Alma Reisel

Passionate about children and young people, social work, support for parents, LGBT inclusion and Judaism. All views my own. Retweet does not mean endorsement.

[Crystal @crystalwillseeu]

The NHS has just banned puberty blockers for children. You’d be forgiven if you heard that and thought “oh, maybe they were being over-prescribed.”

Do you know how many children were prescribed puberty blockers on the NHS last year? 83.

83.

This is a moral panic.

[Alma Reisel @almareisel]

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, this design for urine sample pots is #everydaysexism

[Hannah Weisfeld @hannahweisfeld]

1/ Before the last chinks of light disappear it’s important to say: it’s possible to support the humans of this conflict. Israelis who have suffered a terrible tragedy at the hands of Hamas, & Palestinians in Gaza who are suffering a terrible human tragedy as a result of the war.

[David Hirsh @DavidHirsh]

Diane Abbott is the first black woman in parliament and a courageous pioneer in British public life. She is regularly subjected to racist and misogynist abuse; and a particular kind of racist misogynist abuse too.

This letter was a really bad mistake. Diane Abbott says that it was a first draft that had been sent by mistake. Well fine, we all make mistakes like that.

But then...

1. She has been publicly and relentlessly supporting an antisemitic movement in this country for 8 years, led by her colleague Jeremy Corbyn. That rather diminishes people's willingness to give the benefit of the doubt.

2. Is her position really that between the first and the second drafts she suddenly remembered the Holocaust?

Roma and Sinti, as well as Jews, suffered slavery and apartheid and exclusion from public transport, and worse, in living memory.

And this was not only during the Holocaust. Roma and Sinti, and Jews, had been excluded from public life in Europe for centuries, and subjected to organised violence for centuries.

The letter that was printed treats the Holocaust as a short-lived aberration from the deeper, more enduring structural racism that black people have been subjected to for hundreds of years.

It is also true that the view she articulates in the letter that was published is not unusual is contemporary anti-racism. This might be mitigation; she is not the only person capable of drafting a letter like this. Or it might not be mitigation, it might be a deeper indictment of a well entrenched aspect of contemporary anti-racist thinking.

And, Diane Abbott has lots of Charedi Jews in her constituency, and she has had, over the decades, a pretty good relationship with them, and she has supported them against antisemitism. This is to her credit. Perhaps this has made her too ready to associate 'real' antisemitism with prejudice against an easily identifiable Jewish current.

So maybe the Labour Party should think about giving Diane Abbott the benefit of the doubt. She's made a mistake drafting this letter, and another mistake was made in sending it off.

But then, maybe she has to do something differently, if she is given a second, actually a twentieth or a fiftieth, chance. Maybe she has to engage more seriously in understanding antisemitism, how it works, and how it relates to anti-black racism.

Diane Abbott is an intelligent, able and courageous woman; sometimes her enemies have jumped on her mistakes to portray her as otherwise, but unfairly.

Perhaps it's not fair, but being a pioneer might thrust responsibility on her shoulders for continuing to pioneer. She needs to understand that her own role in Labour antisemitism has not been a positive one.

[Alma Reisel @almareisel]

@SussexUniESW @leelenth @SharlandElaine @walrus2005 Well done Leethen!!! Such an important piece of work

[Alma Reisel @almareisel]

@DrAmyGarner @GinnyAB If you have a partner who is picking up lots of extra parenting, tell them I’m open to a mutual support group. These exams have been a horrible shadow over our family life for the last few years.

[Alma Reisel @almareisel]

@NikeService hi Nike, my running club app has been consistently wrong in tracking distances. I’ve just discovered it and it’s obviously really disappointing. Is there anything I can do with the settings to make it right?

[Yehudis G @YehudisG]

Judah Baumgarten of UOHC tells @InquiryCSA wants to negotiate with statutory services with regards to safeguarding children.

Arghhh!

#ReligiousOrganisationsAndSettings #sexualabuse #itsnotok

[YehudisFletcher @YehudisFletcher]

Offenders also offend against those of their own gender, making yichud entirely irrelevant.

[YehudisFletcher @YehudisFletcher]

In response, Rabbi Baumgarten says that a UOHC rabbi meeting someone in their own home is acting in their personal capacity 😂😂 who wants to see the retraction I was forced to sign in a rabbi's dining room, stamped with the UOHC official stamp? #CSA #iicsa #InternationalYouthDay

[Richard Ferrer @richferrer]

Tomorrow’s @JewishNewsUK front page.

[YehudisFletcher @YehudisFletcher]

'Lost the confidence of the community' - but managed to get onto the dais of a huge cross communal event with a spread in the brochure, too #ReligiousOrganisationsAndSettings #CSA

[YehudisFletcher @YehudisFletcher]

Oh there are those who 'want to raise awareness about sex abuse' and do exactly the same thing. It is exhausting.

[Eve Sacks @EveSacks]

Can’t tell you how many times I have heard that Yichud prevents abuse.

[YehudisFletcher @YehudisFletcher]

In yesterday's @InquiryCSA evidence, Rabbi Baumgarten admitted that euphemisms are used in training and awareness raising. He didn't see a problem with that and insisted that everyone knows exactly what is being referred to. He is wrong. #ReligiousOrganisationsAndSettings

[SHOWstudio @SHOWstudio]

The system isn't broken. It was built this way.⠀

Writer and broadcaster @afuahirsch calls for Britain to recognise its dark colonial history through hundreds of years of oppression in the form of the British Empire.
⠀
https://t.co/7tAFbVtVLz

[Zing Tsjeng @misszing]

I'm sorry but the Daily Mail doing a pros and cons list of slave owners has absolutely ended me

[Afua Hirsch @afuahirsch]

In a former life, when I thought you cd politely persuade people not to be racist

Their response? "If you don't like it here, LEAVE". Which I'm yet to hear said to a white British person

Racism is telling black people who have a critique of their own country, they should leave

[Joanne Harris @Joannechocolat]

Profoundly disappointed that so many of the women of my generation who once fought so hard for their own right to choose - jobs, clothes, fertility, the way they define their own womanhood - can now feel the need to impose their view of what makes a "real" woman.