With the advent of the Edinburgh Council Gaza Twinning discussion, Pete Gregson has been attacked in inaccurate and malicious articles – even from those, such as the Edinburgh Reporter, who should know better.
Phyllis Stephen
The Edinburgh Reporter has refused to correct the inaccurate report Pete Gregson ejected from council meeting today | The Edinburgh Reporter
Here is the letter sent to Phyllis Stephen, the editor, on 15th August 2022, to which she has not responded about the Council’s CCWEL (City Centre West East Link- a protected cycle track costing around £17M). Pete is an avid cyclist:
Dear Phyllis,
One of your articles attacking me is gaining some traction at present, so I think I would like you to correct it. It is being boosted through SEO so it’s the first thing seen by people searching my name.
It concerns this piece: https://theedinburghreporter.co.uk/2019/05/pete-gregson-ejected-from-council-meeting-today/
You claim:
Peter Gregson, who was addressing the council’s Transport and Environment committee in response to a proposed cycle route through Roseburn, was removed from City Chambers following the outburst.
Mr Gregson accused the council of “asphyxiating Ruth Davidson’s baby”, Finn, by claiming the authority was not tackling air quality.
What actually happened was that I was making a satirical comment on the Council’s action with the CCWEL. A retired SEPA air quality expert studied the data and if you took the time to watch The Roseburn Plume (at https://youtu.be/n_jkUmMGi8I ) you would understand the science behind it. The pollution levels on the south side of Roseburn Terrace are at the EU limit just now- by removing the parking from the north side of the street to accommodate the CCWEL the traffic (around 100,000 commuters in 22,000 vehicles per day) is moved much closer to the tenement homes on the south side- with the result that pollution levels will easily breach EU standards. If you took the trouble to visit one of the traders on the south side, you would see, as I did, the soot on all surfaces inside the shop. This is the particulate pollution that is set to increase; and one that brings on asthma attacks and has proven to be fatal.
All this was lost on your reporter (David Bol). The reason that I and most others object to the Roseburn to Haymarket stretch of the CCWEL (cost- what, about £12M?) is that we already have a perfectly good cycle route into town from Roseburn. It’s called National Cycle Route 1 and runs alongside the tram tracks and is what we cyclists use- and will continue to use- for the completed CCWEL will still share tarmac with 22,000 vehicles. NCR1 takes 2 minutes longer than the CCWEL to get to Haymarket. And the CCWEL at Roseburn is not wide enough to accommodate two cyclists coming from opposite directions travelling at speed, so cyclists in a hurry (and most are) will use the road, not the CCWEL. If you were a cyclist living in Roseburn you would know all these things.
Anyway – as to inaccuracies; if you check the Council webcam footage (at www.tinyurl.com/pollutionscandal ) you will see that firstly I was not “removed from the City Chambers”; I was asked to leave the Dean of Guild Rooms, where the Transport Committee meeting was being held. And it was not an outburst- it was part of a scripted press release that I had made the mistake of sending to reporter David Bol before the meeting began; he passed it onto Cllr Leslie Macinnes, who prevented me from making a clarification to the initial challenge on what the Council were doing in Roseburn, by stopping me before I had given the context to my tongue-in-cheek claim. And the Reporter got that wrong too; I was not ‘accusing the council of “asphyxiating Ruth Davidson’s baby”’, I was accusing the Council of inadvertently planning to so do, by dint of the fact that their air quality report was refusing to acknowledge their own readings for the monitoring equipment on Roseburn Terrace. And the pollution levels we could face will asphyxiate any baby faced with levels 50% above EU permitted levels, which is what our ex-SEPA air quality expert predicted*.
As for your statement on me and the Labour Party and bogus antisemitism, which you insert into your piece in your enthusiasm to paint me as some sort of nutcase, I beg you to read the webpage at https://bogusantisemitism.org/the-ihra-definition-of-antisemitism/ which will hopefully enlighten you as to why Corbyn was brought low, and led to us being lumbered with a Brexit-loving right-wing Government; one which congratulated Israel on its unprovoked bombing of Gaza last weekend. We have a government (and an opposition leader) who declare Israel to be a wonderful place and that there is no apartheid there- which is pretty much the UK Government that Israel wanted and is the one which Israel has got. If you doubt the reach of Israel in our politics, please recall Israel threatened to get all our Edinburgh Councillors jailed last March when last they planned to discuss Gaza twinning (see the UK Lawyers for Israel post at https://www.uklfi.com/edinburgh-council-withdraws-discussion-on-twinning-with-gaza ), a threat which had the desired effect of stopping progress on twinning.
Will you correct your article? All the Councillors are reading it because the Zionists who oppose Gaza twinning are sending it to them.
Your publication is therefore being used to assist in the ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people; Israel has declared Gaza twinning to be an existential attack upon its fabric.
At present I am taking about 400 letters a week to Council offices from Edinburgh citizens who support Gaza twinning and have been doing so since the Gig for Gaza in early June. In 3 years of campaigning on this matter, and having distributed around 20,000 flyers to citizens, I have not met one resident that opposes Gaza twinning. We created Israel, remember. We are 100% the architects of Palestinian suffering. Twinning might be the first step in redressing the evils perpetrated by our racist colony.
So it would be good if your newspaper was not the vehicle that was used to paint me in such a bad light as to prevent it.
Yours sincerely,
Pete Gregson
*Edinburgh Council rejected two attempts to get an independent air assessment done on the likely impacts of the CCWEL- see https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/directory-record/1110034/we-local-traders-and-residents-of-roseburn-terrace-call-upon-the-council-to-commission-an-independent-air-study-analysing-the-likely-impact-of-ccwel-road-layout-changes-on-roseburn-terrace-pollution-disturbing-new-research-from-a-recently-retired-local- and https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/directory-record/1110035/call-for-independent-air-study-analysing-the-likely-impact-of-ccwel-road-layout-changes-on-roseburn-terrace-no2-pollution-levels claiming that our request contained “false statements”.
It should be noted that Phyllis is an ardent supporter of the CCWEL and receives funding from Edinburgh Council to promote it.
David Collier
Collier has developed quite an obsession with Pete, which is rather bizarre because he is not, in fact Jewish.
There is another piece of fictitious prose on Collier’s website at https://david-collier.com/edinburgh-islamic-jihad/
Jewish Telegraph and The Guardian
Pete responded to attacks from the Jewish Telegraph and The Guardian with a letter in the Weekly Worker:
Dear Reader,
You may know I am campaigning to get Gaza city twinned with my hometown, Edinburgh. I have now become the target of Zionists, who declare my project to be a challenge to Israel’s right to exist. They set out to tar me at every opportunity – most recently in this article by the Zionist Jewish Telegraph, which claimed I said the holocaust was exaggerated, which is a lie:
What I actually said was: “Israel exaggerates the holocaust for political ends.” I made the statement to the then GMB union Scottish secretary, Gary Smith (now national secretary) because I sought to intentionally breach the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism, which declares (amongst other things) that it is anti-Semitic to state that Israel is a racist endeavour or exaggerates the holocaust. Smith, an avowed Zionist, had me expelled from the union.
The IHRA definition was invented purely to protect Israel from criticism, as it continues to remove the Palestinians from their land. In 2018, I had published a petition calling upon Labourites to declare that “Israel is a racist endeavour” and over 2,650 have signed it. I pointed out to the JT that it was this action that saw me investigated by the Labour Party.
To say, “Israel exaggerates the holocaust for political ends”, is very different from saying, ‘The holocaust was exaggerated’. In an effort to explain my statement, I had pointed out that of the 11 million killed in the holocaust, as far as Israel presents history, the slaughter was purely about six million Jews. I observed that Israeli university courses on the holocaust ignore non-Jews: there is no mention of the millions of Russians, Poles, Roma and others murdered en masse by the Nazis.
Even Israelis admit they exploit the holocaust. Israeli former minister of education, Shulamit Aloni, was asked in a US interview: “Often, when there is dissent expressed in the United States against policies of the Israeli government, people here are called anti-Semitic. What is your response to that as an Israeli Jew?” Aloni replied: “Well, it’s a trick, we always use it. When from Europe somebody is criticising Israel, then we bring up the holocaust …”
I believe that The Guardian, another pro-Zionist publication, is no better. I was criticised in a Guardian article, which alleged I had spoken at a Keep Talking meeting alongside holocaust deniers. When I pointed out that I was the only one on the platform that evening and a holocaust denier had simply asked a question from the audience, The Guardian argued that they were factually correct, in that both of us had actually “spoken” at the meeting! It was this kind of ridiculous guilt by association that led to my establishing the Campaign Against Bogus Antisemitism.
I believe we need to speak to holocaust-deniers at every opportunity, to explain why they are wrong. Shouting and shunning them achieves little, for it only pushes them into the shadows, where their lies fester and multiply.
I call upon readers to visit the Campaign Against Bogus Anti-Semitism’s website, (www.bogusantisemitism.org), to find out why the UK has, since the IHRA definition was introduced in 2014, seen a rise in ‘anti-Semitism’. I consider it’s because a different, pro-Israel definition has been promulgated. This twisted IHRA definition purports to claim that pro-Palestine anti-racist campaigners are no better than Hitler. It is promoted by Zionists to justify their apartheid regime and Israel’s murderous attacks upon the Palestinian people. And so, as more and more UK citizens protest at Israel’s crimes, more and more ‘anti-Semites’ are ‘exposed’ in the press. Any politician that mentions it is an issue is hounded out of their party!
In fact, the IHRA definition has been adopted by all major political parties except the Greens. It has been adopted by 40% of local authorities, and all the major trade unions, except the PCS. It has been adopted by the police, the UK government, the Scottish parliament and many universities. As a result, many have suffered for declaring Israel to be racist, through being fired, suspended or expelled. JT readers are told there is an ever-rising tide of anti-Semitism in the UK when in truth it is the opposite. I sense this scaremongering is designed to maintain hysteria and to drive more Jews to move to Israel, to assist the government there in its incessant land-grab. No-one I know, even Palestinians, bears ill will against Jews. However, they detest Zionism, which is a political creed. No longer should we allow anti-Zionism to be conflated with anti-Semitism.
Yours sincerely, Pete Gregson
Campaign Against Bogus Anti‑Semitism
This letter was published on 12th August in the Weekly Worker, last letter
A longer version can be found in Redress Online at www.redressonline.com/2022/08/gaza-campaigner-pete-gregson-defends-himself-against-press-attacks-claiming-he-said-the-holocaust-was-exaggerated
Eventually the Jewish Telegraph admitted a mistake and published a correction, though, as usual, it is unlikely many of its readers noticed it.
The Herald
There are more examples of attacks on Pete from the Herald newspaper and other on-line blogs in Pete’s entry of the Rogues Gallery – Campaign Against BOGUS Antisemitism
Newspapers defame first in bold headlines, then retract later (in tiny print). Suing for damage to reputation is expensive and may fail; it appears that editors know they can say what they like- because of the likelihood that the courts will favour Zionists in civil cases. (see Legal Battles lost and won (and ongoing!) – Campaign Against BOGUS Antisemitism)
On the 21st August, Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss wrote a letter of support for Pete Gregson – see it at Rabbi Dovid Weiss declares Pete Gregson is no Antisemite – Twin Edinburgh with Gaza (twingaza.com)
You can also see Rabbi Ahron Cohen defend Pete when he was being unjustly tried by the GMB for criticising Israel and exposing Rhea Wolfson as his accuser. See www.tinyurl.com/gmbihra