Phil Cassen

[Maggie Oliver @MaggieOliverUK]

Day 2 of our groundbreaking Judicial Review today.

Still consumed in legal arguments as the govt says they don’t HAVE to do anything. Public enquiries have no legal obligation to implement any recommendations! And by NOT bringing in the recommendations of IICSA they argue there in “NO DETRIMENT” to anyone!!!! Just unbelievable, disgusting, offensive and totally contemptuous….

They don’t have to act on recommendations, that’s of course true. But what arrogance! How insensitive and dismissive of all survivors and victims who believed the promises made to them - that retraumatising themselves to bring change were just empty words! Empty promises!!

And of course it begs the question, why are we going into yet ANOTHER public enquiry …. That’s the real question here …. And why spend billions of public money on public enquiries….. it seems as though it’s just another way to avoid action and accountability and kick the ball down the road!!! 😡😡😡

But we @TMOFCharity are fighting this to the death and doing our best to expose the hypocrisy and lies of successive governments!

We and our incredible legal team Howe and Co can but try….

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

Iran threatens Western military bases, sponsors terrorism and persecutes its own people. Yet 144 UN members vote to give it a seat on a committee overseeing key UN programmes. Britain failed to object to its nomination. What a disgraceful display of diplomatic cowardice.

[Sharron Davies HoL MBE @sharrond62]

What the heck’s wrong with the UN… really guys? 🥺🤡

[Natasha Hausdorff @HausdorffMedia]

As calls for an independent inquiry into the BBC escalate, I address the more recent allegations of antisemitism within the corporation. The BBC’s response, insisting that its existing procedures are robust and that an external investigation is unnecessary, highlights the problem. The allegations don’t simply concern isolated editorial mistakes, but systemic failures, institutional bias, misleading reporting and failures of senior management. How can an institution accused of such serious failings credibly investigate itself?

[Campaign Against Antisemitism @antisemitism]

Apparently even coexistence through music counts as propaganda now.

Last night, anti-Israel demonstrators held a protest outside the British Library in London against a performance by an Arab-Jewish ensemble associated with the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra.

The concert’s organisers had reportedly billed it as an evening of “extraordinary music and shared humanity”, bringing together Arab and Jewish musicians to play classical and traditional Middle Eastern music.

The anti-Israel mob appears to have seen the event differently. In a notice posted on social media, the performance was branded as “a propaganda campaign attempting to distract from Israel’s genocide”.

Our polling shows that 84% of British Jews see boycotts of Israeli artists as intimidation. Yet, anti-Israel obsessives have chosen to demonstrate against an event bringing Arabs and Jews together. The only thing it is likely to achieve is intimidating concert-goers who simply want a good night out.

If even a celebration of Arab-Jewish unity is a target, this was never about changing policy – it’s about erasing any connection to the world’s only Jewish state.

Once again, the anti-Israel mob reveal their true colours for the country to see.

https://t.co/DVxdiHsd9T

[Lucie Kon @imluciekon]

The BBC needs an independent investigation into antisemitism, and the groupthink that allows it to go unchallenged, with clear, measurable recommendations.
Why independent? When I raised a complaint of antisemitism, the BBC refused to hear from the UK's leading experts on it. It wouldn't involve anyone from outside.
That's the long-term fix. In the short term, there are some relatively easy ones, which I spoke to @broadcastnow's
@EllieKahn about:
• Discrimination complaints investigated independently, to a fixed deadline, with outside experts where relevant
• Face-to-face mental health training, designed by people with lived experience
• Clearer, more consistent guidance on language and impartiality across the whole organisation
None of this needs a lot of money. It needs the will, and an acknowledgement that the current system isn't fit for purpose.
This isn't about bashing the BBC. It's about putting things right as it enters its second century.
#BBC #CharterRenewal #Antisemitism
https://t.co/DXSAAPu06b
#BBC #CharterRenewal #Antisemitism

[Jake Wallis Simons @JakeWSimons]

On Monday, Ed Miliband took to social media to lament that rain had waterlogged tents in Gaza. "Heartbreaking," he called it, vowing that Britain "will not rest until we bring an end to the intolerable suffering".
Meanwhile, 13 American states with a combined GDP of more than $6 trillion have threatened economic retaliation over our sanctions on Israel. Their attorneys general accuse Britain and the Netherlands of having "aligned themselves with the policy objectives of terrorist organisations like Hamas and Hezbollah". British firms could be barred from state contracts and American public money pulled from British businesses. On the BBC? Not a dicky-bird.
And for what? Israel has downgraded our consulate in East Jerusalem and shut British officers out of the Gaza coordination hub in Kiryat Gat. Having just returned from Israel, I can tell you that Britain is now seen there as a comical irrelevance.
The ultimate irony? Reports from Gaza suggest the tents may have flooded because Hamas obstructed a project to provide sturdier shelters.
Milibandism, if you will. My latest column for the @Telegraph:
https://t.co/zj1KKEZGOP

[Campaign Against Antisemitism @antisemitism]

For The Observer to print a fawning interview with the founder of a proscribed terrorist organisation on its front page is grotesque.

Presumably if Palestine Action targeted minorities other than Jews, the newspaper would be condemning it without restraint, but perhaps because it is the Jewish community that has felt the brunt of Palestine Action’s intimidatory and violent criminality, The Observer is unmoved – or perhaps even delighted.

This was a shameful editorial decision.

Having been at the forefront of the campaign to ban Palestine Action, we have been watching the recent Supreme Court proceedings very closely and hope the justices will deliver the right judgement.

[Sharron Davies HoL MBE @sharrond62]

I very much agree with Claire. 16yr olds do not have the ability or life experience yet to independently way up the consequences of their vote. If we don’t think they are responsible enough to drive, drink or be done with education, how are they mature enough to vote? A cynical move!

[Campaign Against Antisemitism @antisemitism]

Labour – including aide to Home Secretary – and Liberal Democrats joined radical independents in Birmingham to back boycott of Jewish state

Birmingham City Council has voted to pass a motion which calls for a review of West Midlands Pension’s investment holdings and examination of “options for engagement, exclusion or divestment” – all the while mentioning only the Jewish state in the text of the resolution.

The motion, which passed by 54 votes to nineteen, characterised Israel’s war on Hamas as a “genocide” and applauded sanctions announced by Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband in September.

This morally reprehensible motion was promoted by Gaza-obsessed independents on the Council but also backed by their governing allies the Liberal Democrats and by opposition Labour councillors, including one who works at the Home Secretary’s constituency office.

Local councils should be focusing on local issues and bringing communities together, not driving them apart with divisive and inflammatory declarations that, as Birmingham City Council has itself admitted, can barely be put into practice under law.

Our polling shows that 84% of British Jews believe that boycotts of Israeli artists, academics or businesses selling Israeli products constitute intimidation. Despite that – or perhaps because of it – this Council has chosen to declare that it wishes to boycott the Jewish state.

We expect the Government to reiterate the legal position and underscore that Birmingham’s singling out of the Jewish state is no more than performative vice-signalling.

https://t.co/gvdjDYb1EQ
https://t.co/IAW4Zom4ST

[The Free Speech Union @SpeechUnion]

Andy Burnham has met Muslim community leaders in Downing Street and accused his political rivals of using “unacceptable” language when discussing Islam.

This is not the first time senior Labour politicians have accused their political opponents of crossing the line when discussing Islam, its history and its practices.

Labour MPs have repeatedly branded opposition politicians who criticise Islam “Islamophobic”. Earlier this year, 26 Labour MPs reported Reform UK to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) over its comments about Islam.

Labour MPs also reported the Conservative Shadow Justice Secretary, Nick Timothy, to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and accused him of being “Islamophobic”. He even faced calls for his sacking from the then Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, after criticising a mass Muslim prayer event in Trafalgar Square.

In a free country where blasphemy laws were abolished 18 years ago, politicians and private citizens must be free to criticise, question and debate any religion — including Islam.

But that was not the only revelation to emerge from the Downing Street meeting.

It has been reported that Angela Rayner told Muslim community leaders she was preparing to announce the appointment of an “anti-Muslim hostility” tsar.

Given that Rayner appointed five individuals to the Working Group tasked with drafting the “anti-Muslim hostility” definition, all of whom had troubling links to Islamist organisations, and that her department falsely claimed to have deleted all responses to its consultation on the definition, who on earth will she appoint?

Read more from FSU Campaigns Officer @MaxHThompson 👇

[Baroness Foster DBE #FreeIran🦁❤️ @jfoster2019]

This @UKLabour Govt. says it’s new Sanctions Regulation is not about Israel 🇮🇱..
Not true !!

[Lance Forman @LanceForman]

1/2 A note to Piers Morgan…

Within living memory, one third of the world's Jews were systematically exterminated. Six million people murdered, not in some distant, uncivilised corner of the world, but in the heart of Europe, where Jews had lived, worked, contributed and integrated into society for generations.

The Holocaust is not simply a chapter in a history book for Jews. It is embedded in our collective memory. It explains why we worry about our families' security, why we are cautious about whom we trust, and why we know that the veneer of civilisation can be frighteningly thin. Our neighbours turned against us. Others simply stood by and watched.

The re-establishment of Israel in 1948 was supposed to ensure that never again would Jews be dependent on the goodwill of others for their survival.

And this was no arbitrary piece of territory. It was our ancestral homeland, from which Jewish sovereignty had been extinguished by the Romans nearly 2,000 years earlier.

Throughout the centuries of exile, persecution and expulsion, Jews never stopped yearning to return.

The United Nations recognised that right to self-determination in 1947. But from the moment Israel declared independence, its neighbours sought its destruction. Despite the vast expanse of the Arab world, they could not tolerate a Jewish state on a sliver of land roughly the size of Wales.

And rather than help resolve the refugee crisis created by that conflict, the international community established a system through UNRWA under which refugee status could be passed down through generations, perpetuating the Palestinian refugee question rather than resolving it.

My own father was a Holocaust survivor from Poland. Yet I am not a refugee, nor would I dream of claiming to be one. Why should the descendants of Palestinians be treated so differently?

When British India was partitioned in 1947, millions were displaced. Yet the international community did not establish a permanent, hereditary refugee system to perpetuate that conflict indefinitely.
Israel, meanwhile, has spent nearly eight decades having to defend its very existence. Peace has been offered, rejected, negotiated and repeatedly undermined. Whatever the failures on both sides, the Jewish state's fundamental right to exist should never have been in question.

And this is what you, Piers, seem so spectacularly incapable of understanding.
When Israel comes under attack, Jews around the world don't simply see another foreign conflict. We see the potential destruction of the one place on earth that guarantees we will never again be defenceless.

When we witness the explosion of antisemitism, particularly online, so often disguised as righteous opposition to Israel, we recognise something terrifyingly familiar.

We've seen this movie before. We know how it ends.

The difference today is that Israel exists. Its people are armed, proud and determined. Jews will never again be marched helplessly to their deaths without the means to resist.

And the Islamist extremists who openly call for Israel's destruction make no secret of their wider ambitions. Israel is not their final destination. The West is next.

Yet you seem to treat all this as another opportunity for confrontation, controversy and clicks.

You present yourself as the fearless, impartial referee between competing opinions, but there is a profound difference between genuine journalism and providing a lucrative platform for those who demonise the world's only Jewish state.

Of course Israel can be criticised. Its government can be challenged. Its military decisions can be scrutinised. But there is a world of difference between holding a democracy accountable and relentlessly feeding a narrative that questions its legitimacy while ignoring the historical trauma and existential fears of the Jewish people.

[spiked @spikedonline]

Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign in Michigan summed up everything that’s wrong with identity politics. It was a toxic mix of Muslim self-pity and wild-eyed hatred for Israel. The US left is going down the same Islamo-road as the UK left, says Brendan O’Neill

https://t.co/g9ud8vhZ2M

[spiked @spikedonline]

It is not ‘Islamophobic’ to dislike Abdul El-Sayed. His supporters include people who say it doesn’t ‘f***ing’ matter if rapes happened on 7 October. And who think Zionism is a mental illness. This is the Islamo-left and they’re nuts, says Brendan O’Neill

https://t.co/g9ud8vhZ2M

[Campaign Against Antisemitism @antisemitism]

How can the BBC teach about Adolf Hitler with no meaningful reference to the Holocaust?

In its biography of Adolf Hitler, BBC Bitesize – an educational resource for GCSE students – apparently fails to mention key events which led to the Holocaust, including any reference to the “Final Solution”, a plan devised by the Nazis to orchestrate the mass murder of European Jews. It also makes no reference to Kristallnacht, a coordinated, state-led pogrom where Jewish homes, businesses, schools, and synagogues were looted and burned resulting in over 30,000 Jewish men being arrested and sent to concentration camps.

This pathetic attempt at educating students is so alarmingly vacant of key historical references that it almost reads as a whitewash of the Nazi dictator’s brutality.

At a time when antisemitism in schools is at a record high, how can we expect the situation to improve if our resources even on Holocaust education – let alone contemporary antisemitism – are so woefully inadequate.

Combatting antisemitism starts with education, and the BBC must urgently revise this resource.

https://t.co/3IFKP1ZBzC

[The Free Speech Union @SpeechUnion]

🚨 ISLAMIC BLASPHEMY LAW BY THE BACK DOOR 🚨

Kellie-Jay Keen (@ThePosieParker) has been charged with a criminal offence over posts criticising Islam, Muslim cultural practices and Islamism.

The Free Speech Union is proud to be defending her.

In a free society, no religion or cultural practice should be immune from criticism.

Since Labour came to power, the number of FSU cases involving people penalised for criticising Islam has doubled. It is now the single biggest category in our casework.

And now, with a state-approved definition of Islamophobia — rebranded as “anti-Muslim hostility” — things are only getting worse.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Andy Burnham and Communities Secretary Angela Rayner met Muslim community leaders in Downing Street. Burnham took a swipe at critics of Islam, saying “some of the language” opposition parties use “is unacceptable”, and told the leaders “we need to find ways with you to demonstrate that more and more”.

We now await Rayner’s appointment of an “Islamophobia tsar” who will help enforce the definition.

All five hand-picked members of the Working Group that drafted it have concerning links to Islamist organisations, as FSU Research and Policy Director @DavidRoseUK exposed in his report. We have little hope that the appointed tsar will be good news for free speech.

Meanwhile, the Government is refusing to say who submitted responses to the Working Group, so we cannot know which groups shaped the definition. Islamists may well have had a hand in its drafting.

Support the FSU’s campaign against an Islamic blasphemy law — and the people penalised under it 👇

[Sarah Deech ☕️ @londonette]

How did I miss this jaw-dropping anecdote from Lucie Kon @imluciekon last week.

Apparently a BBC diversity officer told a Jewish staff member, who’d been trying to set up a Jewish BBC support group a few years ago, that it wasn’t needed “because Jews run the media”.

A ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ officer.
This is just dystopian now.

(@DailyTPodcast int here: https://t.co/MuMQT3Gdlb)

[Iain Duncan Smith MP Chingford & Woodford Green @MPIainDS]

What an extraordinary statement. Apparently, according to Labour, employers aren't working people. Tell that to the small business owners working 60-hour weeks, risking their savings, paying their staff and keeping their businesses afloat. Labour can play with definitions and indulge in endless whataboutery, but it cannot escape the consequences of its decisions. Taxing employers affects jobs, wages and the very people Labour claims to protect.

[Mossad Customer Support @LionOfJudahX]

Victor Davis Hanson with the uncomfortable truth 🔥

“They ethnically cleansed almost a million Jews from Arab countries between 1948–1973.
No one talks about that.

But only the Palestinians still claim ‘refugee’ status 78 years later.

When Poland was recreated, 12 million Germans walked back to Germany. Two million died.
You don’t see Germans today waving keys to apartments in Danzig screaming ‘I’m a refugee.’

Cypriots lost 40% of their land to Turkey.
Jews from Damascus, Cairo, Baghdad, the Gulf — kicked out, property stolen.
None of them still play the eternal refugee card.

Israel left Gaza in 2005 with hundreds of millions in greenhouses and infrastructure.
What did they do? Looted it.
Took $40–50 billion in aid… and built rockets and 500 miles of tunnels instead of a real state.

We’re supposed to feel sorry for people who chose this path?”

History is not a buffet. You don’t get to pick only the victimhood that serves you. 🇮🇱