This feeds into the ridiculous ‘I’m speaking my truth’ people. It’s not the truth it’s subjective feelings, fair enough but why do feelings trump the actual reality of life now and why are the people who point this out the villains. I watched the Surrane Jones witch trial documentary, the parallels were surprising, we’re becoming more regressive as a society and worryingly I can’t see when people will wake up to it all. Modern day witch hunts and it seems you have had the brunt of it! Good piece, thanks
I am going to “likely this, which means that I support your freedom of speech. I shouldn’t need to say, of course, that is not an expression of support for any of the tweets that are the subject of the complaint.
What I dont understand is that one suposedly cannot criticise Israel, but its perfectly acceptable to hate on Russia and call for its complete destruction. The latter is acceptable even for our media and politicians.
Same when white people are told they are "privileged", and discriminated against in employment etc but you are not allowed to say "black privilege" or advertise a job for white applicants only.
Its a F'ed up world, and its all being F'ed up deliberately by the "elites" at the top via the WEF, UN, NATO, WHO etc
Oh, they are so full of it. This is not a "state defending itself with targeted attacks on Hamas." Are premature infants in hospitals "Hamas"? Are the hospitals themselves "Hamas"? Are refugee camps "Hamas"? What "pogrom"? What do they call what they've been doing to Palestinians for more than seventy years? Blatantly stealing their lands and homes and murdering them to establish Israel in the first place. And this isn't even the first time this has happened. No "proper" translation of the Old Testament is ever going to scrub away that stain.
I do not think this behavior is endemic to any particular people with any particular combination of genes. I do think it has been excused for far too long and I'm not the one arguing, and neither are you, that this sort of behavior is coded into Jewish genes. It's the Zionists making that argument. So who are the anti-Semites, really?
No existing state on the planet would survive the criteria you are enforcing on Israel.
Are we, for example, going to require Turkey to abandon lands that were Greek for two millennia and Greeks were expelled from a mere century ago? How did the Middle East become Islamic in the first place? What about the Jewish refugees from Muslim lands, who are equivalent numbers to Palestinian refugees?
Why do Palestinians get to be the world’s only hereditary refugees? (You are a Palestinian refugee if you are patrilineally descended from someone who lived in what is now Israel for two years before 1948.) Via UNRWA the global community pays the Palestinians hundreds of millions of dollars to NOT make peace with Israel, because then they stop being refugees and the money stops.
Proportionate may have some point in tit-for-tat retaliation. It has way less significance in war. How proportionate was the Allied response to the German attack on Poland or to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor?
Hamas is using Palestinians as human shields. Given that, the actual ratio of dead civilians to dead Hamas fighters is remarkably low. Sufficiently disproportionate to force abandonment of Hamas’s genocidal program would seem to be appropriate.
Of course they are. That does not however give Israel a free pass for disproportionate military response and it particularly does not mean I am to be criminalised for making that comment.
'Disproportionate ' is entirely subjective though. Is the avowed destruction of Israel and every Jew 'proportionate'? As I've commented before, I think a Substack debate between you and Melanie Phillips would help observers like myself get to grips with the issue.
Quite. Which is why it requires open, honest and fearless discussion not this disgraceful behind the scenes bullying from what I had thought was a respected organisation. It is respected rather less by me now. I repeat I am happy to debate my views with anyone. I simply ask they don’t go crying to the police if I disagree with them.
100% with you, Ms. Phillimore. Across the political spectrum, there’s an authoritarian lack of tolerance for disagreement on emotive issues. We’re seeing the prioritisation of feelings over fundamental democratic values such as the rights to freedom of expression and opinion.
For some time now, the right wing of the Labour Party have been weaponising false accusations of antisemitism - which it conflates with anti-Zionism - to purge the party of leftwingers. I’m sorry the same sort of bullying tactic is being used against you, and I very much admire your spirit in fighting back.
I disagree with your position on the matters in question but that isn’t relevant. I fully accept that your position is a legitimate one and should be capable of being expressed and debated.
I haven’t looked up its wording but based on each of the matters cited I strongly suspect that s127(1) of the Communications Act is yet another example of modern law that I would find deeply offensive.
I am going to assume the police aren’t interested - assuming they were ever approached which actually I doubt. I think this was a deeply cynical attempt to frighten my regulator into action with baseless reliance on the criminal law.
You’d have thought that “baseless reliance on the criminal law”, coming from a bunch of KCs, including some who sit in the HoL, would constitute bringing the Bar into disrepute. Perhaps the regulator should investigate that!
The Jewish Lobby—by which I mean advocacy for Jews (and Israel) by bodies and networks specifically organised for that purpose—have a long history of acting badly in ways harmful to freedom of thought and speech. This reality has noting to do with the Israel-Palestine disputes, except as excuses for said bad behaviour. It has remarkably little to do with actual Anti-Semitism. It also rests on misreadings of history. https://www.lorenzofromoz.net/p/professor-snyder-demolishes-jewish
Some of it is the curse of activism—the incentive to make folk more fearful so the donations keep flowing. (We Homo sapiens are very good at moralising and rationalising self-interest.) Some of it is the mixture of culture of threat/paranoia and entitlement that the Holocaust remembrance feeds.
To clarify, the Holocaust was a horror that we struggle to grasp. But it simply was not some unique thing that gives Jews special claims. They were neither the first nor the only victims of Nazi exterminations nor is the Holocaust the only vile mass murder. Israel’s equivocating about the Holodomor, for example, is shameful at so many levels. And Cambodians may have something to say the trauma of appalling horror, in detail and scale.
Disproportionate has a meaning in the laws and customs of war. I have not seen anything to suggest the means used to remove Hamas from Gaza militarily is disproportionate to the aim. Sending in troops to locate fighters and hostages in urban areas is high risk, but staying out and conducting aerial bombardments would not be proportionate.
Disproportionate has a meaning in the laws and customs of war. I have not seen anything to suggest the means used to remove Hamas from Gaza militarily is disproportionate to the aim. Sending in troops to locate fighters and hostages in urban areas is high risk, but staying out and conducting aerial bombardments would not be proportionate.
You seem to miss the point. This is not about me arguing I am correct. This is about me arguing I have a right to say it at all. Which I certainly do and will no matter how I am threatened or insulted.
I observe that a democracy allows such disagreements to be resolved without bloodshed, unlike the institutions that Hamas would impose. But that is not really to the point either.
The point is that humans have many and inventive ways to be evil or stupid and not all involve spilling blood. Some are done under the cloak of righteousness and claimed nobility.
But I remember you cast doubt on the police’s ability to recognise antisemitism and support for proscribed organisations in another substack. I don’t know enough about your regulator to comment.
So Sarah may I suggest a discussion with Melanie Phillips? Those of us revolted by Hamas, appalled by anti-Semitism and cancel culture need to see both sides in debate. See Melanie Phillips at <melaniephillips@substack.com>
I do support your freedom of speech as I support my right not to agree with you. However, I am an adult, and I realise not everyone agrees with everyone else. The real power cones from discussion that is respectful to each other but firm in that the belief you hold is deserving of that same respect. That does not make either of us hateful, nazis, bigots, or any other offender against others. Maybe more debates should be held in schools starting in junior schools to enable students to learn how to present points of view without screaming at each other, I would then hope that this would be carried on into senior schools as part of the curriculum. In my opinion this would help educate children exactly how to present and speak to others in a discussion without slurs deriding others' opinions. Thank you for this article Sarah, and I'm sorry that this us continually happening to you. It's unfair and vexatious and should be investigated as to who exactly is behind all of it, naming those who do it. Maybe that would help stop it. 👏
Thank you. A far more effective strategy for UKLFI would have been to contact me directly and explain why they found my posts offensive and asked me to reflect. I may not have agreed but there would have been far more chance of engaging with me than by doing what they did - which has just made me feel contemptuous of them and unlikely to consider them worth my attention from here on.
Yeah, no. I've read and supported you for ages, but you are wrong here. What do you think gives you the right to tell Israel that it shouldn't exist? And your comment about declaring yourself a Jew and threatening to burn down a synagogue (however you try to finesse it now) betrays a huge ignorance of Judaism and also, AT BEST, a sickening insensitivity to what it's actually like to be Jewish right now.
“If it is anti Semitic to say that I think the military response of Israel in Gaza is disproportionate then so be it.” Proportionate may have some point in tit-for-tat retaliation. It has way less significance in war. How proportionate was the Allied response to the German attack on Poland or to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor? Hamas is using Palestinians as human shields. Given that, the actual ratio of dead civilians to dead Hamas fighters is remarkably low. Sufficiently disproportionate to force abandonment of Hamas’s genocidal program would seem to be appropriate.
I am very happy to discuss anything with anyone that is within the law. This seems to be an unacceptable position in our Brave New World.
This feeds into the ridiculous ‘I’m speaking my truth’ people. It’s not the truth it’s subjective feelings, fair enough but why do feelings trump the actual reality of life now and why are the people who point this out the villains. I watched the Surrane Jones witch trial documentary, the parallels were surprising, we’re becoming more regressive as a society and worryingly I can’t see when people will wake up to it all. Modern day witch hunts and it seems you have had the brunt of it! Good piece, thanks
I am going to “likely this, which means that I support your freedom of speech. I shouldn’t need to say, of course, that is not an expression of support for any of the tweets that are the subject of the complaint.
You should not have to say it. But sadly many will now assume you do and savage you for it.
What I dont understand is that one suposedly cannot criticise Israel, but its perfectly acceptable to hate on Russia and call for its complete destruction. The latter is acceptable even for our media and politicians.
Same when white people are told they are "privileged", and discriminated against in employment etc but you are not allowed to say "black privilege" or advertise a job for white applicants only.
Its a F'ed up world, and its all being F'ed up deliberately by the "elites" at the top via the WEF, UN, NATO, WHO etc
Oh, they are so full of it. This is not a "state defending itself with targeted attacks on Hamas." Are premature infants in hospitals "Hamas"? Are the hospitals themselves "Hamas"? Are refugee camps "Hamas"? What "pogrom"? What do they call what they've been doing to Palestinians for more than seventy years? Blatantly stealing their lands and homes and murdering them to establish Israel in the first place. And this isn't even the first time this has happened. No "proper" translation of the Old Testament is ever going to scrub away that stain.
I do not think this behavior is endemic to any particular people with any particular combination of genes. I do think it has been excused for far too long and I'm not the one arguing, and neither are you, that this sort of behavior is coded into Jewish genes. It's the Zionists making that argument. So who are the anti-Semites, really?
No existing state on the planet would survive the criteria you are enforcing on Israel.
Are we, for example, going to require Turkey to abandon lands that were Greek for two millennia and Greeks were expelled from a mere century ago? How did the Middle East become Islamic in the first place? What about the Jewish refugees from Muslim lands, who are equivalent numbers to Palestinian refugees?
Why do Palestinians get to be the world’s only hereditary refugees? (You are a Palestinian refugee if you are patrilineally descended from someone who lived in what is now Israel for two years before 1948.) Via UNRWA the global community pays the Palestinians hundreds of millions of dollars to NOT make peace with Israel, because then they stop being refugees and the money stops.
Proportionate may have some point in tit-for-tat retaliation. It has way less significance in war. How proportionate was the Allied response to the German attack on Poland or to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor?
Hamas is using Palestinians as human shields. Given that, the actual ratio of dead civilians to dead Hamas fighters is remarkably low. Sufficiently disproportionate to force abandonment of Hamas’s genocidal program would seem to be appropriate.
Are you quite sure that Hamas in not complicit in the death of children by hiding near them?
Of course they are. That does not however give Israel a free pass for disproportionate military response and it particularly does not mean I am to be criminalised for making that comment.
'Disproportionate ' is entirely subjective though. Is the avowed destruction of Israel and every Jew 'proportionate'? As I've commented before, I think a Substack debate between you and Melanie Phillips would help observers like myself get to grips with the issue.
Quite. Which is why it requires open, honest and fearless discussion not this disgraceful behind the scenes bullying from what I had thought was a respected organisation. It is respected rather less by me now. I repeat I am happy to debate my views with anyone. I simply ask they don’t go crying to the police if I disagree with them.
You. Very clearly.
100% with you, Ms. Phillimore. Across the political spectrum, there’s an authoritarian lack of tolerance for disagreement on emotive issues. We’re seeing the prioritisation of feelings over fundamental democratic values such as the rights to freedom of expression and opinion.
For some time now, the right wing of the Labour Party have been weaponising false accusations of antisemitism - which it conflates with anti-Zionism - to purge the party of leftwingers. I’m sorry the same sort of bullying tactic is being used against you, and I very much admire your spirit in fighting back.
Thank you. It has become ordinary now. Just another thing on the To Do list!
I disagree with your position on the matters in question but that isn’t relevant. I fully accept that your position is a legitimate one and should be capable of being expressed and debated.
I haven’t looked up its wording but based on each of the matters cited I strongly suspect that s127(1) of the Communications Act is yet another example of modern law that I would find deeply offensive.
I am going to assume the police aren’t interested - assuming they were ever approached which actually I doubt. I think this was a deeply cynical attempt to frighten my regulator into action with baseless reliance on the criminal law.
You’d have thought that “baseless reliance on the criminal law”, coming from a bunch of KCs, including some who sit in the HoL, would constitute bringing the Bar into disrepute. Perhaps the regulator should investigate that!
I will be making a formal complaint about the solicitor who drafted the complaint to the BSB. She will be regulated by the SRA.
The Jewish Lobby—by which I mean advocacy for Jews (and Israel) by bodies and networks specifically organised for that purpose—have a long history of acting badly in ways harmful to freedom of thought and speech. This reality has noting to do with the Israel-Palestine disputes, except as excuses for said bad behaviour. It has remarkably little to do with actual Anti-Semitism. It also rests on misreadings of history. https://www.lorenzofromoz.net/p/professor-snyder-demolishes-jewish
I struggle to see what they hope to achieve with this other than to increase resentment and dilute the actual horrors of anti Semitism.
Good post - the best response and defence is the rule of law
Some of it is the curse of activism—the incentive to make folk more fearful so the donations keep flowing. (We Homo sapiens are very good at moralising and rationalising self-interest.) Some of it is the mixture of culture of threat/paranoia and entitlement that the Holocaust remembrance feeds.
To clarify, the Holocaust was a horror that we struggle to grasp. But it simply was not some unique thing that gives Jews special claims. They were neither the first nor the only victims of Nazi exterminations nor is the Holocaust the only vile mass murder. Israel’s equivocating about the Holodomor, for example, is shameful at so many levels. And Cambodians may have something to say the trauma of appalling horror, in detail and scale.
🤮
Disproportionate has a meaning in the laws and customs of war. I have not seen anything to suggest the means used to remove Hamas from Gaza militarily is disproportionate to the aim. Sending in troops to locate fighters and hostages in urban areas is high risk, but staying out and conducting aerial bombardments would not be proportionate.
Disproportionate has a meaning in the laws and customs of war. I have not seen anything to suggest the means used to remove Hamas from Gaza militarily is disproportionate to the aim. Sending in troops to locate fighters and hostages in urban areas is high risk, but staying out and conducting aerial bombardments would not be proportionate.
You seem to miss the point. This is not about me arguing I am correct. This is about me arguing I have a right to say it at all. Which I certainly do and will no matter how I am threatened or insulted.
It’s a response to your comment, not the substack.
And you are still missing the point. I have formed my view. The issue is whether I am allowed to say it at all.
I observe that a democracy allows such disagreements to be resolved without bloodshed, unlike the institutions that Hamas would impose. But that is not really to the point either.
The point is that humans have many and inventive ways to be evil or stupid and not all involve spilling blood. Some are done under the cloak of righteousness and claimed nobility.
I can see SP 1,2 and 6 but not the others. It’s not about feelings, it’s about your comparisons and the IHRA definition. They have a point.
The police and my regulator do not seem to agree. Do you think I should be facing a criminal trial for any of this?
Absolutely not.
But I remember you cast doubt on the police’s ability to recognise antisemitism and support for proscribed organisations in another substack. I don’t know enough about your regulator to comment.
So Sarah may I suggest a discussion with Melanie Phillips? Those of us revolted by Hamas, appalled by anti-Semitism and cancel culture need to see both sides in debate. See Melanie Phillips at <melaniephillips@substack.com>
Mad Mel is about the last person to "see both sides in a debate" when it concerns Jews or Israel.
My requirements are low. Just don’t make vexatious allegations to the police or my regulator and I will be delighted to talk to you.
Nonsense.
I've listened to Melanie Phillips many times on BBC Radio 4's "Moral Maze". So opinionated, rude and hectoring. Such a treat when she's not there.
Yes, but how about her views on Hamas?
I do support your freedom of speech as I support my right not to agree with you. However, I am an adult, and I realise not everyone agrees with everyone else. The real power cones from discussion that is respectful to each other but firm in that the belief you hold is deserving of that same respect. That does not make either of us hateful, nazis, bigots, or any other offender against others. Maybe more debates should be held in schools starting in junior schools to enable students to learn how to present points of view without screaming at each other, I would then hope that this would be carried on into senior schools as part of the curriculum. In my opinion this would help educate children exactly how to present and speak to others in a discussion without slurs deriding others' opinions. Thank you for this article Sarah, and I'm sorry that this us continually happening to you. It's unfair and vexatious and should be investigated as to who exactly is behind all of it, naming those who do it. Maybe that would help stop it. 👏
Thank you. A far more effective strategy for UKLFI would have been to contact me directly and explain why they found my posts offensive and asked me to reflect. I may not have agreed but there would have been far more chance of engaging with me than by doing what they did - which has just made me feel contemptuous of them and unlikely to consider them worth my attention from here on.
Yeah, no. I've read and supported you for ages, but you are wrong here. What do you think gives you the right to tell Israel that it shouldn't exist? And your comment about declaring yourself a Jew and threatening to burn down a synagogue (however you try to finesse it now) betrays a huge ignorance of Judaism and also, AT BEST, a sickening insensitivity to what it's actually like to be Jewish right now.
Thanks for proving my point. I say it because I have a right to say it. You don’t like it? Don’t engage.
“If it is anti Semitic to say that I think the military response of Israel in Gaza is disproportionate then so be it.” Proportionate may have some point in tit-for-tat retaliation. It has way less significance in war. How proportionate was the Allied response to the German attack on Poland or to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor? Hamas is using Palestinians as human shields. Given that, the actual ratio of dead civilians to dead Hamas fighters is remarkably low. Sufficiently disproportionate to force abandonment of Hamas’s genocidal program would seem to be appropriate.
I have no interest in a wider debate which will go on to the crack of doom. This is not about if I am ‘right’ - it is about what I am allowed to say.