-semitism’ in Manchester this Sunday by me on a North-West Friends of Israel demonstration against anti-Zionism (which they call ‘anti-Semitism’).

This is the type of abuse that Twitter finds doesn't breach its rules - always so long as the target is not a Zionist

They claimed it was untrue that fascists were present. However my understanding is that there were supporters of Tommy Robinson present, not least from amongst the ranks of the Zionists themselves.

My post had a video of solicitor Robert Festenstein starring in a promotional video with Tommy Robinson of the Football Lads Alliance. Festenstein is the founder and sole member of the misnamed Jewish Human Rights Watch, whose purpose is to ensure that Palestinians don’t gain access to human rights. Festenstein is also a member of the Board of Deputies.

Twitter objected to this photo on my profile - the truth hurts

There was also a video showing the NW Friends of Israel openly cooperating and organising with the EDL on a picket of a shop selling Israeli products.  There is a long history, as I have repeatedly posted, of co-operation and joint work between Zionists and fascists for example EXCLUSIVE – We Name the Gang of Zionists Whose Purpose is to Disrupt Palestinian Events in London

The Board of Deputies moved quickly.  Not to ensure that fascists were barred from its demonstration against ‘anti-Semitism’, but to prevent my story remaining up. The result was that my blog on Medium was closed down. The Zionist press even boasted of their achievements.  What kind of gutter press is it that takes delight in closing down free speech?

An anonymous troll calling me a 'racist antisemite' is not targeted abuse and is not hate speech

Jewish News reported that ‘Following a complaint from the Board of Deputies’’ my posts were removed after I had ‘alleged that the antisemitism rally in Manchester last month was supported by the far-right.’ The truth clearly hurts when it comes to the close co-operation that exists between the Zionist movement and its activists in this country and the fascists.  See for example EXCLUSIVE: More Revelations about Zionism’s Fascist Wing

In fact I am from Brighton not London but what is one mistake amongst many. A BOD spokesperson is quoted as saying of my allegations that ‘“This is a complete lie with no factual basis… There was absolutely no involvement of the EDL and Tommy Robinson, indeed the organisations involved have denounced Tommy Robinson multiple times.” This is totally untrue.  The Board has members like Festenstein who support Robinson, who is an avid supporter of the Israeli state. People like Robinson hold that Israel is the ideal ethno-nationalist state.

The Jewish Chronicle also led with a full page report that ‘An article by a Jewish anti-Israel blogger was removed from the Medium website after he alleged that a demonstration against antisemitism in Manchester was orchestrated by far-right figures.’ This was after ‘the Board of Deputies lodged a complaint.’ Tony Greenstein article pulled over claim that far-right led antisemitism protest

It would appear that the Board of Deputies, which has led the false ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign against Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Left has become hypersensitive to charges that the people working with anti-Semites are primarily to be found within their own ranks. 

When I put a photo of a young Ahed Tamimi being assaulted by an Israeli soldier, my account was locked and I was told to remove the photo as a condition of regaining control of my account

It is an open fact that large sections of the Zionist movement support white nationalists for similar reasons to the support that the Zionist Organisation of America openly gives to pro-Zionist anti-Semites like Steve Bannon and Donald Trump. See Steve Bannon Strongly Supports Israel and Jews – ZOA Klein’s Forward Article.  Bannon was accused by his own wife, during divorce proceedings, of having objected to his children going to school with Jewish children. According to his ex-wife, Mary Louise-Picard “He said he doesn’t like Jews and that he doesn’t like the way they raise their kids to be ‘whiny brats,’” Piccard said, according to the court papers.’ That doesn’t however stop American Zionists working with him as he is an ardent Christian Zionist.

In the past week, the Zionist campaign against me has been extended to Twitter.  A complaint was made by Jack Mendel, who according to his own description is a 'so called' Journalist at JewishNewsUK’. It is not a description I would disagree with.

When Zionist mouthpiece Mendel defended Israel’s murder of over 200 unarmed demonstrators at the Gaza fence I compared the siege of Gaza to the siege of the Warsaw Ghetto and when he defended Israel’s bombing of Gaza by the Israeli military because of Hamas ‘rockets’, which were fired in response to Israel’s botched raid on Gaza, Mendel complained to Twitter. Clearly my remarks so infuriated this Zionist lapdog that instead of rebutting my comparisons he appealed to Twitter to censor me.

Twitter has closed down my account because toe-rag 'journalist' Jack Mendel couldn't take criticism of his rottweiler of a state

In doing this Mendel was pushing at an open door. Twitter have subsequently closed down my account for ‘hateful conduct’. This is how the language of equalities is used and abused to protect the powerful against the powerless.

By putting everything under the rubric of ‘hate speech’ racism and sexism is depoliticized. It means if you criticize Zionism then that is ‘hate speech’ The racists get to define any speech they don’t like as ‘hate speech’. This is the logic of identity politics.  So if you criticize the capitalists or the 1% then that too is ‘hate speech’. In other words by redefining racism as ‘hate speech’ you end up defending the powerful against the powerless.

If you criticize a society which makes the few wealthy at the expense of the many then that too is ‘hate speech’. ‘Hate speech’ means that it is the racists and the imperialists who can turn round and complain that they are hated, because hate, or what is called ‘hate’, works two ways.  And yes, people have every right to hate Zionism and racism.

Telling someone Jewish that they should have gone to a gas chamber is not a breach of Twitter rules (unless they are a Zionist!)

According to Twitter this and similar tweets is NOT an example of hate speech!

Ironically two years ago I complained when a Zionist George Yousef sent me a delightful message wishing that my family and me had ended up in a concentration camp.  When I complained to Twitter I was told there was no breach of the rules!

Twitter rejects my complaint

When a particularly stupid Zionist Mark Haringman aka Newsdude called me a variety of names including child abuser, criminal and socialist this year, I made another complaint. This too was rejected.

We therefore have the crazy situation that responding to racist Jack Mendel’s vilification of the Palestinians is a breach of Twitter rules but telling someone Jewish they should have died in a concentration camp is alright!!

Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer of the alt-Right just loves Israel - and why shouldn't he?

This comes on top of the recent suspension of Paul Jonson, an anti-social behaviour worker with Dudley Council for daring to state that Israel is a racist state. Since Israel is a racist state it means that the truth has been outlawed. That is why people like the neo-Nazi founder of America’s alt-Right, Richard Spencer describe themselves as White Zionists.

What is equally disturbing is that the GMB Union, which is notoriously right-wing and corrupt (for those who remember the Poulson Affair and Andy Cunningham) has suspended Peter Gregson, a shop steward, who has put up on the web a petition stating that Israel is a racist state. See the statement from Labour Against the Witchhunt.

Although you wouldn’t know it, Liberty (formerly the National Council for Civil Liberties) overwhelmingly rejected the IHRA at its last Conference.  However its right-wing Executive have sat on the motion as the majority of them don’t agree with it.  It will be essential in the coming year to make the Zionist attack on free speech a priority. See Why are the Officers and Employees of Civil Liberties Group Liberty Refusing to Implement its Policy of Opposition to the IHRA?

Tony Greenstein 

see Twitter closes down my account for ‘hateful conduct’ 

Mondoweiss