Liverpool council bans Jewish woman from speaking on Gaza ceasefire

Read below for her full speech – and the council’s excuses for its attack on democracy and free speech

Liverpool City Council has withdrawn Jewish resident Helen Marks’s speaking slot at tonight’s meeting of the council, where she had successfully applied to address the council to ask it to call for a ceasefire and peace deal in Gaza, where Israel has slaughtered around 15,000 people, half of them children, in a relentless campaign of bombing homes, hospitals and schools.

Ms Marks had been told by the council’s Principal Democratic Services Officer:

You will be able to speak for 3 minutes at the Council Meeting, would you be able to send me a statement as to what you are going to say to the meeting please?

We are also ticketing the meeting, so you will need to be sent a ticket via email for the meeting. You will be allowed 2 tickets if you need another one and I would also need the name of the person attending with you.

As requested, Ms Marks sent a draft of her planned speech. It reads:

My name is Helen Marks. I am secretary of Liverpool Friends of Palestine. I am from a Jewish family. My mother was brought up in mandate Palestine and my Polish Jewish father lost his parents, a brother, aunts , uncles and cousins in the holocaust.

I have asked to speak today to urge you to call for an immediate ceasefire . However, I want you to go further if a ceasefire is agreed and insist that it is accompanied by genuine peace talks to find a lasting solution to this endless cycle of violence.

When the holocaust took place during the 2nd World War most people in the world could justifiably say that they were unaware of what was taking place. They were also incredulous when they learned the facts. They couldn’t believe that any one or any country could behave in such a calculated, despicable way.

Fast forward to the current situation in Gaza. We have no such excuse. Every day we see on our TV screens Gaza being bombed and innocent men women and children being killed in the most calculated, brutal way ; thousands of body bags, children screaming for their mummy. An acronym has been coined. WCNSF Wounded Children No Surviving Family. There are now more than 33,000 Palestinian orphans living in Gaza.

I abhor the killing of innocent Israeli civilians at the hands of Hamas on the 7th October and feel especially sad that some were from a Kibbutz where the residents were critical of the injustices suffered by the Palestinians. However the Israeli response is disproportionate, inhumane and must be stopped.

How can this be happening in this day and age? Did all this violence start on October 7th or must we put it in context ?

Hajo Meyer, holocaust survivor, spent his adult years warning us that holocausts don’t just appear. They happen because of a process of dehumanising the other and that is what successive Israeli governments have been doing in relation to the Palestinians, never calling them Palestinians just Arabs, labelling them all as terrorists, calling them human animals. When I was in Hebron in 2008 I saw daubed on the doors of Palestinian houses “ Kill all Arabs” with a star of David alongside. In 2014, Justice Minister Ayalet Shaked said that the mothers of Palestinian martyrs should go ,as should their homes “ otherwise more little snakes will be raised”.

It is much easier to kill your enemy if you view them as sub human.

In 2022 Amnesty International published a report based on 4 yrs of research which concluded that Israel was an Apartheid state according to the legally accepted definition. This report was backed up by reports by Human Rights Watch and the Israeli human rights organisation B’tselem. They saw the expansion of illegal settlements, the theft of land for military purposes, the denial of planning permission for housing, the restricted access to water, the numerous checkpoints that denied free movement, the imprisonment of adults and young people under military not civil law and the killing of Palestinians without proper investigations. Over 160 Palestinians have since been killed in the West Bank following 7th October.

What is happening now in Gaza, like the recent bombing of a school in the Jabalia refugee camp killing 200 children and staff is not self defence or helping to root out Hamas. It must stop.

If you fail to call for an end to the occupation a lifting of the siege of Gaza, a solution to the over 6,000 refugees languishing in camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Palestine itself then the cycle of violence will continue.

There were ceasefires after 2008/9, 2012, 2014, 2018 but the Western Powers continued to protect Israel, pretend it did not have nuclear weapons, backed the false PR that it had the most moral army in the world and was the only democracy in the Middle East and rewarded it with prestigious hosting of events irrespective of its behaviour. And the US and UK continue to send it arms .

I am sure as councillors you will not mistakenly conflate this criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

I call on you to demand an immediate ceasefire that is followed by a clear programme that delivers justice for the Palestinians.

However, this straightforward and factual speech fell foul of the council’s City Solicitor Daniel Fenwick, who claimed that it would breach the so-called ‘IHRA definition’ of antisemitism – a definition that does not actually define, and which has been criticised by Jewish legal experts and even its author as a means of chilling free speech on and legitimate criticism of Israel. Fenwick wrote, withdrawing Marks’s permission to speak at the meeting:

Dear Ms Marks,

Council Public Speaking Rights

I write with regard to your request to speak at the above meeting and your draft statement which has been passed to me as the Council’s Monitoring Officer for assessment under the Council Procedure Rules (rule 12).

Unfortunately, the Council already had three speakers registered to speak for the Council meeting by the time you registered to speak. For completeness, whilst you emailed the Council on 7th November, the Council replied to you on the same day advising you how to make your request to speak after the publication of the agenda on 14th November. A third and final request to speak was received on 17th November at 9.46am and your request was received at 10.54am on that day. I am sorry this was not communicated earlier to you but, unfortunately, having check the times of the emails, this is the correct order in which they were received and as Monitoring Officer I have no authority to waive this rule..
I believe you have tickets for the public gallery and we look forward to seeing you at the meeting.

Your Statement

Thank you for the draft of your statement. For completeness, I have reviewed your statement under the Council’s procedure rules and thought it would assist you if I gave you my views for future reference, if you had been able to speak at the meeting. As currently drafted, your statement could not accepted as it breaches the following rules on the acceptance of public statements:

12.8 The Monitoring Officer may reject a request to speak if:
…
12.8.3 it is defamatory, frivolous or offensive

It is my view as the Council’s Monitoring Officer that whilst it is legitimate freedom of expression to criticise the Israeli government’s policies and actions in Gaza, there are significant elements of the statement’s content that risks a breach the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of Anti-Semitism, which was adopted by the Council as its definition of anti-Semitism in January 2018. Your statement is therefore likely to be offensive to the Jewish community and others in the city and beyond. For this reason, the Council cannot place itself at risk of breaching its own policies and potentially discriminating unlawfully against any person by making a decision to allow it to be read in its current form.

The statement if read out would further place the Council at risk of breaching its public sector equality duty under s.149 of the Equality Act 2010. The Council must have due regard to the achievement of this duty and, as one example, the statement as worded is also unlikely to foster good relations between Jews, Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims and with those without those protected characteristics under the 2010 Act in Liverpool and beyond, noting the context of the horrific rise of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic attacks since 7 October.

Thank you for showing an interest in speaking at the Council meeting.

Skwawkbox wrote to Fenwick to ask him to be specific about why he was taking this action and exactly what in Marks’s speech he considered to breach the ‘definition’:

Mr Fenwick,

You contacted Jewish activist Helen Marks by email informing her that she would not be able to speak at tonight’s council meeting – despite, though your email did not acknowledge this, her having received confirmation of a 3-minute slot from the council’s Principal Democratic Services Officer. You claim there are too many speakers and that her speech might breach the IHRA ‘definition of anti-semitism’, but do not say why. I have seen the statement and it is self-evidently legitimate criticism of Israel for its actions and merely being offensive to someone is not a breach of the IHRA, which in any case has been criticised by legal experts and even its founder for its chilling effect on free speech.

Apologies for the short notice, but as the meeting takes place at 5pm I will be covering this imminently so ask for your response no later than 2pm on the following – as you have already made these deliberations before writing to Ms Marks, it should not be onerous to provide the information:

1. Why are you denying a Jewish resident her right of democratic expression on a matter of obvious public importance concerning Israel and Gaza?
2. What precisely in her planned statement do you think breaches the IHRA and why?
3. Were you instructed or pressured by anyone inside or outside the council to withdraw permission?

He did not answer the questions, instead saying only that the council meeting will be livestreamed and directing the enquiry to the council’s communications team, who did not respond even well after the press deadline. Opponents of Israel’s genocide in Gaza are mounting a protest outside Liverpool’s City Hall before the 5pm council meeting.

Ms Marks, who was one of two Liverpool Jewish party members smeared by Labour officials in a widely-condemned 2019 BBC Panorama programme, told Skwawkbox that the council’s manoeuvres were ‘feeble but predictable’:

I was given permission to make a 3-minute statement at today’s council meeting but this permission was withdrawn for very feeble but predictable reasons. I was speaking in support of Alan Gibbon’s motion calling on councillors to vote for an immediate ceasefire. I have since sent all councillors the statement I would have read out.

Labour’s betrayal of Palestinian civilians continues even in a city whose people have shown strong solidarity with those Gazan women and children facing genocide and ethnic cleansing.

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