OPEN LETTER TO CAROLINE LUCAS MP – Why Have You Signed a Parliamentary Letter Attacking Academic Freedom and Freedom of Speech in Support of Apartheid Israel?

Caroline Lucas Vilifies anti-Zionist Professor David Miller alongside Virulent Racists like Bob Blackman MP, Baronesses Deech and Cox?

Caroline, when you were elected to Parliament as the first Green MP in 2010 I had no hesitation in supporting you. The chance to have an alternative to another cloned New Labour MP was attractive.

However since then you have followed in the footsteps of Green Parties throughout Europe who, as in Ireland, have got into bed with both conservative parties, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. In Germany it was a Green Party coalition that took German troops into their first armed conflicts abroad post 45, in Kosova and Afghanistan.

It seems that there is an iron rule that however radical they are before getting elected, Green MPs become assimilated to the establishment. That is the problem with trying to green capitalism.

I am however amazed that you have added your name to a letter whose sole purpose is to secure the dismissal of Bristol University Professor David Miller, under the guise of protecting Jewish students.

This letter criticises academics supporting Miller for signing ‘a factually inaccurate letter’. This is ironic coming from those who falsely allege that David ‘has undermined the safety and security of Jewish students.’

What did David do?  Did he visit Jewish students in the middle of the night with a group of thugs? No he put forward well researched criticisms, not of Jewish students but Zionist student groups operating on campuses who whitewash the record of the Israeli state.

The Israeli state has just been described as a Jewish Supremacist Apartheid State by Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem. Not surprisingly the Israeli state finds it difficult to defend things like refusing to supply Palestinians with COVID vaccines at one and the same time as vaccinating Jewish settlers. Is it any surprise that seeks it accuses its critics, including David Miller, of anti-Semitism?

Supposing that the Anti-Apartheid Movement had criticised pro-Apartheid South African student groups 30 years ago? Would you have signed a letter attacking the AAM as endangering the safety of South African students? If not why have you signed this letter?

The letter you signed falsely accuses David Miller of having ‘framed Jewish students.. as pawns or tools of a foreign government.’ No he didn’t. What David said was that Jewish students were being used as “political pawns by a violent, racist foreign regime engaged in ethnic cleansing.” There is a crucial difference between the two.

The Israeli government uses the Jewish Diaspora as pawns. That is a fact. In the United States the Israeli Foreign Ministry even distributed a questionnaire asking American Jews ‘to indicate where their allegiance would lie in the case of a crisis between the two countries.’

David’s statement that ‘Bristol’s JSoc like all JSocs, operates under the auspices of the Union of Jewish Students (UJS), an Israel lobby group’ and is part of ‘a campaign of censorship and manufactured hysteria’ that is ‘directed by the State of Israel’ is true.

The Union of Jewish Students is not a Jewish student group but a Zionist group whose first loyalty is to the Israeli state. Support for Israel is enshrined in UJS’s constitution. Its objects include

‘inspiring Jewish students to make an enduring commitment to their Jewish identity, Israel, and the community.’

Jewish students who are not Zionists ineligible to join UJS and where they have done they come under attack from UJS. Independent Jewish Voices, which isn’t anti-Zionist, described what happened at SOAS:

Emma Clyne, a Swedish Jew, writes of her experience as chairperson of the Jewish Society at SOAS in 2006-07. She came under intense pressure from the Union of Jewish Students, the umbrella organisation which works with Jewish societies in universities.

Before she became the chair of the SOAS Jewish Society, she had found it was like an Israel Society…. She took over the chair on condition that there was to be a clear distinction between the Jewish Society and the Israel Society. This led to a furious reaction from the Union of Jewish Students, which told her: “That’s not what the Jewish Society does. You can’t separate Israeli politics from Jewish identity. It is all the same.”

The antagonism towards her reached a peak after she went to the launch of IJV in 2007 and found the speakers “honest articulate and inspirational.” When she invited some of the speakers to a meeting at SOAS to discuss “the impact of nationalism on Jewish identity” the pressure on her increased, and she was told that the Union of Jewish Students and the Israeli Embassy were very concerned about the meeting.

I described what happened when Emma organised a meeting with speakers such as Sir Geoffrey Bindman QC:

According to… Emma Clyne, posters for a meeting the society put on were repeatedly torn down. Ms Clyne told a meeting of Independent Jewish Voices on May 15 that she had to put new ones up every day.

A clue as to the reason for its silence might lie in an article in the Jewish Chronicle of April 27 (“Students in censorship row over IJV debate”).

As the then Chair of UJS, Mitch Simmons, made clear ‘”It is the view of the UJS that certain views are not acceptable under free speech.” This is what you are supporting Caroline. A full frontal attack on the freedom of Jewish students who are not Zionists.

The UJS is the student wing of the Zionist movement. It is affiliated to the World Zionist Organisation which funds Jewish settlements in the West Bank. In the words of Ha’aretz, it has a ‘land theft division.’

UJS has been particularly prominent in the campaign to impose the 500+ word IHRA definition of anti-Semitism on universities. The IHRA’s sole purpose is to conflate anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. As Sir Stephen Sedley, the Jewish former Court of Appeal judge wrote, the IHRA isn’t even a definition being indefinite.

The Jewish Chronicle described how UJS ‘reacted with fury’ at the decision of the Academic Board of UCL to overwhelmingly reject the use of the IHRA misdefinition of antisemitism.

A joint statement by the UCL JSoc and UJS said that “Jewish student voices will not be silenced, nor dictated to, by a small group of academics’ warning that “retraction of the definition will cause considerable distress to Jewish students and major reputational damage to UCL”. Note that word ‘distress’. A definition that was supported by Donald Trump and adopted by the anti-Semitic Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban. The JC described how UJS

‘singled out “several members” of the Jewish Studies Department for being “key drivers” in the decision taken by the Academic Board, adding: “We take particular exception to the Head of Department’s use of the Department’s Newsletter to promote his views on this issue. One can only imagine the intimidating impact this could have on students and other members of the academic staff.” The head of the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies and Professor of Rabbinic Judaism is Sacha Stern, who has repeatedly written of his opposition to IHRA.

Does this language about Jewish academics at UCL having an ‘intimidating impact’ remind you of anything?. How on earth can rejecting a bogus definition of anti-Semitism beloved of anti-Semites intimidate Jewish students? I am surprised Caroline have been taken in by this Israeli hasbara (propaganda).

David Hirsh, the lecturer who is quoted in the letter you signed told the JC: “In my whole life, I have never been in a more hostile and antisemitic space than my union.”

The same happened at City University where the student union decided to hold a referendum over the IHRA. [City University students union criticised over IHRA referendum]

According to UJS the student union ‘failed to consult Jewish students until after the decision was made’. UJS feared that in a democratic debate it might lose the argument. It preferred emotional blackmail using words such as ‘distress’ to discussing issues because these are ‘intimidatory’. Apparently it makes them feel ‘unsafe’. Zionism and democracy go together like oil and water.

UJS complained that City University’s students union had remained “adamant about the referendum going ahead”. A spokesperson for City Students’ Union said it promotes “freedom of speech as an essential part of our democracy”. Given its support for the State of Israel you can well understand the concerns of UJS.

What I find laughable in the letter which you signed is the statement ‘We, the undersigned, wish you to know that we stand against hatred’ although the phrase ‘We know hate speech when we see it’ rings true.

Ian Paisley, one of the signatories and MP for the DUP, is fully aware of what hate speech is being a member of an anti-Catholic Protestant party. There is no better example of the symbiosis of Zionism and anti-Semitism than in Christian Zionism. The leader of the million strong Christians United for Israel John Hagee, described Hitler as a messenger from god sent to drive the Jews to Israel.

Another Christian Zionist bigot Lord Pickles is one of the signatories to this letter. Pickles has been reborn as an opponent of ‘anti-Semitism’. I know him however as an anti-Gypsy bigot responsible for the eviction of the Traveller camp at Dale Farm.

Pickles gained his reputation as a councillor in Bradford when he played the race card appealing to the racism of Bradford’s White population.

When in 1984 Ray Honeyford, headmaster in a local school, wrote an article in Salisbury Review, a magazine which acted as a bridge between the Tory Right and overtly fascist groups there were calls to suspend him. Pickles gave him unstinting support. Honeyford wrote:

The term ‘racism’, for instance, functions not as a word with which to create insight, but as a slogan designed to suppress constructive thought….

Cultural enrichment’ is the approved term for the West Indian’s right to create an ear splitting cacophony for most of the night to the detriment of his neighbour’s sanity, or for the Notting Hill Festival whose success or failure is judged by the level of street crime which accompanies it.’

However Pickles, who defended Tory MEPs sitting with fascists and anti-Semites in the ECR Group has been born again. As Mehdi Hassan wrote in the New Statesman.

Perhaps most shameful of all are the Tories’ new allies from Latvia, the For Fatherland and Freedom (LNNK) party, whose sole MEP, Robert Zile, sits in the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, and even attended the Conservative party conference in Manchester.

The Tories have been keen to defend this controversial party, which honours Latvia’s Waffen SS veterans each year with an annual parade in the capital city, Riga, on 16 March.

What was Tory Party Chairman Eric Pickles response? He ‘condemned Labour and the Lib Dems for recycling “old Soviet smears” and “endorsing Soviet propaganda” against the Latvians.’

This is the company you are keeping Caroline Lucas. Support for Israel and Zionism makes anti-racists out of racists and anti-Semites out of anti-racists.

Although he isn’t a signatory, the Leader of the Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg, described David Miller’s comments as ‘deeply wicked and the sort of thing decent people simply do not say.’ Mogg knows quite a lot about wickedness and what decent people do and say.

In April 2019 Mogg tweeted a speech and video by Alice Weidel, Leader of Germany’s AfD whose former leader Frauke Petry called for refugee boats to be fired upon. This led to the AfD’s expulsion from the ECR. AfD members march regularly alongside neo-Nazis. It is a party full of holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis but it is also pro-Israel. This has led to it being put under formal state surveillance. Even the Zionist Jewish Chronicle had an article Jacob Rees-Mogg faces fury over ‘disgraceful’ promotion of ‘antisemitic’ German party.

Mogg, spoke last year of the “Illuminati who are taking the powers to themselves” in reference to two Jewish MPs, Oliver Letwin and John Bercow. Michael Berkowitz, Professor of Modern Jewish History at UCL, described this as ‘an expressly antisemitic sentiment’, The Illuminati are at the centre of many anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

Naturally the Board of Deputies, which kept silent about Mogg’s comments, has led the campaign against David Miller. President Marie van der Zyl said that Miller’s comments “would not look out of place on the pages of Der Stürmer”, the Nazis’ propaganda newspaper.’ The IHRA defines comparisons between the Nazis and Israel as anti-Semitic but naturally the Board is exempt from this.

The Board of Deputies say that calling them part of the Israel lobby is ‘anti-Semitic’ yet, as Asa Winstanley observed the Board of Deputies repeatedly defends Israel, right or wrong. It attacked the decision of the International Criminal Court to investigate Israeli war crimes as evidence of its ‘moral bankruptcy’. ‘What’, he asked, ‘has the ICC got to do with the British Jewish community? Nothing.’

The Board also boasted of changing a BBC headline about an Israeli air strike on Gaza that killed a woman and her child. What one wonders has Gaza got to do with Britain’s Jews? The Board also defended the murder by Israel of snipers of Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza killing 300 demonstrators and 50 children.

It is clear that the BOD is a part of the Israeli lobby and it is also clear Caroline that you have accepted this false narrative about such criticism making Jewish students unsafe. It is Palestinian parents, wondering if their children will be attacked by the Israeli military who feel unsafe. It is Palestinian children blindfolded, arrested and beaten in the middle of the night by Israel who feel unsafe. These Zionist snowflakes don’t know the meaning of the word ‘unsafe’.

The Racists who Signed the Letter with Caroline Lucas

Speaking of hatred, there is no better example than Baroness Ruth Deech. Deech accused Labour politicians of ‘cravenly’ adopting ‘anti-Semitic tropes and anti-Israel demonization’’ in order to get Muslim votes, rather than standing up to Muslim prejudices.

Deech described ‘right-wing anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers’ as ‘buffoons of no importance’ whereas left-wing ‘anti-Semites’ should be taken very seriously. In her view Nazi style anti-Semitism was of no importance compared to criticism of Israel.

Deech called Jews who were not Zionists ‘renegade Jews’. Itself anti-Semitic. She named these ‘renegades’ – Gerald Kaufman, Norman Finkelstein, Avi Shlaim, Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe. The Oxford English Dictionary definition of ‘renegade’ is

· Having treacherously changed allegiance: a renegade bodyguard

· Having abandoned one’s religious beliefs: a renegade monk. Used in conjunction with ‘Jew’ its archaic meaning is equivalent to apostate.

Deech’s article is a good illustration of David Miller’s argument that Zionism is one of the main props of Islamaphobia. Deech explained that:

The U.K. census of 2011 revealed that Bradford’s population was 24.7% Muslim, and no doubt it’s higher by now. There are wards of Bradford, Blackburn and Burnley (the suspended councilors’ constituencies) where British Muslims reach 70% of the local population.

Deech quoted an article in the New Statesman about how ‘the virus of anti-Semitism has infected the British Muslim community”. What is rarely mentioned is the high degree of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab racism in the Jewish community. It is the secret that dare not speak its name but if you don’t measure it then it will remain invisible.

In fact 61 per cent of those questioned viewed Jewish people favourably, while an additional 14 per cent of British Muslims had a sort-of middling opinion of Jewish people. This was almost exactly the same as how Muslims viewed Catholics, Buddhists and Hindus and the irreligious. That might have something to do with the fact that Muslims in Britain are the victims of White racism unlike Jews.

As Free Speech on Israel noted the Baroness’s wordswere identical to ‘early 20th century social attitudes to – and government racial profiling of – British Jews’.

But the Crown Prince of hatred Caroline is fellow MP and signatory, Bob Blackman. Blackman was accused of Islamophobia after posting an anti-Muslim article on Facebook which he subsequently apologised for. [Bob Blackman says he ‘sincerely regret[s] any upset caused’]

Blackman, the MP for Harrow East, had shared a story with the headline: “Muslim Somali sex gang say raping white British children ‘part of their culture’.”

Miqdaad Versi of the Muslim Council of Britain, tweeted: “Deeply disappointing to see Tory MP Bob Blackman once again endorse Islamophobia.” Blackman had previously retweeted an anti-Muslim post by Tommy Robinson.

Vice revealed that Blackman had been a member of several far-right Islamophobic Facebook groups such as “Britain for the British”, “For Britain Political Party” and “Pendragons Fight Back”.

“Britain for the British” is administered by BNP supporter Steven Devlin. It features numerous comments which praise Hitler, and many more which wish violence upon London Mayor Sadiq Khan, accusing him of being an “Islamofascist” and “traitor“, and hoping that he dies.

Blackman is a patron of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, which was a Who’s Who of Britain’s most racist politicians.

Blackman is a supporter of the Hindu chauvinist Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi and the BJP. When the Conservative Friends of Kashmir began, Blackman urged Boris Johnson not to recognise them.

When the BJP revoked Article 370 of India’s Constitution declaring martial law and occupying Kashmir with thousands of troops, Blackman wrote to Johnson describing the attack on Kashmir as an ‘excellent decision’. It would, he said allow the Kashmiri people ‘to enjoy the benefits of being part of India.’ Strangely enough the people of Kashmir weren’t very appreciative of being under occupation!

Blackman also hosted the outright Hindu racist Tapan Ghosh in the House of Commons. Tapash has called for the UN to control the birth rate of Muslims, praised the genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar and said that Muslims should be forced to leave their religion if they come to a western country.

But you can imagine my surprise when I came across the Delhi newspaper, the Milli Gazette. Gideon Falter of the CAA attended a meeting in 2018 at the Commons at Blackman’s invitation. It described him as a ‘rabidly pro-Hindutva Tory MP’.

Falter told the meeting that he would do all he could to help eradicate the ‘duty’ on the government to make Caste an aspect of race in the Equality Act 2010. [UK Government will repeal caste law] Untouchables in India are treated as less than human yet this vile MP, whom Caroline Lucas considers congenial company, sought to remove caste discrimination as a protected characteristic in the Equality Act. And you know what? Blackman and his friends in the CAA succeeded.

Blackman also opposes what he calls ‘Hinduphobia’. Anyone who challenges caste discrimination or supports Kashmiri self-determination is a ‘Hinduphobe’. They have taken a leaf out of the Zionists’ book. These Hindu chauvinists are hoping to weaponise Hinduphobia against opponents of Hindu racism in the same way as ‘anti-Semitism’ has been weaponised against opponents of the Israeli state and Zionism. See

The alliance between Israel, Zionism and Hindu Nationalism is based on a shared belief in ethnic cleansing and ethno-nationalism  and UK: Corbyn, the Hindu far-right and Israel’s partisans

TheyWorkForYou described how Blackman almost always voted against laws to promote equality and human rights. It gives examples of how Caroline Lucas’s fellow signatory of Caroline Lucas voted.

· On 18 Jul 2019: Blackman voted not to legalise abortion in any circumstances in Northern Ireland.

· On 9 Jul 2019: Blackman voted not to permit same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland.

· On 13 Jun 2018: Blackman voted against retaining the EU “Charter of Fundamental Rights” as part of UK law.

· On 26 May 2016: Blackman voted in favour of repealing the Human Rights Act 1998 and against plans to save the steel industry.

· On 30 Jan 2014: Blackman voted to only allow human rights grounds to be used to prevent a foreign criminal being deported in cases where there would be a breach of the right to life, or right not to be tortured; and to add a new exemption to deportation for cases where harm to the criminal’s children outweighs the public interest in removal.

· On 16 Apr 2013: Blackman voted to remove the duty on the Commission for Equality and Human Rights to support the development of a society where people’s ability to achieve their potential is not limited by prejudice or discrimination and there is respect for human rights.

· On 16 Apr 2013: Blackman voted against making it illegal to discriminate on the basis of caste

In an article Bob on caste as a protected characteristic of the Equality Act 2010 Blackman revealed how

‘MPs received a written ministerial statement making it clear that this protected characteristic is going to be removed from the Equality Act. Bob urged the Minister to bring forward, without delay, proposals to remove this unnecessary, ill-thought-out and divisive move in the Equality Act 2010.’

The reaction of the HARROW MONITORING GROUP was that Blackman plays the divisive ‘caste’ card!

The parliamentary debate led to a statutory requirement to include caste in the Equality Act as a separate aspect of race. In 2013 a clause against caste discrimination was inserted into the Equality Act 2010.

Referring to his 2015 Harrow East campaign, Sunny Hundal of the Hindustan Times ‏tweeted “Astonishing. Tory MP in London playing Hindu divide-and-rule caste politics with leaflets for Hindus. Nasty”. Commenting on Blackman’s campaign, London assembly member and 2017 parliamentary candidate for Harrow East Navin Shah said,

“The general election also saw the same old issues like Kashmiri Pundits and caste legislation dragged out for the Tory propaganda to find cheap favours amongst Indian / Hindu voters”.

See Blackman not supported!

But the Queen of anti-Islamic bigots is another signatory to the letter Caroline Lucas signed, Baroness Caroline Cox. In February 2009, Cox and UKIP peer Lord Pearson invited the leader of the Dutch Freedom Party Geert Wilders, who supports banning the Islamic religion outright, to show the anti-Islam film Fitna at the House of Lords. Wilders was banned from entering Britain.Cox accused the Government of appeasing militant Islam.

In 2010 Cox and Pearson successfully hosted Wilders and his film with 200 members of the English Defence League marching in support of the screening. Cox said in a speech in Israel that “Islam is using the freedoms of democracy to destroy it”

Cox, a former Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords, is prominent in the Henry Jackson Society and is a director of the far-Right Gatestone Institute which hosts her writings online. In 2007, she told the Jerusalem Summit, an anti-Palestinian network of which she has been co-president since 2005, that “Britain has been deeply infiltrated” by Islamist extremists, who have converted the country into “a base for training and teaching militant Islam”. She added that “Britain’s cultural and spiritual heritage are under threat.”

Cox also told the Jerusalem Post she was concerned about “the disturbing alliance between the Islamists and the Left in the UK,”

According to Craig Murray, Cox is “a prominent supporter of organisations which actively and openly promote the ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians from Gaza.’

So Caroline Lucas are you going to allow your name to stay on this letter alongside a whole group of racist, war mongering MPs, the detritus of New Labour such as Lords Austen and Mann?

You say you are a supporter of Palestinian human rights. The absence of those rights isn’t an act of god. The lack of any human rights comes from Zionism, a Jewish Supremacist ideology and movement which has for the past 70+ years built a society where non-Jews are the Untermenschen of Israel.

The letter signed by your fellow parliamentarians has nothing to do with defence of Jewish students. It has everything to do with demonising a decent radical lecturer and inflicting a body blow against academic freedom in this country. Your decision to sign the letter is shameful. Please remove your name at once.

Tony Greenstein