For the past month I’ve been working on my appeal to the GMB; their Executive Council meets on the 5th February to discuss my expulsion and to set up a committee to hear my appeal. It will be in London in March. The rabbi will try and come. I’ve also just finished the above video which features him, in “GMB IHRA ban- Rabbi Cohen speaks out”

I have much improved upon the previous video of his speech; it is in widescreen and higher quality; I have created an intro and an outro; I have finally utilised the Sewage Sunday footage that the folk who helped that day (Gerry, Georgie, Patricia and Paul), have been waiting for me to make into something usable. I’d written a script to make a video round it, but I think the Rabbi says it better.. so this is the only video I’ll be making for now. I must thank Maryory in Buenos Aires for translating it into Spanish for the subtitles which I’ve added, to try and get it shown through social media in South America and to Hispanic people in the USA. There is a lot of support for Zionism there and I’m hoping the quaintness of my characters (Scots Duracell campaigner with charming elderly Rabbi) plus words like “Sewage Sunday” might prove a mix worth viewing.

If you are interested in helping me get this film shown anywhere, I’d be most grateful. The link to the video is above; you can download here a pdf of the flyer promoting it (with clickable links) - if you want to forward it onto your friends using email. Posting the link to the film on social media as well would be helpful: it’s at tinyurl.com/gmbihra

I am going to the Labour Against the Witch Hunt conference in London tomorrow to give out flyers for the video; I have two motions; see them on list of motions here. The first is “LAW support to activists”, the second is a model anti-IHRA motion I’ve been working on since November. This latter one was negotiated with my CLP to be as inoffensive as possible, but it still fared badly in the January meeting I submitted it to. It fell by 27 votes against, only 9 in favour. There were many young activists there who were angry at me because they loved the GMB and Rhea Wolfson (who had dobbed me in). They seemed to be both pro-Palestinian and pro-IHRA. One even called me an anti-Semite for saying Israel exaggerated the Holocaust (a lot of mud was being thrown at me). Even though I made clear the numbers of Jews who suffered was not what I disputed, rather Israel’s overemphasis of it, 80 years on. They were in no appetite to listen. It was telling that the only people who supported the motion were aged 50-plus; I think we have a mountain to climb. I have improved the motion following my defeat by listing the examples in it which conflate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, which I think helps explain why the definition is so insidious, fraudulent and illogical. It will be interesting to see what LAW activists make of the motions.

I’ve also been trying to get human rights group Liberty to take a stand on my behalf; if you’ve had dealings with them on the IHRA, please let me know.

I also wanted to let you know of a screening of a film called WitchHunt being organised by Jewish Voice for Labour, (JVL) exposing the campaign to discredit Jeremy Corbyn and the left. It’s premiere will be at 12 noon, on Sunday February 10 in London and other locations across the UK.

I’m told it's a “gripping documentary by activist filmmaker Jon Pullman who has combined extensive archive material with authoritative new interviews to explore the connections between the attacks on Labour, the unfolding tragedy of Palestine and the wider struggle against race-based oppression. He examines the use of antisemitism allegations to silence critics of Israel's human rights violations.”

For security reasons JVL will keep the venues under wraps until nearer the time. The London screening will be followed by a Q&A session with Jon Pullman, Jackie Walker, Justin Schlosberg (who appears in the film representing the Media Reform Coalition) and comedian Alexei Sayle. Contact admin@jvl.org.uk for further details. If anyone is planning to go, would you hand out my flyers? Please let me know ASAP by emailing me at postmaster@roseburn32.plus.com

Finally, I wanted to let you know that following my appeal to you all a month ago to send an email to help activist Issa Amro in Palestine, a total of but 4 of you did so, out of the 1,400 folk I’d written to. It really is a simple one-click affair:  please tell the Israelis to drop charges- to do that, just click here to generate an  email.

Thanks

Pete