All the evidence is that anti-Semitism is at a historic low in Britain
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| The Pew Research Centre's survey of racism in Europe - anti-semitism is low down on the list |
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| The political methodology of the CST is clear from the above montage - it conflates all sorts of opposites into one melange - a pot pourri of sensationalist headlines meaning nothing at all other than that the CST has no analysis of what it is supposed to be analysing |
The
reason for this politically convenient narrative and it is why the government funds the CST so generously, is
that the ‘anti-Semitism’ narrative is tied to opposition to Israel and support
for the Palestinians. It is a constant
theme that ‘anti-Semitism’ is derived
from opposition to the Israeli state, which in practice means opposition to a
central plank of British Foreign Policy.
Support for Israel is support for our ‘special relationship’ with the
United States. Opposition to the
alignment with the United State is thereby deemed ‘anti-Semitism’ and
‘extremism’.
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| If you repeat a lie long enough some people may come to believe it |
Riding on the back of the CST’s Report are
propaganda papers like Huff Post
which was co-founded by the far-Right Jewish racist Andrew Breitbart of Steve
Bannon fame. In it Euan Philipps, of the
non-existent Labour Against Anti-Semitism, which is no more than a group of
Internet Trolls [Jessica Jacobs-Schiff, Saul Freeman, Euan
Philipps. Emma Feltham, Denny Taylor] asserts that Labour
Has A Massive Antisemitism Problem, It Isn't Going Away, And Only Action Will
Tackle It.
If you repeat a
lie often enough and big enough, as Goebbels observed, then people may
believe you. In fact very few people in
the Labour Party believe this lie.
Philipps talks of a failure to win 3 London seats in what he called London’s ‘bagel belt’, surely an anti-Semitic
trope if ever there was one! Perhaps we
should ask how many seats Labour could lose by becoming Islamophobic? The whole talk of a Jewish vote, which has
been pursued by racists such as Philipps is itself anti-Semitic.
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| Notice the contrast between the tabloids' opposition to 'antisemitism' and their racism towards asylum seekers |
Other than the usual witch hunting nonsense,
singling out people like Luke Cresswell or myself, Phillips has nothing to say apart
from describing the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism’ as the ‘bedrock’ of Labours’ disciplinary processes.
Since the only purpose of the IHRA is to conflate anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism
it is clear where Philipps and his trolls are coming from.
We
have the irony that the most anti-Semitic groups in Britain and in Europe, the
people who deny the Holocaust and believe in Jewish conspiracy theories are
also the most pro-Zionist and pro-Israel.
Groups like the EDL, BNP and Britain First in Britain and Le Pen, Geert
Wilder’s Freedom Party, Herr Strache’s far-Right Freedom Party and the neo-Nazi
AfD Alternative for Germany love Zionism and Israel but don’t particularly like
Jews.
We
see this in the support of the mass media for the fiction that the Labour Party
is overrun by ‘anti-Semitism’. What was
interesting last week was that on the same day The Telegraph, Mail and Sun all
led with anti-Semitic attacks against George Soros who, in the words of the
Sun’s Hugo Gye was the ‘puppet master’.
This is the same Hugo Gye who asks why Labour’s hard left ‘has a problem with Jews.’ The idea of rich powerful Jews as ‘puppet
masters’ has a direct lineage to Nazi stereotypes.
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| Yair Netanyahu's anti-Semitic cartoon welcomed by neo-Nazis |
The
attacks on George Soros by Europe’s far-right, including Hungary’s Prime
Minister Viktor Orban are reciprocated by Israel and Netanyahu who hates Soros
for funding Israeli human rights groups.
Last year Netanyahu’s son posted an anti-Semitic cartoon of Soros as the
puppet master which received acclaim from the neo-Nazi editor of the Daily
Stormer, Andrew Anglin and David Duke, the Holocaust denying former KKK Grand
Wizard.
In
the year 2016/17 the CST received
£13.4 million from the Home Office in grants.
This grant has been renewed for 2017/18.
It is meant for ‘UK Jewish
community security measures’ but there is no reason
to believe that British Jews are under any threat. This grant and the expansion of the CST is about
hyping up a non-existent threat. It is
about creating fear and tension, not least inside the Jewish community, a fear
which is then linked to Palestinian supporters and the Left in the Labour
Party. Such is the seamless narrative of
our rulers and their prostitute media.
This grant is about 4 times the equivalent given to the Muslim community despite the latter being about 8 times as large as the Jewish community. Whereas anti-semitism in Britain is virtually non-existent although hyped up by groups like the CST, Islamaphobia and anti-Black racism is a real problem.
There are no examples of vehicles mounting the pavements to run over Jewish worshippers. There are no examples of firebomb attacks on synagogues, unlike mosques. Yet 'anti-Semitism' is prioritised and Islamaphobia is ignored for reasons of political convenience and policy considerations.
For
the financial y/e 31.3.17 the CST made a net profit of over £3m. The income for a 15 month period (the end of
year date has changed) was £30m compared to £15m for the previous financial
year. As their Report states ‘fundraising during
the period exceeded the target set by the Trustees.’ The CST is awash with money and it has a vested financial interest and lots of
employees to pay to ensure that in future years too the level of
‘anti-Semitism’ is seen to increase in order that it can make a case for yet
more cash. It now has £16¾m in
reserves.
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| Despite an alleged increase of 34% in violent anti-semitic incidents there wasn't one injury - which raises questions to what constitutes a violent incident |
The CST’s
2017 Anti-Semitic Incidents Report recorded a total of 1,382
incidents, an increase of 3%, itself statistically meaningless. The CST
reported 1382 incidents for 2017
which is only 3% up on their revised
2016 figure of 1346 (despite a much publicised 30% increase for first 6
months of 2017). It did though record a
34% increase in assaults, which on the surface should be worrying. But here is the strange thing. Not one of these incidents was what they
called ‘extreme violence’ i.e. at least Actual Bodily Harm. In fact there were
four incidents of extreme violence in 2015 and one in 2014.
For
2 successive years there were no serious anti-Semitic physical attacks on Jews
causing injury.
What is even more strange is that assaults
or violence in general were, on average, 33% of all hate crimes, so around 26 500 assaults in total and 20 500 related to race to end
March 2017. One quarter of these resulted in injury. Yet the number of assaults in the CST figures
and this is allowing for the most trivial of assaults is 145 or 10.5%. This is a massive disparity suggesting that
the number of anti-Semitic ‘incidents’ is either vastly overinflated or what is
termed an ‘anti-Semitic incident’ differs dramatically from other incidents of
hate crime.
Even
more startling is that whereas some 8% of all hate crimes result in an injury,
this is not the case with violent anti-Semitic incidents where there were zero
examples of injury.
By
its own admission, ‘there is a wide spectrum of what is
classed as an Assault by CST.’ One
suspects much of this is extremely trivial and minor even if an anti-Semitic
motivation can be shown.
In fact,
as the CST Report shows, there has throughout the year been a decline in
anti-Semitic incidents, with December recording half (78) of the January
figures.
On page 5
of the Report there is what one can only call tendentious and mischievious
political commentary. Scrabbling around
for an explanation of the increase in anti-Semitic incidents, the CST puts
forward the hypothesis that
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| Speculation and an underlying political bias runs through the Report |
‘there
was unprecedented publicity regarding controversies about alleged and actual
antisemitism in the Labour Party. As would be the case for any form of hate
crime, both issues are likely to have emboldened offenders, whilst also causing
victims to be more aware of the need to report incidents.’
If
this is to be believed then the false anti-Semitism campaign of the Jewish
Labour Movement and other groups has engendered actual anti-Semitism! If that is true then it is a damning indictment of the Zionist organisations whose activity has resulted in self-fulfilling prophecies.
In
London, where most British Jews live, there was a 7% decrease in anti-Semitic incidents from 835 to 773 in 2017, whereas
the in Manchester there was a 27% increase from 206 to 261.
The
bulk of the anti-Semitic incidents consisted of 1038 incidents of ‘abusive
behaviour’ ranging from social media to hate mail and verbal abuse. None of this is particularly serious.
18%
of the anti-Semitic incidents (247) occurred on social media. Since one person can post a million tweets
this is statistically absurd. Social
media should be stripped out of any such report. No one has died from an anti-Semitic Facebook
post or a Tweet. This is just trivia.
An
indication of the bias of the CST is that in reaction to Trump’s Jerusalem
announcement the CST sought fit to talk about
‘street
protests in major cities across the UK including Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff,
Edinburgh, London, Manchester, Nottingham and Sheffield. Whilst protesting against Israel is not automatically anti-Semitic and
is not recorded as an antisemitic incident by CST, some of the rhetoric
involved in these protests was targeted towards Jewish people. Specifically, on Friday 8th December, during a protest
outside the United States Embassy in London, some of the protesters chanted, “Jews,
remember the Khaybar, the army of Muhammad is returning.” This references the battle
of Khaybar in the year 628, in which Jews were killed and expelled from a town
of the same name.’
What is noticeable about this is that the clear inference is that
although not automatically anti-Semitic
protests against Israel are usually anti-Semitic. In fact all it could do to muster up some
proof is the reference to a long forgotten battle some 1,500 years ago! Given that Israel calls itself a Jewish state
it is surprising that this is all the CST could find!
Of
course some of the 145 incidents of assault are extremely unpleasant. One example given is that where a group of
Jewish school children were trapped on a bus and attacked and chased but there
are no reports of any injuries and all
the perpetrators were caught and punished.
Other incidents include stones being thrown. Again not very nice.
But
compare this with what the Communal organisations of the Jewish community, the
Board of Deputies and other Zionist organisations support in Israel and
Palestine. If Jews in this country were treated like Israel, the Jewish state, treats its non-Jewish citizens then there would be good cause for complaint.
Today Ha’aretz reported Settlers
Caught on Film Throwing Stones at Left-wing Activists in West Bank.
Ha’aretz reports about how ‘10
Israelis, members of the left-wing anti-occupation group Ta’ayush, along with
international activists, were touring the area when they were assaulted’ and
quote one activist Guy Batavia as saying that “The area there is very
violent. In recent months there have
been a number of assaults on activists and on [Palestinian] farmers and
shepherds. Yesterday there were two more assaults. We had gone to one of the
villages where [settlers] had gone in during the week and made a mess – and a
few teens came out toward us, three of them masked, and threw really big stones
at us. It was really dangerous.” The
activists did not file a police complaint, saying the police “don’t really want
to do anything.”
It’s a good job that the Jewish
schoolchildren in Britain didn’t face the British equivalent of the Israeli
police – who protect the racists and ignore the victims. The article goes on to explain that ‘Last
year a Haaretz investigative report revealed that although
the police were aware of at least nine instances of assault by settlers against
Palestinians, left-wing activists and soldiers over a period of two and a half
months, all of which were filmed or witnessed by soldiers, no one was indicted,
even though the unmasked faces could clearly be seen. In other cases, soldiers
were very close to the stone-throwers, but did nothing to stop them.’
Unfortunately
bogus and inflated accounts of ‘anti-Semitism’ in Britain, not least by the CST
and the far-Right Campaign Against Anti-Semitism are used in order to prevent
solidarity in Britain with the Palestinian victims of genuine violence in
Israel/Palestine. That is what the false
anti-Semitism campaign in the Labour Party is about. Preventing solidarity.
If
Jews in Britain faced even a fraction of the racism, violence and
discrimination that Palestinians face in Israel then they would have real
grounds for complaint about anti-Semitism.
Below
are some comments on Home Office and Police statistics of hate crimes in
general. I must thank Dr Alan Maddison with help in compiling this.
Number and share of
Hate Crimes
Note
the growth of 29% overall and for individual threads, the police say this
growth was both real and combined
with improved reporting, (around only
one in three are reported on average).
The
Home Office do not usually provide the data for a breakdown of religious or
racial hate crimes, but a freedom of information” request gave the number of
anti-Semitic hate crimes reported to
police in 2016 as 1078. This is lower than the
CST incidents figure of 1309 given in their 2016 report; now in their recent report
CST say this 2016 figure is 1346.
The
distribution of hate crimes reported to police is shown in the pie chart below
using the 1078 antisemitic hate
crime figure.
Hate Crime Assaults
When
you look at police data for assaults for each category below, you’ll see it
varies from around 30% for Race and Religion and up to 45% for Disability. And
the Grey section of “Violence with injury” (one quarter of assaults on average)
is highest for Sexual Orientation.
The
violence with injury for the Religion group looks to only about 17% of violent incidents . But of the 5949 religious hate crimes we know
the 1078 for antisemitism may have pulled this down. The biggest group here are
Muslims, and they are the most hated.
There is no reason why their injuries should be less than the average.
The
CST reports of 107 assaults for 2016, if we assume they were all passed on to
the police then that gives only 10 % (107/ 1078). No comment is made by the CST
on injury, except to say no serious injury occurred and no GBH.
The
shares of the hate crime assaults are given below, (for anti-Semitism, 107
over 26 500 = 0.4%)
The New CST Data
The
CST now report 145 assaults for 2017
(again no serious injuries) but a growth of 34%. We can’t give the new share,
but my guess is that total hate crime assaults will increase at around the same
rate as shown below, and that the 0.4% share for antisemitic assaults will not
change much.
We
don’t have police data for either anti-Semitism or other hate crimes to end
2017, but projecting the 29% increase to March 2017, including assaults, then I
guess the antisemitism assault share of all hate crime assaults will not change
much from the previous 0.4%.
Just
to give a context, whilst there were
145 antisemitic assaults reported to
the CST in 2017, an increase of 40
events, we anticipate racist hate crime assaults alone will rise to 22 500, an increase of
3500 events.
To
take account of the small Jewish population the pro rata risks for assault are
estimated below for 2016.
The
recent 34% increase in anti-Semitic assaults reported by the CST, may be higher
than that anticipated for other hate crimes ( we don’t know yet) which may
probably increase between 20 and 30%. This would not lead to much of a change
in the relative risk as depicted in the illustration.
Given
this new CST data it will still be true that a Jewish person will be around 40 times more likely to be a victim to a general
assault ( if carrying the same risk as the rest of us) than one motivated by
anti-Semitism.
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