Louise How

🎗️🇬🇧

[Louise How @HowLouise]

I have often asked myself the same question. But I now know the answer. I would. Would you?

[Rawan Osman روان عثمان @RawaneOsmane]

“Free Palestine.”

I grew up on those words.

In Lebanon, most people around me wanted a free Palestine for a very practical reason — to send the Palestinian refugees back. The civil war that tore my country apart was ignited in no small part by the Palestinian armed factions who turned Lebanon into their launching pad. “Free Palestine” meant: free us from them.

In Damascus, where my father’s family lived, the sentiment was different but equally self-serving. Palestine must be returned to the Arabs, its righteous owners. No one asked follow-up questions. No one was expected to.

Palestine was central to Islam, most Arabs are Muslim, therefore supporting the Palestinian cause was reflexive. A non-brainer in the most literal sense — no brain engaged at all.

Nobody stopped to point out that Palestine is not an Arabic word. Nobody found it strange that Jerusalem, the supposedly third holiest city in Islam, is not mentioned once in the Quran. Not once. Nor is Palestine. The entire theological and political architecture of this cause rests on a foundation that their own scripture doesn’t bother to acknowledge.

What was actually happening was indoctrination. A systematic, generational rejection of Jewish sovereignty — and frankly, of any minority sovereignty. Jews, Christians, Druze, Kurds, Assyrians, Yazidis — the Arab world has been remarkably consistent in how it treats people who are different. We just don’t talk about that.

Instead, in the West, we talk about Palestine.

In the West, a civilization that has elevated human rights to its highest moral currency, the Palestinian cause has become the one exception to every rule. In the queue of human suffering, Palestinians cut the line every time. Homosexuals executed in Gaza and hanged from cranes in Iran? Palestine first. Women imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for campaigning for the right to drive — a right they were denied until 2018 — girls sold into marriage in Afghanistan, women erased from public life entirely under the Taliban? After Palestine. Political dissidents ground into dust in Syrian and Egyptian prisons, journalists disappeared in Libya, children starving in Yemen while their rulers wage proxy wars, entire populations hollowed out by hunger in Sudan? All of it waits. Christians ethnically cleansed from Iraq and Syria, the Arab world methodically emptied of every Jewish community it once held — a demographic erasure carried out across a century with surgical patience and near-total Western silence?

Palestine is still first.

So let’s end where we started. Free Palestine. Which Palestine, exactly? The Roman invention? The British administrative line? The British Mandate covered the entire territory of what is today Israel, the West Bank, Gaza and Jordan. In 1921, 78% of that mandate was handed to the Hashemite family — a dynasty imported from Hijaz in present-day Saudi Arabia — and became the Kingdom of Jordan, which it remains to this day. A foreign royal family, on the majority of historic Palestine, ruling it as a monarchy. Nobody protests that. No flags, no chants, no encampments. The remaining 22% was designated for the Jews, became Israel, and is the only part that any pro-Palestinian activist has ever had a problem with.

So when you say Free Palestine, you mean that 22%. You mean the Jews.

And free it from whom? From a people with a three-thousand-year-old documented presence in that land, to restore the glory of a name coined by Roman colonizers, a name lifted from the Torah, a name that has no roots in Arabic, no mention in the Quran, and no history as a sovereign state?

You are not chanting for liberation. You are chanting for colonialism — the Roman kind, repackaged for social media.

Free Palestine is not a cause. It is a colonial term, coined by invaders, recycled by the indoctrinated. The least you can do is have the intelligence to understand it and the decency to reflect on your position.

📍#Israel

[Konstantin Kisin @KonstantinKisin]

What if the west isn't the villain they told you it was?

We’ve spent years accepting accusations about racism, intolerance, and slavery without challenging the bigger historical reality:

The societies most condemned today are also the ones that led the world in ending slavery, expanding rights, and building the most tolerant nations on earth.

That’s the conversation nobody wants to have.

[Maggie Oliver @MaggieOliverUK]

RESIGNATION LETTER TO @AndyBurnhamGM

Following my comments yesterday in the media around the huge failures in my opinion of part 4 of @AndyBurnhamGM independent review in Manchester, I am sharing my resignation letter sent to him and his deputy last January 2024, as I have been approached by numerous news outlets for more information. I share it below in full.

I always try to give credit where credit is due, and I will remain eternally grateful to @AndyBurnhamGM for instigating the Independent reviews into Op Augusta in Manchester and Op Span in Rochdale. They both confirmed without doubt that all I had said was true and that has been incredibly important to me and survivors as we tried to make sense of all that happened.

The final part of the process however was meant to be an “ Assurance Review” and it was meant to deliver assurances that CURRENT practises in @gmpolice regarding their treatment of vulnerable victims of sexual abuse were now fit for purpose, based on current evidence. Instead what happened in this 4th part of the review was not honest, transparent, or in any way fit for purpose in my opinion.

It’s a complex subject matter and there’s an awful lot to cover, but this letter below which I sent to @AndyBurnhamGM last January explains some of it, especially why I and @TMOFCharity resigned from a process in stage 4 that was little more than a tick box exercise. Even the two independent professionals who had carried out the previous 3 parts resigned, unwilling to put their names to something they knew was not in fact wanting to speak the truth.

What I saw in Mr Burnham and @gmpolice was a willingness to say there had been huge “failures in the past” but when looking at action around failures still going on today, there truly was no “duty of candour” on display! Instead they turned away. Again.

Once again the voices of those victims and survivors whose voices SHOULD have been front and centre of this report were totally silenced and blocked out of the “Assurance review” making it worthless. The establishment again “marking its own homework”.

Just Like in @IICSAVSCP the 7 year statutory national enquiry for which we are currently taking this government to a Judicial Review, like in Oldham and in so many other cases throughout the country over the last 3 decades.

So there is a willingness to admit past failures as that can no longer be denied, but there’s still a huge avoidance of addressing what’s still going wrong today.

In other words continuing to turn away when what our country (and victims) need is a hard scrutiny at the problems TODAY, based on real life experiences of survivors and not a cover up yet again from those at the top of our PUBLIC institutions whose duty it is to act in my opinion.

Our public servants, must begin to show courage, integrity, honesty, and bravery, something we have not seen in decades. And that’s has to change!!

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

I stand against antisemitism.

I stand against those people who want Jews to be afraid to go about their lives, and will never allow them to win.

I stand with the Jews of Britain.

[Jake Wallis Simons @JakeWSimons]

Exceptional poise, moral clarity, courage and grace from @KemiBadenoch in the face of the Gaza mob. (Total 🔥 too.)
Free Britain from jihadism!

[Konstantin Kisin @KonstantinKisin]

It turns out that if you import millions of people who are taught to hate Jews their entire lives your country becomes less safe for Jews. Who could have predicted this?

[Chris Rose @ArchRose90]

Growing up in the UK, I’ve never had someone approach me and say “what are you doing around here” for being black.

This happened to a Jewish man who was simply doing his job.

Combined with the arson attacks, British Jews are targeted in ways people like me aren’t. A sickness.

[Louis Mosley @louismosley]

@ZackPolanski - this is magnificent. Three things I can’t deny:

1. It is a video.
2. You are wearing a jacket.
3. Then you aren’t.
4. Then you are again.

Unfortunately that’s where the accuracy ends.

A few corrections for you:

Peter Thiel is not our CEO. Alex Karp is — and has been for 20+ years. (A lifelong Democrat, for anyone keeping score.)

We are not a “spyware company.” Spyware is malware. Malware is illegal. Calling a software company spyware is, technically, defamatory (don’t worry, we are not suing).

We don’t build surveillance technology. We build software that helps organisations make sense of data they already hold. Not the same thing.

There was no “private tour” of our HQ. There was a public photocall to which the media came. Hence, why there are so many pictures of the event.

Our MOD contract is not “the biggest defence contract in UK history.” Ajax armoured vehicles = £5.5bn. Dreadnought submarines = £31bn. We’re grateful for the work, but let’s keep a sense of scale.

We have no more access to NHS data than Microsoft has to the contents of your Word documents. I think you know this by now.

We don’t have access to patient medical records. Same story.

I agree that “nothing matters more than our health.” Which makes it worth reminding you of what Palantir’s software is actually doing in the NHS right now:

->110,000 additional operations
->15% fewer delayed hospital discharges
->7% more patients finding out within 28 days whether they have cancer

Respect again for what you did with that jacket.

[Louise How @HowLouise]

@timothy_stanley The sun may be shining but it is as warm out there as Starmer sharing a lift with Sir Ollie Robbins!

[Louise How @HowLouise]

@koshercockney It’s so disgusting. This video really upset me too. Absolutely shameful.

[Arsen Ostrovsky @Ostrov_A]

I see Pakistan’s Defense Minister @KhawajaMAsif has now deleted his unhinged, Jew-hating, Hitlerite diatribe.

But screenshots are forever. So, don’t forget this is same country who claims to be honest broker in ceasefire with Iran.

[Toby Young @toadmeister]

Five years on, the Batley teacher who showed a cartoon in a free speech lesson is still in hiding – cleared of any wrongdoing, but abandoned, traumatised and with his life in pieces. https://t.co/FyfPBxLoP6

[Kosher @koshercockney]

This is a must listen and a must share.

Seriously. The BBC at its very worst.

And this isn’t even @DouglasKMurray at his very best, yet he’s utterly brilliant.

[Hen Mazzig @HenMazzig]

Friendly reminder: commenting “Free Palestine” on a post about Passover is antisemitic.

Celebrating a Jewish holiday has nothing to do with the war in Gaza.

Jews will never stop practicing our faith to appease trolls who are offended by any mention of Judaism or Israel.

[Louise How @HowLouise]

@afneil If someone has an ‘extreme fear of dogs’ they have a phobia and the problem is theirs. Why should society adapt to suit the irrational fear of a few people who refuse to accept that they themselves have a phobia for which they themselves should take responsibility?

[Omid Djalili @omid9]

Could it be that a lot of people going on these marches genuinely have no idea what they are supporting, or do they consciously support this murderous, tyrannical regime and therefore the continued suppression of the Iranian people?

[Kosher @koshercockney]

I’ll ask again. Why is Keir Starmer STILL refusing to proscribe the IRGC?

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

Antisemitism is on the rise. The Al-Quds protests and terror marches are helping fuel it.

We need a shared British identity. The Conservatives are going to fight for that.

We will root out the separatism tearing Britain apart.

[The Free Speech Union @SpeechUnion]

A 19-year-old Royal Holloway student — Brodie Mitchell — was suspended after a Freshers’ Fair exchange with an anti-Zionist activist who called him a “wannabe Jew”.

He responded by asking why she was wearing a “tea towel” — referring to the keffiyeh-style head-dress she was wearing.

The university suspended Brodie, locked him out of campus and his accommodation — despite having no contractual right to do so — and launched major misconduct proceedings that could have led to his expulsion.

While Brodie faced disciplinary action and serious disruption to his studies, the other student continued attending campus as normal.

The process was deeply unfair and a blatant example of double standards for speech on campus. Royal Holloway was allowed legal representation at the hearing — but Brodie was not.

Now the university is spending vast sums on lawyers to defend its actions in the High Court — wildly disproportionate to the case and seemingly designed to bully a 19-year-old student out of the litigation. Royal Holloway’s conduct is, in our view, disgraceful and intolerable. The Free Speech Union is proud to stand by Brodie in fighting back against this attempt to bully him.

With the support of the Free Speech Union, Brodie is now back on campus — but under onerous conditions restricting who he can talk to and what he can say. Royal Holloway proposes that Brodie face expulsion for any further breach of university rules, no matter how minor.

The enactment of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 was a step-change in the protection of freedom of speech on English campuses. ‘Business as usual’ is no longer good enough – universities need to get serious about tolerating their students’ free speech. Royal Holloway, however, does not seem to have received the memo. It is time to remind them, forcibly, of their duties.

We are challenging the restrictions and asking the regulator to investigate. To help Brodie, and other FSU members in similar predicaments, please give to our legal defence fund. Any donation you make will go into a general fund which will pay for the best legal representation for members under threat.