What Happened in Uvalde is Why the Police Should Be Defunded

 While a Gunman was Killing 19 children and their teachers in Ulvade Texan Police Handcuffed, Pepper Sprayed and Tasered the Parents Instead!

The Problem Isn’t Gun Law but America’s Violent Racist Society - Gun Law Reform Won’t Change That

Police Cowards in Uvalde

If ever there was a demonstration as to why the Police should be defunded, it was on display in Uvalde, Texas. Heavily armed Police stood outside the classroom where the gunman was murdering defenceless children because they didn’t have a key to the door!

They apparently believed all the children were dead but didn’t have the courage to find out for themselves if anyone was alive. It has taken a tragedy like Uvalde to demonstrate that the Police aren’t there to protect people but to protect property.

Police Justify Doing Nothing 

Heavily armed police refused to go into the school and instead saw their job as harassing and persecuting desperate parents. One parent, Angeli Rose Gomez, was handcuffed. When freed she jumped the fence and went in to rescue her child whilst these heavily armed cowards stood outside, pepper spraying and tasering distraught parents.

40% of Uvalde’s budget was spent on these entitled cowards. They should not only be sacked but prosecuted for gross negligence manslaughter. But of course they won’t because the Supreme Court has given them virtual immunity.

Police cowards Outside Uvalde school Texas Tackle Parents Instead of the Gunman

Texas Governor, the Christian bigot Greg Abbott, an anti-abortionist and pro-death penalty supporter, meanwhile spent the aftermath praising the pigs in uniform.

Of course when it comes to shooting an unarmed Black kid then these heroes will rise to the challenge but otherwise they are useless. Ulvade doubled the amount it was spending in one year on providing school security but the killer still ran past police and armed guards. Indeed he was outside for 12 minutes shooting but no one had the gall to tackle him.

He posted what he was intending to do on Fuckerberg’s Facebook but the Moderators, who are so quick to uphold ‘community standards’ when it comes to supporting the Palestinians saw nothing.

Texas's Far-Right Governor Greg Abbott Grandstanding

If nothing else this shows that there is a need for a different, community model of policing. If the parents had had the guns that the Police had then the gunman would have been neutralised far earlier. We need to get away from the idea that we need separate groups of Police to protect us.  The Police have as their priority the defence of the wealthy and property not people.

Meanwhile the far-Right Governor of Texas, Greg Abbot, pontificated about ‘evil’ stalking the land. Clearly he was not in possession of a mirror because it is Abbott who represents evil. Abbot blamed the murder of 19 children and 2 teachers on mental illness and virtually anything but himself and the armed goons who saw attacking the parents as more important than tackling a lone gunman.

His Democratic opponent Beto O’Rourke confronted Abbot over his do nothing approach. Of course Abbot is an easy target. He opposes gun control on principle. Abbot is a particularly vile creature. But it is easy to fall back on the panacea of gun control.

Norway has a very high rate of gun ownership and yet despite the USA having 50 times the population of Norway it has 10,000 times the murder rate. The reasons for the high rate of gun crime in the USA and in particular this phenomenon of shooting children in schools can’t simply be explained by lack of gun control.

The fact is that as a settler-colonial society which recently had slavery, the US is an endemically violent society. It is the only Western state that has the death penalty. To this day the USA maintains a concentration camps in Guantanamo. It has the highest rate of incarceration, some 2 million prisoners, some of whom are kept in conditions that amount to torture. Super-max prisons where inmates are kept in shackles and solitary confinement.

The US is responsible for a phenomenal amount of violence around the world, from Iraq to Afghanistan to Israel. The CIA has been given a license to torture and the US even has a training school for torturers and death squads, the School of the Americas which is now renamed the Institute for Security Cooperation.

If Israel maintains a violent occupation it does so courtesy of US weapons and subsidies. At the moment the US is doing its best to encourage a genocidal war in Ukrainian by supplying it with limitless weapons. The US is the world’s major arms supplier.  The US is the prime factor in violence in the world. Is it any wonder that US violence abroad is imported back home?

The US is of course a massively unequal society and the purpose of the Police is to keep it that way. Inequality breeds violence. The US can’t afford a national health service but it can afford 800 foreign bases and at spends at least $750 billion on its armed forces. It spends more than the next 9 countries put together on its military.

Why should anyone be surprised when this makes some people mentally ill enough to want to kill American kids? After all the US army has been killing children for years in its Drone Wars without any comeback.

The idea that gun control by itself can solve the problem of internal violence is a pipedream sown by the Democrats who, as the Ukraine war has proven, are worse imperialists than the Republicans. In Congress it was 57 Republicans who opposed the $40 billion to Ukrainian neo-Nazis. In the Senate it was 11 Republican Senators who voted against. 

Not one Democrat in Congress – not Sanders, not AOC, not Ilhan Omar or Rashida Tlaib voted against supplying the Azov Battalion with nice, shiny new US weaponry.

It is a tragedy that 19 children and their teachers died in Texas but no one should be fooled that gun control by itself that will be the remedy.  The United States is a violent society and violence begets violence.

Tony Greenstein

See Parents reportedly handcuffed, tasered, and pepper sprayed by police during Uvalde school shooting

The Lib Dem Leadership Wages War on the Palestinians and their supporters as they welcome Chuka Ummuna and Luciana Berger

Contrast the silence of Layla Moran, the Lib Dem’s ‘Palestinian’ Quisling with Rashida Tlaib's brave fight against Trump and AIPAC

 

In March this year the Lib Dems suspended their Friends of Palestine group. As the issue of Palestine and Zionism has become the symbol of the Right’s hatred of Corbyn so the Lib Dems leadership have all but outlawed any criticism of Israel and Zionism.

As Israel veers to the extremes of the racist right, with two prominent Rabbis (Cashtiel and Radler) even telling their students at a pre-military Yeshivah that Hitler was right, he just got the wrong victims, the Lib Dems outlaw any criticism of Zionism and the idea of a 'Jewish' racial state. 

As Israel's recent election witnessed a competition between the two major Zionist parties as to who was more hostile to Israel’s Palestinian minority, the Lib Dems have ensured that Labour’s traitorous Zionist rejects feel welcome and at home.

the late Louis Eaks, pro-Palestinian Chair of the Young Liberals

It was not always like this.  In 1970 the Young Liberals supported a democratic, secular state in Palestine and even the abolition of the Israeli state as a Jewish state. The late Louis Eaks, their Chairman, went on to edit Free Palestine. Indeed Dave Rich, the CST Deputy Director in his atrocious book ‘The Left’s Jewish Problem – Jeremy Corbyn, Israel and Anti-Semitism’ attributed the rebirth of anti-Zionism on the Left to Eaks and the Young Liberals. Rich wrote that Eaks 'did more than anyone else to make Palestine a mainstream issue for the British left.”

Rashida Tlaib, US Congresswoman of Palestinian origin has been forthright in support of the Palestinians unlike Moran

Today the Liberal Democrats have abandoned any pretence to be a centre left party. Their new leader Jo Swinson, who was a Minister under David Cameron and personally responsible for the introduction of massive Employment Tribunal fees, as well as going along with all the attacks on claimants and refugees, local authority funding cuts and tuition fee increases, has pledged never to support Corbyn.  She and the rest of her yellow Tories have adopted wholeheartedly the libel that to support the Palestinians and oppose Zionism is antisemitism.

At a time when ‘anti-Semitism’ is the weapon of choice of the Right in their attack on Corbyn then it is no surprise that Swinson should embrace it. And what better way to demonstrate that you oppose ‘anti-Semitism’ than to ban and prevent the Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine from having the right to organise in your party? Free Speech means nothing to these 'liberals'.

Former leaders Farron and Cable - Farron is an evangelical Christian Zionist

The Party of freedom and civil liberties has, when it comes to Israel, adopted a slavish attitude of support for a state which has just barred 4.5 million Palestinians from taking part in an election as to who governs them and which keeps them under a Military Law which incarcerates and abuses hundreds of children.

Whereas the supporters of Zionism and Jewish supremacism in the Lib Dems have no obstacles placed in their path, supporters of the victims of Israeli racism and occupation are not allowed to organise.  This is the Lib-Dem version of free speech and the right of association.

Tom Watson's mate, Luciana Berger, finds a welcome amongst the Lib Dems

Twelve members of the Lib Dem Friends of Palestine [LDFOP] wrote an Open Letter to their party leadership in June and when that was ignored they wrote an article on Open Democracy. What they have written demonstrates that the Lib Dems are a deeply reactionary and undemocratic party.

The LDFOP were suspended after they posted an article by Electronic Intifada journalist Asa Winstanley, who wrote that Sir David Garrard, a ‘multi-millionaire pro-Israel lobbyist’ was funding the Independent Group of MPs.  As they said ‘We see no evidence that Winstanley’s assertion is untrue, or in any way antisemitic.’ Apparently the truth is now antisemitic!

The assertion is obviously true, as a cursory search of people like Tom Watson or Ian Austin’s entry on the  parliamentary register of MPs demonstrates.  Garrard funds a number of right-wing pro-Israel politicians.

Their letter also argued that the Lib Dems should ditch the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism and  ‘revert to a simple definition, such as that in the Oxford English dictionary: hostility to or prejudice against Jews. ‘

Despite asking for a response to their letter none has been forthcoming. They complain in their Open Democracy article that:

We did not get any response from the Party leadership, but tried to get the topic discussed on four different Lib Dem online forums, only to find ourselves shut out of one platform after another. On one of them, Party activists and officers subjected us and others to troll-like abuse. We have formally complained about our treatment but, having seen no action since 16 June, are not holding our breath.

The federal board has now reinstated LDFP, but under unjustified and humiliating conditions that will make it much harder for it to speak truth to power and question the IHRA definition.

The false 'anti-Semitism' narrative is a ruling class narrative and the reactionary Jo Swinson is not going to allow any opposition in the party to surface to Israeli Apartheid and its supporters. Swinson has gone out of her way to endorse the attacks on the Labour Party as ‘anti-Semitic’.  Those who dissent from this are being silenced.  The Lib Dem leadership don’t do debate.

When you think that the Israeli state is currently arming and equipping the Burmese regime in its genocide of the Rohinga, just as it armed the Hutu regime in Rwanda at the time of the genocide there, to say nothing of the neo-Nazi Azov battalion in Ukraine and it supports any number of reactionary regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Narendra Modi then you have to be particularly dumb to think that this is about anti-Semitism. 

The Lib Dem’s posture is solely about UK support for a foreign policy in the Middle East that is indistinguishable from that of Donald Trump.  Support for Israel is the bedrock of western foreign policy in the Middle East.

Jo Swinson attacks BDS and the Palestinians

Swinson has gone out of her way to attack BDS. The Jewish Chronicle writes that Swinson condemned BDS whilst supporting the two state solution. 2 States is an apartheid solution. It provides Israel  with a justification for depriving Palestinians, who have lived for over half a century under military occupation, of any civil or political rights. You would have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to notice that Israel is not, under any circumstance, going to grant Palestinians a state.

In this week’s election, the ‘left’ Zionists   of the Democratic Party (formerly Meretz) and the Israeli Labour Party gained 11 out of 120 seats in the Knesset. In Israel's first election in 1949 the two labour Zionist parties obtained 65 seats. Today Israel is ruled by a group of open racists and fascists yet Swinson is happy to condemn the only means of pressurising Israel into changing its behaviour. 

Perhaps it was more Black and White when sanctions and disinvestment were the main weapons employed by activists against Apartheid South Africa. In 1933 world Jewry (the Zionists excepted) mounted a Boycott against Nazi Germany. No doubt if Swinson had been around then she would have joined Thatcher in her opposition to sanctions on South Africa and the Zionists when they decided to trade with rather than boycott Nazi Germany. They called it Ha'avara.

The Lib Dems and the Liberals before them have always been pro-Zionist but never as strongly as they are today.  The Lib Dems have recently welcomed Zionist defectors from the Labour Party. Ben Rich wrote in this week’s Jewish Chronicle that Luciana Berger's decision to join the Lib Dems could be a game changer.

This is wishful thinking. The idea that these New Labour leftovers represent anything or anyone is a political fantasy. However what is true is that it has become almost impossible to be a supporter of the Palestinians still less an anti-Zionist in the Lib Dems.

David Ward, who was the Lib Dem MP for Bradford from 2010-2015 was suspended for questioning Zionism in 2013 and the fact that the suffering of Jews in the Holocaust hasn’t led to Israel changing its behaviour. He said that

‘"Having visited Auschwitz twice - once with my family and once with local schools - I am saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza."

Karen Pollock, the Zionist CEO of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said she was "deeply saddened" that the MP had "deliberately abused the memory of the Holocaust".

Given the way the Holocaust is repeatedly used to justify and defend Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, Pollock’s comments can only be described as a chutzpah. The Holocaust is Israel’s main ideological weapon of defence.

The other victim of the Lib Dem leadership’s Zionism is Baroness Jenny Tonge who was forced to resign from the party for daring to challenge the existing consensus. Like David Ward, she was penalised for dissenting from the leadership’s pro-Zionism.

Layla Moran - the Lib Dem's Palestinian Zionist

Layla Moran – Palestinian by origin, Zionist by politics

You might though have expected that Layla Moran, the first British parliamentarian of Palestinian origin, to have stood up for and defended the right of the Lib Dem’s Friends of Palestine group to organise. Not a bit of it.  Moran is a Palestinian Judas.  Not a word of protest has come from this collaborator.

Contrast Layla Moran with the four Black Congresswomen and their support for Palestine

On the contrary she has used her Palestinian origins to lend her support to the idea that supporters of Palestine are anti-Semitic. Without attempting to provide a scintilla of evidence, because throughout the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign evidence has been conspicuous by its absence, she uses the Guardian to bolster her establishment credentials. She wrote:

So, to all the vile antisemites out there: clear off from the Palestinian quest for freedom and justice. Take your odious Jew-hatred elsewhere and do not think for one second that your views help champion Palestinian rights.

Moran thus buys into the idea that the Palestine Solidarity movement, which she has never been a part of, is riddled with anti-Semitism. In fact the exact opposite is the case but Moran, who trades on her origins and little else, knows nothing about what actually happens.

It is difficult to find a parallel to her treacherous behaviour. At a time when Palestinians under Occupation face increasing house demolitions and land thefts as well as violence from settlers and Israeli abuse of their children, where the king maker Avigdor Lieberman after Israel’s elections has long campaigned for the transfer of Israel’s Palestinian citizens, Layla Moran deems it appropriate to slander and libel a movement she has never contributed anything to.

You can get some measure of just how much of a worm Moran is by the description of her by the Jewish Chronicle’s poisonous Political Correspondent Marcus Dysch as “rare, and pretty classy”. Rare she certainly is, since being a Quisling is not a normal occupation.

The Jewish Chronicle which has consistently defamed the Palestinians, which has led the campaign against Corbyn and which has never allowed a glimpse of the reality of Israel’s occupation or its apartheid structure to reach its readership, in stark contrast to America’s Jewish Forward, nonetheless sees fit to praise Layla Moran.  Dysch's praise says everything you need to know about this opportunist.

 Moran's treachery recalls Jack London’s ‘Ode to a Scab’. London wrote that:

After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, and the vampire, He had some awful substance left with which He made a scab. A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a waterlogged brain, and a combination backbone made of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles. 

I couldn't have put it better myself!!  Contrary to Moran’s assertion anti-Semites have always been the best supporters of Zionism. Zionism accepted and still accepts that Jews’ real home is in Israel not where they live.

That is why it is the anti-Semites who are among the biggest supporters of the State of Israel, led by Trump himself. When Trump told 4 Black Congresswomen to ‘go back home’ he also added for good effect the admonition that they ‘they are endorsing Socialism, hate of Israel and the USA!’

Not only Trump, who regularly tells Jews that Israel is their country, but Steve Bannon, Tommy Robinson, ‘white Zionist’ and neo-Nazi Richard Spencer all love Israel.  And why not? Israel is a model state if you are a racist and ethno nationalist. It is a place to send unwanted Jews.

Layla Moran understands none of these things because she is an opportunist who trades on her ancestry for political advantage, in the process stabbing in the back those she purports to be part of.

Contrast Layla Moran with Rashida Tlaib, the first US Congresswoman who is a Palestinian. Tlaib has been to the forefront in supporting the Palestinians and BDS and in the process she has been banned from visiting Palestine by Netanyahu. Tlaib and Ilhan Omar are respected throughout the Palestinian territories whereas Layla Moran is just another in the list of Palestinian traitors through the ages. 

In Israel's 'democratic' elections, there was a concerted attempt to suppress Palestinian voting - of course only about 20% of Palestinians can vote anyway

Moran is one of those rare Arab creatures who is welcomed by the Israeli state. You can get some idea of the Uncle Tommery and scab like behaviour of Moran by the fact that when posters went up on London bus stops condemning Israel as a racist endeavour Moran condemned them as ‘blatantly anti-Semitic’. 

The ruling this week from the Chair of Israel’s Elections Committee, Judge Melcer, forbidding an Israeli NGO from transporting Bedouin women voters from ‘unrecognised’ villages in the Negev to polling stations is an example of how deep racism in Israel is.  Only to vile creatures like Moran is calling Israel a racist state 'antisemitic'.

‘Unrecognised’ Arab villages, which constitute half of the Arab villages in Israel, have no public transport, running water or other facilities. The mere fact that these villages are ‘unrecognised’ i.e. liable to be demolished at any time and without any of the facilities that Israeli Jews take for granted is proof in itself of the inherent and systemic racism of the Zionist state.  But Moran doesn’t like the term ‘Zionist’ either.

You can read the article on how the Zionist state actively discourages Arab voters from voting in the Middle East’s ‘only democracy’ in Ha’aretz. It is but one, small example. Hundreds of Jewish communities are legally permitted to ban Arabs from living in them under the Admissions Committee Law. But to this foul creature to call Israel racist is itself ‘anti-Semitic’.   It is as if Israel were a Jew.  But perhaps I'm reading too much into this opportunist who has probably never given a moment's thought to these issues.

Although I have great admiration for Jonathan Coulter, who I know, and the other signatories to the letter and article I have to say that they are wasting their time. The only principle that the Lib Dems adhere to is having no principles. It is one of the tragedies of the Jeremy Corbyn leadership of the Labour Party that he has allowed the Lib Dems to stake out a position against Brexit and thus allow the Lib Dems come back from their near death experience of gaining just 8 seats in 2015. Nonetheless we should support that small minority in the Lib Dems which isn’t willing to go along with the Trump-Johnson-Swinson consensus and support for the most racist state in the world.

Tony Greenstein

The Threat to Freedom of Speech from Brighton Council Leader Nancy Platts - all in the name of 'anti-Semitism'

 Like Trump Platts Professes Concern About 'Antisemitism' when the real concern is to prevent criticsm of Israel 

When Trump told four Black Congresswomen, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna S. Pressley to ‘go back home’ (despite 3 of them being born in the USA), he also added for good measure that they 'hate America and hate Israel.'

Trump’s concerns are understandable because the one country in the world where Trump is more popular than unpopular is the apartheid State of Israel. [See Support for Trump higher in Israel than almost any other nation: poll]

Like the Tories and Labour’s Right, Trump cannot distinguish between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Which is why, at the very time he was condemning 'anti-Semitism' he was also accusing America’s Jews, 80% of whom vote Democrat, of disloyalty to both himself and the State of Israel. Like his former adviser Steve Bann, Trump uses support for Israel as a stick to beat America’s Jews with!

examples of the abuse that Jackie Walker, one of Platt's targets received -  this is the abuse that anti-Zionists regularly receive but which, unlike that of Zionist prima donnas like Ruth Smeeth is never mentioned

According to Trump Israel is the ‘real home’ of America’s Jews. This is a Zionist doctrine, although many Zionists prefer to maintain a state of political schizophrenia. As Peter Beinart, one of the few genuinely thoughtful Zionists around, whose opinion pieces are always worth reading (perhaps because he’s a Professor of Journalism!) remarked ‘in the past, Trump has repeatedly spoken about American Jews as if they were Israelis.’

And this is equally true of Platts and Kyle.  It is now part of Labour Party culture (if such a term is not an oxymoron) to equate criticism of Israel with criticism of Jews i.e. anti-Semitism. Israel has become the collective Jew. 

That was the purpose and function of the IHRA ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism that Brighton and Hove council adopted last October and for which Nancy Platts voted. So when meetings are held which criticise Israel or Zionism, idiots like Platts (who to be fair has a limited comprehension of such matters) equate such criticism with hostility to Jews).  And those of us who are Jewish anti-Zionists are merely the ‘wrong sort of Jew’ or to use the Nazi term beloved of Zionists, ‘self-haters’ (because if you hate your race you hate yourself).

As Beinart noted 

‘In an April speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition, he called Benjamin Netanyahu “your prime minister” and warned that a Democratic victory in 2020 “could leave Israel out there all by yourselves.”

At the White House Hanukkah Party last December, he told the mostly Jewish audience that Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, “love your country. And they love this country.”

When Kyle, Platts and friends conflate anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism what they are doing is saying that the murderous actions of Israel are carried out on behalf of Jews, wherever they live. That is the logic of equating anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. After all Israel is a ‘Jewish state’. 

Trump being a white supremacist says out aloud what Kyle and Platts can only whisper, viz. that Jewish allegiance is to Israel.  In the meantime these ciphers do their best to introduce Israeli ‘democracy’ into Britain by closing down meetings they disagree with.

Merely by talking about 'resistance' Israeli Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour was gaoled whereas people who chant 'Death to the Arabs' are never even prosecuted

After all Israel is the self-declared ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ albeit a democracy which sent to prison an Israel Arab poet, Dareen Tatour, for expressing support for Palestinian resistance. No amount of racist abuse from Jews in Israel has ever resulted in imprisonment, even in the case of the two rabbis who wrote a book in 2011, Torat HaMelech (the King's Torah) explaining how, according to Jewish law, it was legally possible in war to kill Palestinian children and infants. But this is the type of racism that Platts and her claque ignore.

The Israeli prosecutors found there was 'no basis' to indict the authors of a book who explain why its lawful to kill Arab children

None of this should be any surprise.  At the heart of Zionist theology is the belief that Jews are aliens in the countries they reside in. Israel is the Jewish state and it openly proclaims that it is the state of all Jews. That is why every Jew has the ‘right of return’ to Israel, regardless of whether they have ever been there, whereas Palestinians who were born and lived there for generations have no such right. Racism is inseparable from Zionism and the Kyles and the Platts of Labour's Right are its defenders. 

Yet when it comes to the Windrush Scandal, stop and search and other, genuine examples of racism, Kyle and Platts are silent. Only racism against a section of White people concern them.

As the Jewish Democratic Council of America put it, Trump has ‘"weaponise(d) and politicise(d) anti-Semitism" for political gain.’  And that is exactly what Nancy Platts and Peter Kyle, with their allegations of ‘Jew’ hate/baiting also do.

There is virtually no anti-Semitism in Brighton and Hove.  Jews are a privileged, white community. I know of no anti-Semitic attacks in Brighton. The statement by Platts that ‘I am concerned to hear that there may be any events in or around Labour Party Conference where Jewish people would not feel welcome.’ is disingenuous.  As the meeting with Chris Williamson demonstrated when Jewish people came to stand with him, Jewish people have always been welcome at Palestinian and anti-Zionist meetings.

There are no events where Jews are not welcome. Of course racists, whether they are Jewish or non-Jewish are not welcome at anti-racist events. So members of Sussex Friends of Israel, who did their best to intimidate venues into cancelling the talk by Chris Williamson 2 weeks ago are not welcome. They include people like Simon Cobbs who has demonstrated alongside the English Defence League.  But that is because Cobbs is a racist not because he is Jewish.

There was a complete and total failure to support a family under attack by racists - no comparable case has ever affected a Jewish family

There is and always has been a problem of anti-Muslim racism in Brighton and about that Kyle and Platts are silent. That was particularly true in the case of the Deghayes family, three of whose sons went to fight for Jihadis in Syria after the Police’s failure to tackle the racism they experienced. As the Guardian noted:

Racist incidents increased in 2007 when the boy’s uncle, Omar Deghayes, was released from Guantánamo Bay after being held for five years after his arrest in Pakistan. His return to Brighton led to an angry backlash locally where far-right groups reportedly whipped up anger. Graffiti reading “Behead all Muslims” was daubed near their home and when it was attacked by a mob, police installed CCTV.

Social workers reported that it became increasingly difficult dealing with the family who felt their complaints were not dealt with adequately.

As the boys’ behaviour deteriorated further, youth and social workers expressed their “helplessness” at having no solutions. They expressed “shock and disbelief” when it was discovered the brothers had gone to Syria. “This possibility had never been identified and there was also no recognition that the siblings were vulnerable to radicalisation, travel or participation in conflict.”

The failure to deal with racist attacks on the family led directly to the alienation (‘radicalisation’) of their three sons. Nancy Platts kept her mouth shut during all of this and other failures, such as the murder of Jay Abatan, which Brighton Police force also failed to deal with. But when it comes to non-existent anti-Semitism she is willing to bare her soul to a Zionist publication which has called Jeremy Corbyn an ‘anti-Semite’.

I therefore wrote Platts a letter last night and sent the letter to every Labour and Green Councillor on Brighton and Hove Council.

We know of course what this is about and it has nothing to do with ‘anti-Semitism’ and everything to do with Chris Williamson, Jackie Walker and Ken Livingstone speaking at the fringe of the Labour Party conference in one month.

We expect that the Zionist movement will object. In Israel the Police would simply ban such meetings. In Brighton the Zionists are expecting their faithful poodles Platts and Kyle to do their dirty work. We have news for them.  Chris Williamson and others will speak in Brighton next month regardless of the grandstanding of New Labour's racists.

Below is a letter I wrote to Nancy Platts.  I suspect I won't be receiving a reply!!

Tony Greenstein

Councillor Nancy Platts

Leader Brighton and Hove City Council,

Brighton Town Hall

BN1 1JW

Email to:          nancy.platts@brighton-hove.gov.uk

Dear Nancy,

I have just read your interview with Jewish News, a paper which only a year ago spoke of ‘the existential threat to Jewish life in this country that would be posed by a Jeremy Corbyn-led government.’

An ‘existential threat’ means a threat to one’s very existence. In other words a Corbyn government would represent a mortal danger to Jews. This is the paper which you chose to confide in.

You used to work in Corbyn’s office. I don’t know whether or not you still support him or if, in your new role as Leader of the Labour Group, you are seeking to follow in the footsteps of your predecessors, Warren Morgan and Daniel Yates, both of whom are members of the Jewish Labour Movement.

The title of your interview ‘‘I want Jewish people to feel welcome in Brighton’ is highly offensive. It is no different in tone to the remarks of Warren Morgan two years ago which led to his resignation. You clearly imply that Jewish people are not welcome in Brighton. What evidence do you have for this? Perhaps you could explain why you have singled out Jews as opposed to Muslims or Black people?

I have lived in Brighton for over 40 years and have rarely encountered anti-Semitism other than from fascist and neo-Nazi groups. I am the author of the only book detailing the history of the fight against fascism in Brighton and the South Coast. A book which was reviewed by the Argus in 2012. I think I know a little more about anti-Semitism than you.

In 2012 Brighton anti-fascists scored a historic victory against a Police force which was intent on forcing an English Defence League march through the city. I must confess that I don’t remember either you or any of the other exponents of  Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ of having played any part in either that or any other anti-fascist activity.

You state in your interview that you are ‘concerned to hear that there may be any events in or around Labour Party Conference where Jewish people would not feel welcome.’ Well we all would be concerned if there was any truth to such a story.  However it is a lie peddled by your Zionist friends to drum up sympathy.

Two weeks ago there was an attempt to prevent a meeting by Chris Williamson MP in Brighton. Peter Kyle MP called him a ‘Jew baiter’ a charge that is nothing less than a form of political terrorism. Kyle’s real objection was that Chris had opposed the witchhunt in the Labour Party and called for open selection of Labour MPs. In other words Jews were being used as a stick to beat the Left with.

Instead of speaking up in support of free speech and the rights of peaceful assembly, rights guaranteed under Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention of Human Rights you have chosen to stand with the McCarthyists and those who would destroy free speech on Israel and Palestine. You have done this at the behest of supporters of Israeli apartheid.

Allegations of anti-Semitism by the Right, and I include you in that, are nothing more than a convenient smokescreen for those who wish to avoid a debate over Israel and Zionism. You can rest assured that just as we ensured that Chris defied the threats of violence from those who tried to prevent him speaking two weeks ago we will do the same again.

We are determined to ensure that Chris Williamson, Ken Livingstone and Jackie Walker are able to speak freely at the Labour Party conference fringe, your McCarthyist friends notwithstanding.

Jackie Walker in particular has suffered vile racist abuse  from your Zionist friends. I am copying some of them here so that you cannot plead ignorance. In Israel Zionists march to chant of ‘death to the Arabs’. In this country they complain of ‘anti-Semitism’.

Racism against Black people is an integral part of Zionism. In Israel Black Jews are not considered fully Jewish and currently there is an attempt to forcibly deport 40,000 Black African refugees who in the words of Netanyahu ‘threaten Israel’s Jewish identity. The Israeli Labour Party too supports deporting these refugees. The same Israeli Labour Party that the Jewish Labour Movement is affiliated to.

I doubt if there is a single Palestine solidarity activist in this country, including Jewish anti-Zionists, who has not been called an anti-Semite. The fact that people like you have been taken in by this nonsense speaks volumes about your commitment to anti-racism.

It was little more than a year ago that you were on the platform speaking alongside Chris Williamson. It seems that having fulfilled your political ambitions you are travelling a well worn path to the right that people before you have taken.

The weaponisation of anti-Semitism is not confined to Britain or the Labour Party. In the United States Donald Trump has combined vociferous support for Israel with praise for neo-Nazis. When telling 4 Black Congresswomen to ‘go home’ he also attacked  them because they "hate Israel & all Jewish people.’

I’m sorry to see that you have joined with those who use bogus charges of ‘anti-Semitism’ to deflect support for the Palestinians. You should be ashamed of yourself. If Jews in this country experienced even a tenth of the discrimination that Palestinians endure in Israel then they would indeed have cause to complain about anti-Semitism.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Greenstein

Letter I wrote to Nancy Platts