It’s Not Guilt That Causes Germany to Support Genocide But their Desire to Transfer Guilt for the Holocaust onto the Palestinians

When Germany Attacks Jewish anti-Zionists It is Following in the Footsteps of the Gestapo

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German Police Smash Up Palestine Congress

On the eve of the First World War Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary uttered the immortal phrase that summed up what was to come, when he said

‘The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.’

I think if Judge Silas Reid is going to start imprisoning jurors for coming up with verdicts for the wrong reasons, he should also deny them food & water whilst they’re in gaol, to really lean into that ‘17th century judicial tyrant’ energy https://t.co/tSZZDbSa4I pic.twitter.com/Y0mdBpPX1F

— Paul Powlesland (@paulpowlesland) March 1, 2024

We could well say the same today. Patrick Devlin, a former Law Lord, wrote in his book Trial by Jury (1956) that the jury system was ‘the lamp that shows that freedom lives”. That too is under threat from judges like Silas Reid who threatened a jury at the Old Bailey with prosecution if they allowed their consciences to interfere with the verdict. Reid’s action were an echo of the famous case of Bushell’s in 1670, when a jury was imprisoned for 2 days and nights without ‘meat, drink, fire or tobacco’, because they refused to return a guilty verdict.

But it is not only in Britain that the lamp of liberty is in danger of being extinguished. In Germany, a state which 80 years ago was exterminating millions of people it classed as subhuman, 2,500 Police forcibly closed a Palestine Congress in Berlin, banning from the country the former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis.

Yanis Varoufakis Describes How He Was Prevented from Speaking at a Palestine Congress in Berlin by Germany’s Police

Germany’s Support for Israel Mirrors Nazi Germany’s Support for Zionism

Today the German state purports to be pro-Jewish but when it comes to Jewish anti-Zionists, the German State is following exactly the same path as the Nazis took 89 years ago. The Nazis too distinguished between Zionists, (good Jews) and anti-Zionists (bad Jews).

On 28 January 1935 Reinhard Heydrich, whom Gerard Reitlinger described as the ‘real engineer of the final solution’ issued a directive:

The activity of the Zionist-oriented youth organisations that are engaged in the occupational restructuring of the Jews … lies in the interest of the National Socialist state’s leadership. (These organizations) are not to be treated with that strictness that it is necessary to apply to the members of the so-called German-Jewish organizations (assimilationists).

This can be found in Lucy Dawidowicz’s War Against the Jews (p.118).

The result was that the activities of Zionist groups were supervised with ‘more benevolence’ than comparable activities by non-Zionist Jewish groups. The Gestapo and the SD (SS Security Service) ‘place(d) no restrictions on Zionist organisations.’ [Herbert Strauss, pp. 352-3., Jewish Emigration from Germany: Nazi Policies and Jewish Responses]

In May 1935 Das Schwarze Korps, the paper of the SS, wrote that:

the Zionists adhere to a strict racial position and by emigrating to Palestine they are helping to build their own Jewish state.... The assimilation-minded Jews deny their race and insist on their loyalty to Germany or claim to be Christians because they have been baptized, in order to subvert National Socialist principles.

On 26 September 1935 in Das Schwarze Korps Heydrich wrote that the German government

Is in agreement with the great spiritual movement within Jewry itself, Zionism, whose position is based on the recognition of the unity of Jewry throughout the world, and the rejection of all ideas of mixing in. [Francis Nicosia’s Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany].

Heydrich was the Deputy to Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS and the second most powerful man in Germany to Hitler himself.

Ian Lustick, an Israeli political scientist, described in The Holocaust in Israeli Political Culture, (p.150) how, in the Eichmann Trial

Extraordinary precautions’ were taken to prevent the name of Hans Globke, the closest advisor to Konrad Adenaeur, the German Chancellor, from being made public.

In 1936 Globke, a senior official at the Interior Ministry, wrote a legal commentary on the Nuremberg Laws which became standard in Nazi Germany’s courts. It stipulated that sexual relations between Aryans and non-Aryans was a crime even if they took place outside Germany. In 1938 he introduced a regulation requiring Jews to take the first names, Israel and Sarah.

In 1941 Globke took part in drawing up an ordinance that stripped Jews in the conquered nations of their citizenship and allowed their possessions to be confiscated. A legal precondition for the Holocaust. ‘Hitler’s former henchman, was true architect of modern Germany’, The Times, 4.3.21.

Globke also played a key role in the development of Israel’s nuclear weapons. Protecting Israeli-German military and financial relations was paramount.[Lustick, fn. 27 p.150] Israel was determined to avoid a little matter like the role of ex-Nazi officials in the new German state coming between Israel and Germany. [ Lars Petersson, Hitler’s Deserters, pp. 123-9]

Berlin police just canceled the entire Palestine Congress. I was the only speaker that successfully finished a speech.

Salman Abu Sitta was cut off after 1 minute. Our livestream ended and electricity cut off.

This is Germany. pic.twitter.com/07NUCpownv

— Hebh Jamal (@hebh_jamal) April 12, 2024

It is this that explains the strategic and military alliance between Germany and Israel and why Germany is prepared to openly support Israel’s genocide in Gaza, to the extent of joining it at the International Court of Justice. ‘Anti-Semitism’ is merely the pretext for attacking democratic rights in Germany itself.

After all Germany took part in 2 genocides in the last century, so what is a third genocide between friends? Indeed there was a direct link between the first genocide, the extermination of the Herero and Nama people in South-West Africa (Namibia) and the Holocaust.

It is no surprise that Namibia’s anger boiled over when Germany offered to join Israel’s case at the ICJ. It was in Namibia, then a German colony, that Germany’s extermination program became the template for the Holocaust.

Eugen Fischer was the Nazi doctor who helped pioneer eugenics in the Third Reich. As director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology (1927-42) Fischer provided the ‘scientific’ rationale for the Nazi’s war of extermination.

On Shark Island in SW Africa Fischer ran medical breeding experiments on the camp’s inmates. Racist ideas developed in the colony were brought back to German institutions along with the Africans’ skulls.

Fischer conducted medical experiments on children born from the rape of African women. His research inspired Adolf Hitler and in the 1930s, Fischer taught his racist theories to Nazi doctors. One of his students, Joseph Mengele, was responsible for the medical experiments in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.

In 1939, Fischer declared

When a people wants … to preserve its own nature, it must reject alien racial elements,… The Jew is such an alien and, therefore, when he wants to insinuate himself, he must be warded off.

An organisation named “Commission Number 3” was created by the Nazis to deal with the so-called problem of the “Rhineland Bastards”. This was organised under Eugen Fischer. It was decided that the African-German children would be sterilised under the 1933 Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring.

The programme began in 1937, when local officials were asked to report on all “Rhineland Bastards” under their jurisdiction.

All together, some 400 children of mixed parentage were arrested and sterilised. The Nazis went to great lengths to conceal their sterilisation and abortion programme. See The Holocaust’s forgotten black victims – the‘Rhineland Bastards’

Liberal Jews in Germany referred to the Zionists as ‘volkish’ or racial Jews. In Romania the Zionists were referred to by other Jews as ‘Hitler Juden (Jews)’. So when the modern day German State favours Zionist Jews they understand their ideological affinity

Why Does the German State Favour the Zionists?

The German State never deNazified after the war. In many cases the same civil servants, the same judges and police chiefs continued to play the same role that they had played in Nazi Germany.

Hostility after the war to Germany was very great, given the millions who had died at its hand. With the division of Europe into East and West, it was crucial to NATO and the Western Alliance that West Germany be integrated into the West’s military alliances. At the time there was a vigorous campaign against German  re-armament.

It was through Israel that Germany was rehabilitated and the price it paid was billions in reparations, which were meant for the holocaust survivors but were paid to the Israeli state. Israel stole the reparations together with the Jewish Claims Conference. To this day Israel keeps over a third living in poverty, choosing between heating and eating.

Reparations and Restitution

Yad Vashem, the Israeli state Holocaust museum boasted that West Germany’s government ‘realized that paying reparations would help accelerate West Germany's acceptance by the Western powers.’

Through reparations and direct transfers of weapons Israel paved the way for the integration of West Germany into NATO. But there was a political price. Israel was not to make an issue of the presence of Nazis in Konrad Adenaeur’s government.

Germany and Britain’s Attack on Democratic Rights

On December 20^th I was arrested under s.12 Terrorism Act 2000 for having posted, a month before, a tweet supporting Hamas, a proscribed organisation. Although Hamas’s military wing, the Al Quassem Brigades had been proscribed in 2001 its political wing had not been proscribed until 2021.

No justification has ever been given for why this further step had been taken although the Zionist organisations had long been lobbying for it. The government’s explanation was that:

Hamas IDQ was proscribed by the UK in March 2001. At the time it was HM government’s assessment that there was a sufficient distinction between the so called political and military wings of Hamas, such that they should be treated as different organisations, and that only the military wing was concerned in terrorism. The government now assess that the approach of distinguishing between the various parts of Hamas is artificial. Hamas is a complex but single terrorist organisation.

No indication was given as to what this assessment was or what had changed since 2021. In fact there is no evidence whatsoever that Hamas is a single organisation any more than the IRA was a single organisation between 1969 and its ceasefire.

A Palestine solidarity demonstration in the Potsdamer Platz area, Berlin, October 15, 2023. The police suppressed the demonstration shortly after authorizing it.

See Germany cancels pro-Palestine event, bars entry to Gaza war witness

If Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political wing had been proscribed along with the IRA then there would have been no Good Friday peace agreement. The ban on Hamas makes it clear that the British government, despite pretending to oppose Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory, in practice does the precise opposite.  As the current genocide demonstrates, the real terrorists have always been the Israeli army and government.

Hilary Clinton Admits to Creating Al Qaeda

Hamas has never operated outside Palestine. It was elected, in free and fair elections, by the Palestinian people in 2006. Comparisons with ISIS are nonsense and merely police state rhetoric. If anyone is responsible for ISIS and Al Qaeda it is the United States. There was no ISIS before the invasion of Iraq and there was no Al Qaeda before the West began funding Islamic fundamentalist groups in Afghanistan in order to overthrow the secular pro-Soviet government there.

During the 1980s the Israeli government was instrumental in creating Hamas, for similar reasons. It wanted a Palestinian counterweight to secular Palestinian nationalism.

Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s, told a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat (who referred to Hamas as “a creature of Israel.”)

“The Israeli government gave me a budget,” the retired brigadier general confessed, “and the military government gives to the mosques.”

“Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades, told the Wall Street Journal in 2009. In the mid-80s, Cohen wrote an official report to his superiors warning them not to play divide-and-rule in the Occupied Territories, by backing Palestinian Islamists against Palestinian secularists. See Blowback: How Israel Went From Helping Create Hamas to Bombing It

Today Hamas is enemy no. 1. ‘Terrorism’ is a term of abuse that one hurls at one’s opponents. It has no intrinsic meaning. As Lord Carrington, Margaret Thatcher’s Foreign Secretary admitted ‘one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist.’ In other words ‘terrorist’ is a label to stick on your opponents.

The Nazis too labelled their opponents ‘terrorists’ or ‘bandits’. To them the Maquis, the French Resistance, was a terrorist group as were the Partisans and all those who fought against them but the British had no problem at the time allying with them.

That is why Britain’s anti-terrorist legislation is based on a lie. Hamas is no more of a terrorist than any number of groups that the US and Britain has funded when it founded convenient.

Hamas has never operated outside Palestine. Unlike ISIS it did not send operatives to blow people up in Europe such as at the Bataclan massacre in Paris in 2015 which both it and Islamic Jihad condemned.

Prevent & The Use of Anti-Terrorism To Silence Dissent – The Thinking of the Thought Police

The British state has been very adept at exploiting terrorism in order to politically attack their opponents and in particular Muslims. It has laid the basis of Islamaphobia. Prevent was first introduced by the Blair government in 2006 to counter terrorism.

Since the passage of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act July 2015 there has been what is known as the Prevent Duty. Schools, Universities and a wide range of public sector bodies have a legal responsibility to “have due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism”.

It is based on the bonkers idea, which the Police have adopted wholesale, that non-violent ‘extremism’ is the conveyor belt to terrorism. It is bonkers because there is no proof of this theory and because the causes of terrorism are self evident. Little things like America and Britain’s illegal invasion of Iraq that MPs voted for and Blair lied for with the story of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Terrorism has causes and they are down to the fact that Western imperialism insists on invading, bombing and destabilising countries in the Global South in order that they can extract their wealth.

In Libya a country under the unified government of Muammar Ghadaffi was bombed by NATO countries and the result was a failed state which included ISIS and a refugee crisis.

The same happened in Syria where the CIA, Saudi Arabia and Qatar funded and supplied weapons to a host of Jihadi groups in their efforts to overthrow the Assad regime. Not surprisingly this gave ISIS a headstart and as in Afghanistan, the West’s Frankenstein turned against them. This is what creates terrorism not radicalisation.

Prevent operates on the basis that people are ‘radicalised’ by ‘extreme’ views and then are susceptible to recruitment by terrorists. No proof has ever been found to back up this nonsense. If anything Prevent is likely to create the very problem it’s designed to overcome.

It is no accident that the vast majority of people targeted by Prevent are Muslims and that support for Palestine is one of the indicators that someone is susceptible to being drawn to terrorism.

When I was remanded in Birmingham prison for a week in 2021, after having been arrested going on a Palestine Action outing, I was asked at the prison reception whether I was an ‘extremist’.  I asked her if she knew what an ‘extremist’ was and she confessed she didn’t.

I then explained that all those who fight for their freedom and democratic rights are called extremists and I gave as an example the Suffragettes who were called ‘extremists’ and ‘terrorists’. Today they have plaques in the House of Commons and statues commemorating them but in their time they were vilified by people like Churchill.

Next thing I know, the Jewish Chronicle said I was comparing myself to the Suffragettes.  Some people just don’t get it.

Last Thursday I went to court challenging the Police seizure of my computer and electronic equipment. Although most of it has no value to the Police they insist on hanging on to it.

I brought an action under s.1 of the Police Property Act 1897. The matter was adjourned to a later date. For the hearing the Police officer in charge of my case, Chris Beckford from the Anti-Terrorist Police prepared a witness statement. It was very interesting and gives a good insight into the mentality of Britain’s Thought Police.

In his statement Beckford stated on page 2, paragraph 7 that:

It is important to the investigation that we fully understand Mr Greenstein’s mind set and ideology. This not only comes from public sources, ie his blog and social media, but from his internet search history and communication with others. How, and indeed if, he talks about Hamas with others away from the public domain provides highly relevant insight into Mr Greenstein. (my emphasis)

This isn’t ‘anti-terrorism’ it is the thought police. An insight into someone’s mindset and how they think. Not once in the course of two interviews lasting about 2.5 hours was I asked about any bombs I had made or planted.

The only questions related to articles on my blog or a speech I made at Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27. Counter-terrorism has become the policing of peoples’ minds and what they can say. And there are still fools, knaves and liars like Starmer and Sunak who pretend that this has something to do with peoples’ safety when it is about restricting what we are and are not allowed to say.

In the final paragraph of his witness statement Beckford wrote that:

The return of the property to Mr Greenstein at this stage would be prejudicial and compromising to the investigation as to whether he supports a proscribed terrorist organisation, and whether there is a wider risk to the public that they will be subjected to this support.

So what is this risk to the public? That they will be blown up by my words and thoughts? Chris Beckford is anxious to ensure that no one will be subjected’ to my views on Hamas and the Palestinians. Some might call this censorship but I would be loathe to do so.

This is not just a paper exercise. I was reported to the Police by Zionists and one racist in particular by the name of Heidi Bachram. The Zionist movement in this country is busy trying to extinguish our freedom of speech having done much the same in Israel.

The corrupt rogues and thieves who govern us go scot free. Billions of pounds went to the crooked cronies of the Tories via a VIP channel for procurement. Yet the Police are not interested in investigating corruption, perjury or miscarriages of justice. To date just 2 people have been investigated over the Post Office conspiracy to jail and convict nearly a thousand innocent sub-postmasters. The Met Police are not interested in crimes by the rich and powerful.

Clamping down on free speech in this country or playing the part of the Gestapo by Germany’s police is what freedom under capitalism means in the 21^st century as world war comes ever closer and climate catastrophe signals the end of the human race.

So I guess I am an ‘extremist’ because i want to abolish capitalism before it abolishes us.

Tony Greenstein

This is where the fake anti-Semitism campaign ends up – an attack on the right of free speech

 Boy suspended from Parrswood High School in Manchester for saying ‘Free Palestine’.

See Manchester boy suspended from school for ‘racist abuse’ after shouting ‘free Palestine’ in class

What one wonders was racist about saying ‘free Palestine’ in class?  Was it mentioning Palestine or is the idea of freedom now anti-Semitic too? On their front page they boast that ‘Every child succeeds’.  Clearly the student who exercised freedom of speech has only succeeded in getting suspended.

This is the result of the Prevent programme and the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism.

The letter is here.

Perhaps you could write to

Mark McElwee - the Scumbag Headteacher who doesn't believe in free speech

the Chair of Governors e.caulfield@parrswood.manchester.sch.uk and the Headteacher Mark McElwee at admin@pwh.co.uk as well as s.reeves@parrswood.manchester.sch.uk, l.cray@parrswood.manchester.sch.uk and Ms Mannion j.mannion@parrswood.manchester.sch.uk, 

See below the email sent by a member of Brighton and Hove PSC

From: DAVID ROGER
Date: 16 May 2021 at 13:25:58 BST
To: e.caulfield@parrswood.manchester.sch.uk, Ms E Garry admin@pwhs.co.uk, s.reeves@parrswood.manchester.sch.uk,
Subject: Racism

I hear you have suspended a child for saying Free Palestine
What does this mean ? That you don’t think Palestine should be free ?
Is there an islamophobia problem in your school ?
Do you know a third of Palestinians are Christian ?
What if a child cried “ long live Zionist Israel “ would they get a gold star ?

This action will traumatise children into not thinking for themselves
It’s smacks of racist bias
David Roger
www.davidrogerproductiondesign.com

Free Speech Under Attack - How the Government’s Prevent Programme was used to Cancel Meeting on Israel in Portsmouth

Palestine Solidarity Meeting with Tom Suarez is Cancelled Twice by Portsmouth Council Because it is ‘Controversial’

The book they want to ban - now why might that be?

Extremism in the Defense of Liberty is no Vice!Moderation in the Pursuit of Justice is no Virtue!                        [Barry Goldwater, US Republican Presidential candidate 1964] 

A Guest Post by Jenny Flintoft of Portsmouth PSC

This is the real terrorism - that Prevent is designed to protect

Tom Suarez has, on the basis of research in the Government’s archive written a book documenting the terrorist beginnings of the Israeli state.  I have yet to read and review the book but by all accounts it is an impeccably documented book.

We can always expect the Daily Mail, the paper that supported Hitler in the 1930's, to be around when it comes to suppressing free speech

What is also clear is that the research in this book, which is based on over 400 documents from the government’s own archives is unacceptable to the Zionist lobby in this country.  The Board of Deputies of British Jews, an overtly Zionist body, which calls itself the representative body of Jews in this country has done its best to stop its author Tom Suarez speaking to meetings about his findings.

The Board of Deputies incidentally is elected by nobody.  It is based on synagogue membership.  It doesn’t represent Britain’s secular Jews, about half of all British Jews, the most cultured and educated section of British Jews but narrow minded businessmen and middle class Zionist bigots.  Many of the synagogues elect their representatives on an all male electorate.  Others are simply rotten boroughs where there is no election.

Orwell summed up the language of the Prevent Strategy many years ago

On the basis of the squeals of Britain’s Israel lobby, which doesn’t want the truth about Israel to be known, a campaign has been mounted to stop Tom Suarez speaking.  One wonders what they have to fear?

What is worse is that this is being done under the cover of the government’s Prevent programme.  Prevent was introduced on a mandatory basis under the government’s Counter Terrorism & Security Act 2015.  Purportedly designed to prevent terrorism it operated on the theory that people become terrorists because they are ‘radicalised’.  This absurd theory misses out small things like the fact that people became terrorists because the government in alliance with the United States went and bombed the hell out of Iraq and Afghanistan killing over 1 million people.  Some people wrongly believed that the attack on these countries was because they were Muslim.

The Prevent strategy assumes that people become ‘radicalised’ on the basis of ‘extremist’ political views.  What are ‘extremist’ views?  Anything which doesn’t subscribe to ‘British values’.  Presumably Marxism, subversion, going on strike even, can in certain circumstances be held to be anti-British.  Under this all encompassing rubric, the government has forced universities to vet speakers for public meetings because their young audiences may be susceptible to being unduly influenced by ideas which are not normative and conservative.  Anti-imperialist ideas, Palestine  solidarity and anything else outside the mainstream can be considered ‘extremist’ and thus akin to terrorism.  This is the climate we are dealing with.  That is also why we need to fight back. 

Suarez’s book attacks Israel as a terrorist state.  It is therefore outside the political mainstream.  It therefore gives a license to pathetic pipsqueaks like Portsmouth’s Prevent Officer Charlie Pericleous to go around trying to close political meetings they don’t like.

Of course this doesn’t excuse in any way the cowardly owners of venues – whether it is the Quaker’s Meeting House in Cambridge which cancelled a talk by Suarez or the Friendship Centre in Portsmouth.  A similar meeting at the Friends Meeting House in Brighton which I spoke at with Jackie Walker was the subject of similar attempts to stop the meeting by the Board of Deputies.  Fortunately in our case the Friends had a stiffer backbone than their counterparts in Cambridge.  In Nottingham another meeting by Jackie and myself also had to be moved at the last minute.

We are facing a concerted attack by the Conservative government and the Israel/Zionist lobby in this country on Free Speech.  It needs a robust campaign in response because this is a defence of the very essence of freedom and basic democratic liberties. 

Britain’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign has kept its head down and done virtually nothing in response to this attack on the rights of Palestine supporters and anti-Zionists.  At the moment PSC is incapable of punching its way out of a paper bag, still less mounting a political fightback against government and state attacks.  It even half-welcomed the government’s new International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism until I threw a fit.

Ben Jamal’s advice to Portsmouth PSC is extremely inadequate.  What is needed are not apologies after the event by Council bureaucrats but a determined campaign to ensure that no Council  anywhere or any University tries to ban  speakers that the Establishment in this country doesn’t like.  Universities are under a legal obligation to defend free speech.  Councils have to be made to if necessary. 

We should be tackling head on this whole nonsense of ‘extremism’.  The suffragettes in their day were also considered ‘extremists’.  All fighters for freedom, from Nelson Mandella to Emily Davidson were extremists.  The biggest danger to freedom comes from ‘moderate’ war mongers like Tony Blair and Theresa May.

The Israel Apartheid Week in British universities came under severe attack in January.  One University, the University of Central Lancashire cancelled it outright.  Others such as Exeter and University College London put restrictions on it.

We need a nationwide campaign against the attacks on free speech.  At the moment there is a Free Speech on Israel campaign but it is very weak.  What we need is to organise a nation campaign in defence of our democratic rights involving not just Palestine supporters but civil liberties supporters and anti-racist campaigners.

Below is a description of events at Portsmouth by one of the organisers.

You might also like to send an email to Portsmouth Council's Prevent Officer Charlie Pericleous who can be contacted at: Charlie.pericleous@portsmouthcc.gov.uk  and ask if he sees as his main duty closing down democratic meetings. 

Tony Greenstein  

How Prevent and the Zionists Attempted to Stop Tom Suarez Speaking in Portsmouth

One month ago we booked a venue in Portsmouth, the Friendship Centre, for the evening of Thursday 27 April for an event open to the public.  On the Thursday morning we were told our booking had been cancelled 'because of the nature of the speaker', Tom Suarez.  We quickly booked a new venue, the Buckland Community Centre, only to be told an hour or two later that that booking was cancelled too.  The manager said she had received a call recommending cancellation, but would not say from whom or give the reason.  She said that the City Council’s legal team had insisted on cancellation.  Again she refused to give the alleged reason or legal basis for the cancellation. She did say to our Chair, Zuber Hatia, that the Council would not allow the meeting to take place in any Community Centre or Church Hall.

The meeting finally went ahead in a pub in Havant, 6 miles away, to a much smaller audience than would normally have been expected. Tom was naturally disappointed , but said several times that he was glad we hadn't cancelled. 

The meeting was held to hear Tom Suarez speak about his recently published book, ‘The State of Terror, how terrorism created modern Israel', a book based largely on the evidence of 436 documents in Britain’s national archives.  Allowing the meeting to go ahead in the normal way, with a wider audience, would have allowed more people to make up their own minds about what Tom Suarez had to say, question him about his sources and their interpretation and then read the book if they wanted to go deeper. 

The Daily Mail got hold of the story & started pestering the MP for Portsmouth S, Flick Drummond.  In Flick's own words:

'I was contacted by someone informing me that the Daily Mail was going to write a story about Mr Suarez visiting Portsmouth and what did I think. I did not respond to the Daily Mail at first but just let the police know as I know that there was a riot at the LSE and a fuss in Parliament and I didn't want a big fuss in Portsmouth. 

The Daily Mail continued to ring my office and email me so I just told them I had told the police and hoped that was the end of it. 

They have misrepresented me and I have no view on Mr Suarez speaking anywhere......

My role has been blown out of all proportion and I assume it is because it makes a better story in the press. I was not seeking to stop the meeting but was concerned about other organisations being stirred up to protest.' 

 Flick has personally apologised to me no less than five times. Obviously she would have been better not talking to a newspaper that most sensible people avoid like the plague. Perhaps, however, she was put up to it by Conservative Central Office, who saw an opportunity to create an anti-Corbyn scandal. 'Jeremy Corbyn charity hosts anti-Semitic speaker', trumpeted the Mail.

So who was the main villain of the piece? It appears to have been Charlie Pericleous,  Portsmouth's smooth-talking, oh-so-charming Prevent Officer. The meeting was advertised a month in advance, so Pericleous had a whole month in which to take any action he deemed necessary.  Instead he chose to alert the Friendship Centre on the very day of the meeting that 'special security measures were necessary in view of the nature of the speaker'. The manager was spooked by this & immediately cancelled. 

I had a long & frustrating telephone conversation with him & after a lot of weaselling around he finally admitted that he had rung Ruba Begum at Friendship House on Thursday morning to ask if she had 'appropriate security arrangements in place'.

When I asked, 'Why did you do that?' he said, 'Because of the controversial nature of the speaker.'

          

'Many of our speakers are controversial. We are a campaign, on a controversial issue. Do you think we are Gardeners' Question Time? Why didn't you ring me first, I could have reassured you that there was no need for security, we have never had any incidents in all the years we've been running meetings?'

            'I didn't have your contact details.'

            'We're not a secret group, you could easily have obtained them.' 

He could of course have easily obtained them from MS Begum, but he chose not to.

He agreed to meet us. Ben Jamal had given us some advice on the matter, as follows.

'I think your ask at the meeting should be that the council puts out a clear statement along the following lines: That they did not seek the cancellation of the meeting; that they did not regard Tom as someone who should not be allowed to speak; that there is no bar on his speaking in any venue in Portsmouth; that they are pleased to have met with PSC to have clarified issues – If there has been any suggestion about cancellation of future PSC meetings then you may need to also get them to address that – You may need to allow them to say by way of explanation that they had been liaising with the venues to ensure that there were no security issues - If you want to push it they might want to acknowledge that they should have contacted PSC directly and apologise for not doing so. I would give as a reason for needing a statement that this has generated a huge amount of publicity which is potentially damaging  and that you have been informed by one of the venues that they understood that the meeting should be cancelled on council advice so there is a need to address the confusion that has emerged.' 

When five of us (including Tom Suarez himself) met Charlie Pericleous a few days later, on May 9th, the meeting was extremely unsatisfactory.  It was, as Tom Suarez descibed it, 'an exercise in obfuscation'.

He started off by saying he had received abusive letters from PSC. I said, 'I haven't corresponded with you, only spoken over the phone.' 'No, it wasn't you.' 'Who was it then? I haven't authorised anyone to write to you, & I haven't given anyone your email address, because I don't have it.' 'No, they were letters sent thro' the post'. [Who writes postal letters nowadays?] 'I've got them here,' [pulls out packet]. 'I'd like to see them. If people are writing abusive letters in the name of PSC, I'd like to see them, because I need to deal with it.' [Rummages in packet]. 'One woman was called Tracey.'  Tracey who?' 'Oh, actually I don't seem to have any of them here after all.' !!!!

He point-blank refused to answer any questions we asked. 'I'm not going to do that. I'm here to explain how the system works.' He then proceeded to ramble on for a long time, going round & round in circles & endlessly repeating the same tired meaningless phrases. Instead of listening to our concerns,  he started a long lecture about how wonderful Prevent was & how many lives he was saving. Needless to say he provided no evidence of this.

He refused to consider any of the 'asks' suggested by Ben Jamal. Charlie would not be specific about who had told him to intervene in PSDPSC’s bookings at Friendship House and the Buckland Community Centre.  He said his intervention had been the outcome of internal staff processes, but who or what had prompted their interest in the meeting he would not say.  The reason he gave for advising cancellation was lack of time to assess risks or make arrangements to deal with them: Friendship House had not been told who the speaker was or the subject of the talk.

True, PSDPSC had not got round to supplying the venue with the usual publicity leaflet, but when the manager had contacted us a few days before the event she made no mention of this, only wanting to know what seating layout we wanted.  Over the last ten years we have arranged about 80 meetings in Portsmouth, most of them on Council property and on no previous occasion have the venues shown any interest in the identity of speakers or what they would talk about.  Booking forms, if any, would typically just have a space for “Description of the booking”.  Nor had the Council ever issued any general instructions about what information was needed for bookings or mentioned any need to provide it for risk assessment purposes. PSDPSC meetings have never given rise to any disturbance or posed any risk whatsoever of it occurring. 

So when Charlie told us that this was the first public meeting that the City Council had got cancelled in the last ten years his excuse of insufficient time for risk assessment seemed as implausible as everything else he said.

Charlie himself did seem a tad embarrassed over the whole affair, giving no answer when we pointed out that he had scored an own goal as far as his Prevent programme goes, alienating the Muslim community even more. He also failed to answer when Tom asked if the Jewish Board of Deputies was in any way involved. He did tell us that Tom Suarez was not considered an extreme speaker and assured us that there would be no obstacles raised if we arranged a future event with Tom in Portsmouth.  We shall see.  He refused to agree to the Council issuing a public statement along the lines advised by Ben Jamal at PSC HQ, but promised that some statement by the Council would be forthcoming. As of yet (May 15th) there has been no sign of this statement.

Shortly after the cancelled meeting on Apr 27th, Council employee Ms Megan Barnard took it on herself to write to Tom Suarez's partner, Ms Nancy Elan:

Dear Nancy,

Thank you for your email....The council fully supports free speech, but council officers have to bear in mind the impact on the community of events where inflammatory statements could possibly be made. It's best if venues have time to prepare for such an impact and think about how to manage risks. As Friendship House had not been told the identity of the speaker, council officers advised them that the event might be controversial. They made their own decision to cancel.

A charity that runs a council-owned community centre was then approached to host the talk. Given the short notice there was not enough time to assess the possible impact and put any measures in place to deal with any risks, so council officers advised it would be best for them not to go ahead.

Mr Suarez is not banned from speaking at council venues, but if a booking is made, the venue would need enough time to think about the possible impact of a potentially controversial event and ensure it can go ahead safely.....

Kind regards, 

Meg

Megan Barnard

Leader's Programme Manager
Executive Support Team

Community and Communication

Portsmouth City Council

 I replied to Ms Barnard myself on May 6th, asking her who might be making 'inflammatory statements'. I pointed out that it looked from the letter as though she thought Suarez might do so, & that this was insulting & possibly libellous. I also asked her clarify what 'risks' there could possibly be. Her reply was to say that she had forwarded the email to her line Manager, Louise Wilders, Director of Community and Communication. Ms Wilders has so far failed to offer any clarification, sending one email which entirely failed to address the questions, & ignoring two further emails.

PSDPSC is not letting this lie.  We are putting in a Freedom of Information request for all emails, notes, minutes, reports and correspondence related to the cancellation of the meeting.      

Jenny Flintoft, 15/05/17

see also Pro-Israel Interference in Free Speech in the UK