Last night I received notification from Twitter that after further consideration my account had been reinstated.
On the 31st August I logged in to find that my account had been locked. I was notified that 25 of my tweets had been held to be in violation of their rules on abusive conduct and harassment. I was required to serve a 14 day ban which would commence only once the offending tweets had been deleted.
Common to all 25 complaints was the account of Kerry Ann Mendoza, editor of the Canary, one of the leading pro Corbyn "news" outlets. She and I had clashed a few days prior, following which a concerted and coordinated campaign of mass reporting was initiated to silence me from combating antisemitism on Twitter.
Although entirely devoid of substance the sheer weight of numbers must have induced Twitter to be duped into acceding to the designs of anti-Semites against a jew trying to fight them.
I refused to comply and notified Twitter accordingly. I lodged an appeal but received no response. I followed up with a long email setting out the full context but again received no reply. The Board of Deputies kindly made an informal approach on my behalf which sadly bore no fruit. Twitter maintained that they had "made the right call".
I was urged by a number of people to comply with Twitter's requirements in order to get back into the fray as soon as possible where my voice was much needed and valued. Flattered as I was I declined. Expedient as such a course may have been it was to my mind misconceived. To do so would be to bend to the will of anti-Semites and they would never let me forget it. On principle I was not prepared to compromise. The only course was therefore to pursue Twitter myself for relief.
On a return to Manchester my friend and former instructing solicitor, the very able Daniel Berke, agreed to assist. Having been provided by Dave Rich of CST with the name of the CEO of the UK division of Twitter we decided to address all communications to him personally.
We drafted a Letter Before Action setting out my complaint together with my demands which, if not met would result in legal proceedings being initiated without further notice.
As the deadline approached I received the notification that they had reversed the suspension and reinstated the account forthwith. Importantly this included an acceptance that none of the 25 tweets in fact violated their rules. There would be no requirement to delete any of them nor to serve any ban.
My public thanks must go to Daniel Berke whose creative legal strategy so clearly unnerved Twitter as to engender a complete capitulation on their part.
It was his idea not to pursue the matter via the courts. Instead he argued that the effect of the suspension was to prevent a jew from using their service to combat antisemitism. This was discriminatory on religious grounds. The Human Rights Act he pointed out is applicable to private service providers as well as public bodies. Thus our complaint would be furthered by a reference to the EHRC on those grounds.
The point seems to have resonated with Twitter as evidenced by the volte face yesterday.
The important point is that too many Jews are being bullied off Twitter as a result of pile on's and mass reporting by antisemites who are abusing the rules and procedures against those whom the rules are designed to protect.
That intimidation must not be allowed to succeed. We must show the antisemitic bullies that we will not be cowed nor silenced neither shall we bend or buckle.
We will fight and we will win.
We are Jews. We are proud and we are strong.
As someone observed to me last night when welcoming me back, Twitter is the front line in the fight against antisemitism. It is a cesspool and thus unpleasant to wade through. It is, however, important. I urge friends to get on that forum and fight the fight, particularly now and over the next 6 weeks. My story shows that when we stand up to the anti-semites we will win.
They resorted to seeking to silence me only because they could not win the argument. They failed. Let's together make sure that they fail again on December 12th.
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