Yesterday I stood in the crisp winter sunshine in Brighton as we read out the names of more 1400 innocent victims of terror. Each name had a photo with it & where they were killed. Those beautiful faces will haunt me forever. Every now & then a photo took my breath 1/10 away. A twinkle in the eye, a smile. So many young people, younger than my own kids, out at a peace rave in the desert. Saying their names, seeing those faces made them even more real. Numbers are sanitising. 1400 dead. 230 taken hostage. And it made me understand why 2/10

The silence is deafening.

You ignored the slaughter of 260 young people at a music festival.

You turned your heads when young women were being raped and paraded semi-naked in the streets, you shrugged when elderly sick women were kidnapped to use as bargaining tools, 1/7 you made a cup of tea while entire families were murdered, children torn from their parents arms & killed in front of them.

Not a word did you say, because your world view is so unconsciously biased that in reality you treat Jews and Israelis like those mythical creatures 2/7

I resent the fact that I have been reduced to a one issue voter. It breaks my heart that I can’t vote based on my concerns for social welfare, social justice, that my campaigning for homelessness issues, migrant issues, better mental health provisions will have to be put 1/9 on the back burner. I am devastated that after a lifetime of voting & encouraging people, particularly women, to engage & use the vote denied to so many of our sisters around the world, I am actually thinking about not voting. My strong feelings about Brexit & the need to 2/9

Last night & today I & thousands of other @CST_UK volunteers across the country donned hi-vis jackets & stab vests & stood outside our synagogues, protecting our families, friends & communities while they prayed, on our most holiest of days. We don’t do this to draw attention 1/4 to ourselves, we don’t do it because it’s fun, we don’t do it to make a point. We do it because it’s necessary - because in 2019 to be Jewish comes at a cost. We are vigilant, we have to be. In Halle, Germany, this morning a synagogue, not much different to mine was 2/4

I have posted some things in the last few years that I never believed I would see or hear in the city I grew up in, in the liberal, tolerant City of Sanctuary of Brighton & Hove. When I was first sent this vile message from a Labour Facebook group of someone suggesting that

https://twitter.com/lowles_nick/status/1122888201843163138

“We need to march about this to the Synagogue in Hove,” in response to a candidate’s suspension for antisemitism, I cried. It took a reality check from a pragmatic friend to get me to stop shaking. It was reported to the police & CST immediately. I’m no shrinking violet.