Counsel Confidential

Family barrister (non-practising). Mother & nature lover. Domestic abuse survivor. Professional & (too much) personal experience of the private family courts

[Hannah Summers @hansummers]

NEW: I interviewed Dylan* who was taken from his mother aged nine by the family courts. She was barred from seeing him for six years after he was removed on the advice of an unregulated psychologist. Now, reunited, they tell their story for the first time. https://t.co/jMi1eA6fGC

[Hadley Freeman @HadleyFreeman]

This week’s @thetimes column is about Zack Polanski’s desperate attempts to launder his party’s antisemitism

Antisemitism is all the Greens are recycling

https://t.co/tV8pBiZ9Ey

[Board of Deputies of British Jews @BoardofDeputies]

Standing Strong. Extinguish Antisemitism.

Join the rally to stand in solidarity with the Jewish community and stand up against antisemitism and extremism.

📍 Central London | 🗓 Sunday 10 May | 🕐 1pm

[Counsel Confidential @CounselConf]

@JeanHatchet @MarinaPurkiss @jonsac The producers must have a vacuous “useful idiot” list. Almost feel sorry for her.

[Jean Hatchet @JeanHatchet]

The Golders Green stabbing suspect, a man who attempted to murder Jews, had “a history of violence and mental health issues” and Mark Rowley is trying to work out,

“whether this attack was deliberately targeting the Jewish community in London”

1. This happens when men kill their female partners in domestic terror situations too. The report is “mental health issues”.

But the man has an opportunity to kill his boss, his friend, or anyone he encounters in the same day. He chooses to kill his wife/girlfriend. The reason is he hates her. There is no alternative reason.

In this instance this man, mentally ill or not, CHOSE to try to kill Jews because he hated them. He went to a Jewish area and he targeted two men who were obviously Jewish.

2. Why did he hate them so much?

The responsibility for this cannot be avoided. It rests with those people who since October 7th 2023 have repeatedly raised the anti-Semitic hate levels in the UK to murderous levels, because you are vehemently obsessed with positioning Hamas as victims not aggressors in a war they began.

You have joined anti-Semitic marches. You have draped yourself in a performative keffiyeh and hung Palestinian flags in your windows. You have made upside down triangles with your hands and shouted for “global intifada”. You have knocked on doors to ask people to boycott Israel. You have written hateful, hideous things online about Jews and how they “deserve” violence. You are embedded in political parties like @TheGreenParty @UKLabour @thisisyourparty and the Independent Candidate Alliiance. Some of you are politicians yourselves - repeatedly making statements about Israel and “genocide” with no sense of responsibility for the hatred that rhetoric was fomenting. Though you knew it was.

All of you, every one of you, is responsible when a man, mentally ill or not, picks up a knife, marches into a Jewish community and begins stabbing Jews.

Bear your shame, hold your tweets and speeches.

[Dr Adrienne Barnett @BarnettAdrienne]

https://t.co/Eu5WCvtlh0

This is the account of an incredibly brave young woman, Florence, who was brutally removed from her mother at the age of 10 by the family court and spent the next 5 years fighting back while going through unimaginable pain. Florence was finally able to return to her mother when she was allowed to make her own application to the court at the age of nearly 16. She had not been allowed to do so before then. She is still grieving for the years of childhood with her mother the family court stole from her.

At the age of 12 Florence wrote to the President of the Family Division. It is utterly shameful that he did not reply. She has recently written to him again. Her letter is in the brilliant article by @hansummers at the link above. Thank you for bringing Florence’s plight to public attention. And deepest thanks to Florence for sharing her story.

Florence wants the family courts not to subject any more children to the ordeal she went through. She is determined to be a campaigner for change. Her message is: “It’s so important to believe young people when they say something is wrong. It can take so much to say it and losing faith in a system designed to protect you is painful”.

Child removals by the private law family courts must stop. @Right2Equality is campaigning to stop child removals and the harm caused by reliance on the pseudoscience of ‘parental alienation’ that Florence said caused so much damage to her and her mother.

[Counsel Confidential @CounselConf]

@JeanHatchet Thank you 🙏

[Imam of Peace @Imamofpeace]

My Letter to the Jewish Community – October 7, 2025

Dear brothers and sisters,

I write to you today with a heavy but steadfast heart. Two years have passed since the horrors of October 7, 2023, when Hamas committed atrocities that shook the soul of humanity. Those acts of terror, against innocent men, women, and children, were not acts of faith, but of evil. They were crimes against G-d and against all that is sacred in both our traditions.

I grieve with you. I stand beside you. I share your sorrow, and I honor your resilience.

The days and months that followed revealed not only the depth of your pain but also the silence of many who once claimed moral kinship. Too many interfaith partners disappeared when you needed them most. That silence was a betrayal; not only of the Jewish community, but of the very principles of truth and compassion that faith demands of us all.

Let me be clear: Hamas is not the voice of Islam. It is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood; the same violent ideology that birthed ISIS and al-Qaeda. Its cruelty has hijacked the fate of Gaza, desecrated Islam’s image, and betrayed the Palestinian people themselves. Our faith commands us to stand against injustice… wherever it appears and whoever commits it.

To my Jewish brothers and sisters: We share your grief, we honour your dignity, and we share your hope.

I stand with you. And I pray that G-d grants comfort to the bereaved, freedom to the hostages, and healing to all who still carry the scars of that day.

May Hamas be cursed at every sunrise and every sunset, for all eternity.

May this remembrance strengthen our resolve to build bridges of courage and truth, grounded in faith and humanity that evil can never destroy.

With peace, compassion, and unwavering solidarity,

Imam Tawhidi

[Counsel Confidential @CounselConf]

@DrProudman Mazeltov 🥂Very Well Deserved 🥂

[Counsel Confidential @CounselConf]

@jk_rowling This is an excellent speech on the mutating virus of antisemitism https://t.co/m1ygyI9bMe

[Counsel Confidential @CounselConf]

@DrProudman Mazeltov!

[Counsel Confidential @CounselConf]

Surreal to be featured in @DrProudman’s book, “… it is only through the bravery of women who bring their cases to court again and again that we can achieve change. That our system relies on vulnerable women exposing themselves to repeated trauma in order to make progress.”

[Counsel Confidential @CounselConf]

@BarnettAdrienne I was ordered to do the SPIP. Colossal waste of time - 4 hours of my life I’ll never get back. When I raised DA, it was minimised and I was told that I should look beyond it. Utterly appalling.

[Counsel Confidential @CounselConf]

@bpjamie @zarahsultana You seemed to have missed the Alawite massacre happening now in Syria. Wonder why ? Oh that’s right, it has nothing to do with Israel.

[Hamas Atrocities @HamasAtrocities]

Nothing but Alawite bodies
Make sure to scroll
🧵👇

[Counsel Confidential @CounselConf]

@bpjamie @PSCupdates No Jews, No News!

[Counsel Confidential @CounselConf]

@bpjamie @PSCupdates https://t.co/HOVi1aA2ic

[Ella Ke @EllaTravelsLove]

Hello and good morning to everyone in Columbia University in New York, when will we see encampments over what's going on in Syria?

[Counsel Confidential @CounselConf]

@bpjamie https://t.co/y1HWFPiOHG

[Joo @JoosyJew]

There’s the obvious furore about Trump’s AI video of Gaza.

Albeit no women with beards, belly-dancing on the beach, it’s worth reminding yourselves what Gaza was actually like before Hamas and the Islamic Republic of Iran sacrificed it all to feed their lust for Israel's blood.

[Dalia Ziada - داليا زيادة @daliaziada]

The murder of these innocent kids and their mother is so heartbreaking, and those who are trying to justify it by comparing it to the victims of the war in Gaza are just disgusting anti-semitic manipulators who openly or secretly approve of Hamas terrorism.

Kidnapping a helpless, unarmed mother and her toddlers from inside their home, literally in their pajamas, and then torturing them and killing them is nothing but an act of terrorism that has to be punished and cannot be justified in any way whatsoever.

Hamas is a terrorist organization, and those who are supporting Hamas are also terrorists waiting for the opportunity to show us their real faces.

In contrast, the Israelis did not break into the homes of civilian Gazans on a peaceful morning to kill, torture, and kidnap them as Hamas did on October 7.

Yes, the Gaza war was ugly, just like any other war. However:

1. This war could have never happened if Hamas had not committed the October 7 attack.

2. The number of casualties in the Gaza war could have been much less if Hamas were brave enough to be above the ground and fight the war that they started. Instead, Hamas hid in tunnels under the homes and hospitals of the Gaza civilians and purposefully declined to provide the civilians with any shelter so Hamas leaders could use their blood to gain legitimacy for their terrorism.

So, hey Hamas supporters, stop playing this game of "the children of Gaza" because you are the ones who actually killed them when you endorsed and even celebrated Hamas's terrorist attack on Israeli civilians on October 7.

Hamas has to be destroyed! There is no way these terrorist organizations remain standing for another day! The world has to do something.

#غزة #حماس #إسرائيل #الرهائن #بيباس #Gaza #Israel #Hamas #hostages #HostageRelease #BibasBabies #BibasFamily

[Counsel Confidential @CounselConf]

@bpjamie https://t.co/gDDEKtMhvj

[Yossi BenYakar @YossiBenYakar]

How is it that Western countries fail to see what the Arab world already understands?

It’s no coincidence that the Egyptian army is reinforcing positions along the border…

[Counsel Confidential @CounselConf]

@bpjamie