EXCLUSIVE: Daniel Allington, the Academic Fraud from King’s College, who Assisted John Mann's Attempt to Close Down the Canary & Skwawkbox

 Why Does King’s College allow Allington to use its name to mount an attack on freedom of the press using bogus and distorted ‘research’?

Daniel Allington is no stranger to this blog. He describes himself as a ‘computational social scientist’. He was also the ‘Head of Online Monitoring’ for the far-right Zionist Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, a McCarthyite organisation, widely suspected of being Israeli funded, which specialises in targeting Palestinian students, anti-Zionists and academics for 'antisemitism'. It uses false accusations of anti-Semitism in order to chill free speech.

According to Allington and Mann Emma Watson is an anti-Semite

It also says that anyone who calls out the tactic of smearing individuals as 'anti-Semites' for their support of the Palestinians is itself anti-Semitic. So presumably anyone who criticises former Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, for calling Emma Watson an anti-Semite, for her support for the Palestinians, is also an anti-Semite. 

Last April I wrote an article on how Allington had pioneered an entirely new Research Methodology. Historically science has been evidenced based, which means, on the basis of previous experimentation, you propose a theory and then test it against the evidence. If the theory can predict future behaviour then you have probably been successful.

This is anti-Semitic according to Allington

Allington’s revolutionary research methodology is blindingly simple. I suspect it’s not innovative either! What he does is first he decides what what his conclusions are and then he decides how to fix the evidence and finally he goes about collecting his flawed ‘evidence’.

I don’t call Allington an academic fraud as a form of abuse but because that is what he is. Allington’s research has about as much merit as the studies of Cyril Burt into IQ. Perhaps in years to come the phrase ‘to do an Allington’ might enter the English language.

Allington’s Deception, Fabrication and Use of False Data

Wikipedia defines Academic dishonesty as deception, fabrication and Improper research practices. which ‘involve fabricating, misrepresenting or selectively reporting research data’.

Northern Illinois University defines Academic Dishonesty as including fabrication or falsification which it explains as ‘the unauthorized creation or alteration of information in an academic document or activity. For example, artificially creating data...’ Allington is undoubtedly guilty of this too.

The University of Virginia includes under its definition of Academic Fraud False data which is ‘the fabrication or alteration of data to deliberately mislead. For example, changing data to get better experiment results is academic fraud.’ Allington is bang to rights.

The University of Edinburgh includes under Academic Misconduct? Falsification which it defines as ‘an attempt to present fictitious or distorted data’. Again Allington is guilty as charged. It also includes Deceit which it terms ‘dishonesty in order to achieve advantage.’

Allington is a ‘Police State Academic’. He is the kind of academic who would have given legitimacy to General Pinochet and before that Hitler. Not that he is alone. Many if not most academics are deferential to the State and its attacks on academia.

This is one anti-Semite that the CAA doesn't go after

The silence of academics at the dismissal of Professor David Miller for arguing that an end should be put to Zionism and Israeli Apartheid was deafening. He received no support from the UCU.

Despite paying lip-service to academic freedom when it comes down to it most academics are more concerned about their own status and the financial rewards that come with it.

Noam Chomsky stands very much alone on American campuses where academics service the American war machine with regularity. The number of academics who stood up to the Nazi regime was vanishingly small.

For example Victor Klemperer was Professor of Romance Languages at the Technical University of Dresden who was dismissed for being Jewish.

Richard Evans described in The Third Reich in Power how, when Klemperer was dismissed ‘none of his colleagues did anything to help him; the only sympathy came from a secretary.’ The most notorious academic collaborator with the Nazis being the philosopher Martin Heidegger, whom the Nazis appointed Rector of Freiburg University.

It was no surprise therefore that Allington attracted the attention of the newly ennobled John Mann who was appointed ‘anti-Semitism Czar’ by Boris Johnson. Mann tweeted on being appointed that he would be investigating the Alternative Media for ‘anti-Semitism’.

Mann’s title ‘anti-Semitism Czar’ is most appropriate since the Czarist regime was notorious for its anti-Semitism. Thousands of Jews died from pogroms that the Czars instigated.

Throughout his Parliamentary career Mann was known as a racist. He was described by the Guardian as the “best friend, best man and political ally’ of Phil Woolas, who was ejected from parliament by an Electoral Court after an election campaign which was based on ‘making the white folk angry’, in the course of which he told a number of blatant lies about his Lib-Dem opponent. Mann gave Woolas unstinting support.

Mann also has a track record of anti-Roma racism and was blamed by local Travellers for making their lives a misery. He was interviewed by police in a hate-crime investigation, after putting out in 2007 the Bassetlaw Anti Social Behaviour Handbook It told residents how to deal with problems of anti-social behaviour. Included amongst those problems were Gypsies and Travellers.

You can gauge the type of ‘research’ Allington conducts from his previous Report for the Home Office’s Commission for Countering Extremism that was set up by Theresa May in the wake of the Manchester bombing with a remit to brand the left as ‘violent’ and ‘extremist’. In Violent extremist tactics and the ideology of the sectarian far left. 

Allington wrote about Left wing radicalism linked to sympathy for violent extremism. Beneath it was a picture of Riot Police goons preparing to do battle. I suspect that Allington missed the irony since the violence of the British and Israeli states is invisible to Allington.

Allington’s real purpose was to criminalise social movements like Black Lives Matter, Expulsion Rebellion and anyone who is anti-capitalist (which is the government’s definition of ‘extremism’).

Normally there should be no relationship between those who commission research and the researcher.  Allington was clearly an integral part of the CAA and shared its philosophy

The Campaign Against Antisemitism

The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism had a problem, which was that all the evidence proved that the far-Right were more anti-Semitic than those on the Left. This is not surprising. It’s like a finding that water is wet!

From 2015 the CAA had been producing a pretentiously named ‘Anti-Semitism Barometer’ which had been criticised even by other Zionists for its sloppy methodology.

The Institute for Jewish Policy Research had this to say about the findings of their 2015 survey of the attitudes of British Jews:

“more than half of all British Jews feel that antisemitism now echoes the 1930s” verges into irresponsible territory – it is an incendiary finding, and there is simply no way to ascertain whether or not it is accurate. Moreover, the very inclusion of such a question in the survey, which most credible scholars of the Holocaust utterly refute, was a dubious decision in and of itself, and raises issues about the organisers’ pre-existing hypotheses and assumptions. Professional social researchers build credible surveys and analyse the data with an open mind; the CAA survey falls short both in terms of its methodology and its analysis.

For the cautious IJPR this was about as damning as it gets. Note the comment about ‘pre-existing hypotheses and assumptions’ because this is an integral part of Allington’s methodology too. Nowhere does he make explicit his own bias or assumptions such as his belief that antisemitism and anti-Zionist are one and the same.

Writing about the same survey Anshel Pfeffer in Ha'aretz accused the CAA of an ‘eagerness to see the anti-Semitism in Britain, which inarguably exists, as much more widespread than it really is’. Pfeffer is no radical. He is a mainstream Zionist and Jewish Chronicle columnist. About the finding that 56% of Jews agree that “the recent rise in anti-Semitism in Britain has some echoes of the 1930s.” Pfeffer had this to say:

‘If the majority of British Jews and the authors of the CAA report actually believe that, then it’s hard to take anything they say about contemporary anti-Semitism in their home country seriously.... To compare today’s Britain, for all its faults, with the Jews’ situation in 1930s exhibits a disconnect from reality which borders on hysteria.’ .

Despite this the CAA were forced to concede in their 2017 Barometer that:

‘Supporters of left-wing political parties and ‘remainers’ are less likely to be antisemitic than those on the right or supporters of the ‘leave’ camp’.

What the CAA desperately needed was an academic who would be willing to lend his name and that of his academic institution to bogus ‘research’ that would ‘prove’ that anti-Semitism was primarily a problem of the Left. 

Prior to 2019 the CAA used a series of statements in order to measure the level of anti-Semitism. They were:

1.  “British Jewish people chase money more than other British people.”

2. “Having a connection to Israel makes Jewish people less loyal to Britain than other British people.”

3.  “Jewish people consider themselves to be better than other British people.”

4.  “Compared to other groups, Jewish people have too much power in the media.”

5.  “Jewish people talk about the Holocaust just to further their political agenda.” or in 2015 “Jews talk about the Holocaust too much in order to get sympathy.”

6.  “Jewish people can be trusted just as much as other British people in business.” or in 2015 “In business, Jews are not as honest as most people.”

7.  “I am just as open to having Jewish friends as I am to having friends from other sections of British society” or in 2015 “I would be unhappy if a family member married a Jew.”

It is arguable that some of these statements aren’t anti-Semitic since there is often a factual basis to them. Even those who do believe in them aren't necessarily anti-Semitic since they also consider themselves pro-Jewish. It’s called a fragmented consciousness.

By the time of their 2019 Anti-Semitism Barometer the CAA had hired Allington. They needed someone to give academic respectability to an exercise in which they would simply manufacture evidence to 'prove' that it wasn’t the Right but the Left who were anti-Semitic. 

How did Allington achieve this given that historically it has been the Left which has fought racism and anti-Semitism in Britain, from the Battle of Cable Street in 1936 to the Anti-Nazi League and the anti-fascist committees  which sprang up to defeat the National Front in the 1970s? 

David Hirsh - Allington's academic partner, someone who praised Richard Littlejohn for his opposition to 'anti-Semitism'

Allington however up to the task and the 2019 Barometer concluded that ‘anti-Semitic views were most widespread on the far-left.'

Had there been a major shift in public opinion between 2018 and 2019? The Barometer was silent. It would appear that the existing methods of measuring antisemitism had been deficient. It was a simple matter to rectify this.

Under the guidance of two Zionist academics - Allington and David Hirsh - the CAA added a set of 6 questions. It will come as no surprise to find that all of the new questions were about Israel not Jews! The unspoken assumption of course was that antagonism or hostility to Israel is the same as the same opinions about Jews.  In other words, for the purpose of the exercise, Israel and Jews are one and the same thing.

Now an honest academic would have been upfront about the assumptions they were making but Allington and Hirsch are academics who willingly prostitute themselves in the service of the Israeli state. They are anything but honest. The questions were:

1.  Israel and its supporters are a bad influence on our democracy.”

2. “Israel can get away with anything because its supporters control the media.”

3. “Israel treats the Palestinians like the Nazis treated the Jews.”

4. “I am comfortable spending time with people who openly support Israel.”

5.  “Israel makes a positive contribution to the world.”

6.  “Israel is right to defend itself against those who want to destroy it.”

So if you believe that Israel and its supporters are a bad influence on British democracy you are therefore an anti-Semite! Israel, a state with pervasive censorship, that locks up Palestinians without trial, that demolishes Palestinian homes to make way for Jewish settlements and whose Police violently attack all pro-Palestinian demonstrations, is for them a beacon of democracy and if you disagree you are an anti-Semite.

Or take another question. If you're not comfortable spending time with Zionists you are also an anti-Semite. I and many thousands like me didn't like spending time with defenders of South African apartheid.  Were we racists against White South Africans or Whites in general?  If not why when it comes to Israel does that make you an anti-Semite.

There was no attempt, either in the 2019 Antisemitism Barometer or Allington's Report for John Mann Antisemitism and the ‘alternative media’  (which is based on this definition of 'anti-Semitism) to explain why the 6 questions above are indications of antisemitism.  That was simply an unspoken assumption. Any half decent academic would have explained why the existing questions were inadequate but to have done so would have jeapordised the whole project because Allington would have had to make explicit what was implicit, namely that criticism of Israel and Jews were one and the same thing.

The CAA announced that:

Among the very left-wing, 42% believe that Israel’s supporters are damaging British democracy and 60% believe that Israel treats the Palestinians like the Nazis treated the Jews which directly evokes one of the examples of antisemitism in the International Definition of Antisemitism adopted by the British Government.

The CAA proudly told readers that:

For the first time we asked about antisemitism across the range of examples incorporated in the International Definition of Antisemitism

What the CAA didn’t do was explain why they had made the change. To the popular press this was music to their ears. Now they had ‘proof’ that Corbyn’s supporters really were anti-Semitic.

But it was the academic equivalent of a 3 card trick. If you ask the mythical passenger on the Clapham Omnibus what they think anti-Semitism is they will reply to the effect that it’s someone who doesn’t like Jews. That is the definition of the Oxford English Dictionary– ‘hostility to or prejudice against Jews.’ It is part of the common sense of our times.

That is why the Zionists have invested so much time and money coming up with a definition, the IHRA, that conflates criticism of Israel and anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. The problem, and the reason why the Zionist equation of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism has such resonance, is precisely because when people think of 'anti-Semitism' they think of the holocaust, hatred of Jews etc. not Israel.

The CAA even had to ignore caveats in the IHRA itself. Phrases such as anti-Semitism ‘could, taking into account the overall context’ are ignored. As are the trenchant criticisms of the IHRA by a range of academic and legal scholars including the principal drafter of the IHRA himself, Kenneth Stern.

Antony Lerman, a former Director of the IJPR, stated that

‘Not only is there now overwhelming evidence that it’s not fit for purpose, but it also has the effect of making Jews more vulnerable to antisemitism, not less.’

Sir Geoffrey Bindman described the 38 word IHRA definition as

‘poorly drafted, misleading, and in practice has led to the suppression of legitimate debate and freedom of expression.

Stephen Sedley, a former Court of Appeal Judge and himself Jewish said of the IHRA that it ‘fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite. He also described it as:

‘placing the historical, political, military and humanitarian uniqueness of Israel’s occupation and colonisation of Palestine beyond permissible criticism.’

David Feldman, Director of the Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism described it as ‘bewilderingly imprecise” Hugh Tomlinson QC said the IHRA ‘lacks clarity and comprehensiveness’ and that it has ‘a potential chilling effect on public bodies’

Geoffrey Robertson QC stated that it would ‘chill free speech’ and was ‘not fit for purpose’. Kenneth Stern said:

‘“The definition was not drafted, and was never intended, as a tool to target or chill speech on a college campus.... It was never supposed to curtail speech on campus.”

In Allington’s Report  any honest researcher would have explained that the IHRA is a contested definition. A definition which has been superceded by the Jerusalem Declaration on Anti-Semitism. Allington does no such thing. In the first section ‘What is anti-Semitism’ we are told that:

According to the IHRA Definition, antisemitism is ‘a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews’

As David Feldman wrote, this is 'bewilderingly imprecise.' As Stephen Sedley remarked, being indefinite it wasn't even a definition. If anti-Semitism is a ‘certain perception’ what is that perception? Defining anti-Semitism in terms of ‘hatred’ ironically raises the bar and if anti-Semitism ‘might be’ expressed as hatred of Jews what else might it be expressed as? Anti-Zionism?

The actual 38 word definition (the 11 examples, 7 of which refer to Israel, are not actually part of the definition) says that

manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals.’

In other words anti-Semitism is directed towards everyone making the definition completely meaningless. As Hugh Tomlinson QC wrote:

The use of language is unusual and therefore potentially confusing. The phrase “a certain perception” is vague and unclear in the context of a definition. The use of the word “may” is also confusing. If it is understood in its usual sense of “possibility” then the definition is of little value:... This does not work as a definition.

The CAA is not interested in actual anti-Semitism

The CAA is disinterested in right-wing anti-Semitism, especially if they are supporters of Israel. Instead it focuses on isolated individuals, like the mentally ill Alison Chabloz who it managed to put in prison. Her holocaust denial was certainly offensive (as well as deranged) but holocaust denial is not a crime and countries who have made it illegal (Germany, Austria) have large far-Right/neo-Nazi parties in their legislature.

Even Jonathan Freedland recognised Mogg's comments as anti-Semitic.  However the CAA has a policy of not criticising pro-Zionist antisemites on the right

If the CAA was seriously interested in combating anti-Semitism it would have vigorously condemned Rees-Mogg, who retweeted the comments of Alice Wiedel, leader of the neo-Nazi German AfD but all you will find is a neutral article Jacob Rees Mogg defends sharing German far-right leader’s speech on Twitter which reports what he said without any of their normal vitriol.

The CAA even played down criticism of the AfD saying that they have ‘a long history of problematic language and policies’. No doubt if the year was 1933 the CAA would have been describing the Nazi Party's 'problematic language'  about Jews. They don't describe them as 'anti-Semitic' because the AfD are the most pro-Israel party in the Bundestag.

It is noticeable that the CAA doesn’t criticise pro-Zionist neo-Nazis such as the BNP, Tommy Robinson or Britain First. You will look in vain for anything on their site. The reason is that far-Right Zionists such as Jonathan Hoffman, are part of the CAA’s periphery.

The CAA and Academic Freedom

The CAA spends its time attacking academic freedom. Even Kenneth Stern condemned as ‘egregious’ the CAA’s targeting of a Jewish Professor at Bristol University, Rachel Gould, for having written in 2011 an article ‘Beyond Anti-Semitism’ describing how the holocaust intimidates people into self-censoring. Stern described the CAA’s behaviour, in testimony to Congress, as ‘chilling and McCarthy-like’.

The CAA demanded that Gould publicly retract her article and explain why she had retracted her essay. If she declined to do so then they demanded that she be dismissed “and her dismissal should be made public so as to clearly signal the University of Bristol’s values”.

In their determination to defend Israelil Apartheid the CAA don't even acknowledge the concepts of academic freedom and freedom of speech. Partly this is because the Israeli state itself has contempt for them. Allington  also has contempt for these concepts which is why John Mann hired him for his proposed hatchet job on the Alternative Media.

According to the CAA - telling the truth is antisemitic

Freedom of Speech, McCarthyism and the CAA

A good example of the CAA's contempt for freedom of speech is the complaint of anti-Semitism they made against Franck Magennis, a barrister. What was Magennis’s crime? Did he joke about ‘Jewish noses’ or engage in Holocaust denial? Not a bit of it. Magennis made his views about Zionism known and for that the CAA wanted him struck off. He tweeted:

Zionism is a kind of racism. It is essentially colonial. It has manifested in an apartheid regime calling itself "the Jewish state" that dominates non-Jews, and particularly Palestinians. You can't practice anti-racism at the same time as identifying with, or supporting, Zionism.

What in the above tweet was hostile or hateful to Jews? The complaint to the Bar Standards Board was part of the CAA's war on free speech. When informed that their complaint had been rejected they fulminated that the BSB ‘has disgracefully rejected’ their complaint.

The BSB was in fact very mealy mouthed in its judgment. They said ‘although the tweet may be “offensive”, it was not “seriously offensive”. The proper response would have been to say that freedom of speech is meaningless unless it includes the right to offend.

This blog however is not about the CAA so much as the intellectual charlatan, Dr Daniel Allington, who uses King’s College and his academic qualifications to give legitimacy to the CAA and John Mann's attack on free speech and the alternative press. 

London's King's College - leading the attack on free speech on Palestine

Antisemitism and the ‘alternative media

Allington’s report on the Alternative Media used all his fraudulent academic skills. For ‘balance’ Allington included two far-right sites, one of which TR News (Tommy Robinson) was found to ‘promote a negative view of Muslims, but not of Jews’ which made it alright. What Allington meant was that Robinson is pro-Zionist/Israel not pro-Jewish.

Allington referred to the mainstream media as ‘high quality’ and argued that

‘In the interests of reducing prejudice, it would appear desirable to encourage use of high quality, reputable sources of information at the expense of low quality fringe sources’.

Pro-Hitler in the 30s, the Mail is reliably pro-Zionist

Anyone who thinks that the Sun, Mail and Express are high quality needs their head examining. What Allington meant was that they were reliably right-wing and pro-Israel. The MSM were held to be associated with lower levels of anti-Semitism but since Allington has redefined anti-Semitism this is a meaningless statement.

‘Partial solutions' to the ‘problem’ that Allington faced demonstrate exactly where he was coming from.  Censorship in other words. Allington proposed:

‘Demonetisation of problematic websites (for example, through withdrawal of

advertising)’, ‘De-prioritisation of content from such websites in social media news feeds and search algorithms’ and ‘In extreme cases, legal or regulatory sanctions against the owners of the websites themselves.’

In other words Allington, in the name of King’s College, recommended that the British state, together with Facebook etc. take steps to reduce the circulation of the radical alternative media.

Allington sets the scene politically when he argues that ‘since 1948, there has emerged a further form of eliminationism, which consists in calling for ‘the exclusion of the Jewish nation from world society’. Eliminationism is a word that has previously been applied to the genocidal policies of the Nazis. Allington deliberately uses it to associate support for the Palestinians and anti-Zionism with the Nazis.

Allington's argument that Jews form a separate nation is in itself an anti-Semitic one. That is what anti-Semites have long argued. Jews belong in their own state not other peoples. In the words of Lucien Wolf, a former leader of the Board of Deputies:

I have spent most of my life in combating these very doctrines, when presented to me in the form of anti-Semitism, and I can only regard them as the more dangerous when they come to me in the guise of Zionism. They constitute a capitulation to our enemies.’

Allington compared the far-right TR News and Radio Aryan with the Canary and Skawkbox by comparing their position on certain issues such as Brexit or opposition to foreign wars. He also described the fascists as ‘anti-capitalist’ thus accepting their bogus claims at face value.

Of course it is true that sometimes the position of the Left and Right/far-right are the same on particular issues, albeit for different reasons but Allington doesn’t do subtle. Because sections of the Left supported Brexit in Allington’s eyes that makes them one and the same. Likewise some on the far-Right opposed the Iraq War, that therefore makes them anti-imperialist!

According to Allington Skwawkbox was anti-Semitic because it made

 ‘throwaway references to ‘a former Chief Rabbi with a history of supporting racism’ and that ‘could contribute to the creation of an impression of Jewishness as inherently suspect.’

So criticism of Jonathan Sacks, who supported the far-Right ‘replacement theory’ (that Muslim immigration threatened White European civilisation) was now to be judged as ‘anti-Semitism’. In other words if you criticise someone who is Jewish then you are anti-semitic!

Another example of Allington's ‘guilt by association’ was his statement

‘In the diatribes of Radio Albion, the argument is that Jews are a corrupting influence and must be expelled from ‘white’ nations such as Britain. In Skwawkbox articles such as the above, the argument is that the world’s only Jewish state is a corrupting influence, and those who have been tainted by it must be excluded from British political institutions.’

A quite unbelievable sleight of hand. Skwawkbox doesn’t talk about excluding Jews, even Zionists, from the Labour Party. It specifically called for the Jewish Labour Movement to be disaffiliated from the Labour Party and not to have the privileges that it currently enjoys.

Allington’s justification for the comparison was that:

‘the Jewish Labour Movement is the sole Jewish communal organisation for Labour Party members and supporters. That is, these comments amount in practice to arguments for the exclusion of the Jewish community from the Labour Party.’

But the JLM is not a Jewish but a Zionist group. It excludes anti-Zionist Jews from membership but includes non-Jewish Zionists. As an example of the ‘anti-Semitism’ of  Skawkbox’s readers Allington gives as an example:

‘Zionism is incompatible with Socialism therefore why is the Zionist and antisemitic JLM allowed a place in the Labour Party.’

This is a statement of fact. Zionism is an exclusivist, racial supremacist movement. Racism is incompatible with socialism. Yet immediately afterwards Allington conceded that

‘By contrast, there was much support for the tiny and very recently-founded Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL).’

What riled Allington is that Skwawkbox made ‘counter-accusations of antisemitism against those who raise the issue of antisemitism.’ Yet it is a fact that Zionism and anti-Semitism fit like a hand in a glove. Many if not most non-Jewish supporters of Zionism are anti-Semitic. Tommy Robinson is one example. Donald Trump, Steve Bannon and the neo-Nazi Richard Spencer (who boasts that he is a ‘White Zionist’) are further examples. Historically anti-Semites supported Zionism as a means of getting rid of their Jews.

Zionism, when it first began was seen as a form of Jewish anti-Semitism. When Theodor Herzl attempted to hold the First Zionist Congress in Munich in 1897, there was such an outcry from Munich Jews that the Congress was transferred to Basel in Switzerland.

According to Allington ‘Accusing those who raise the issue of antisemitism of being antisemitic serves to neutralise that issue.’ So one must say nothing about Zionism’s historical appeal to anti-Semites. Arthur Balfour didn’t like Jews coming to Britain but he totally supported the idea of a 'Jewish State' in Palestine. That was why he introduced the 1905 Aliens Act to keep Jews fleeing Russia’s pogroms from these shores. He also issued the Balfour Declaration.

Of course the elephant in the room is the fact that whenever any criticism of Israel or Zionism is made then accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ are made. Jewish anti-Zionists are termed ‘self-haters’ an accusation the Nazis made against German anti-fascists. 

What Netanyahu means by 'Jewish identity' is Jewish racial purity

When the ICC decided it would investigate Israel for war crimes, Netanyahu called this ‘pure anti-Semitism’. When the European Court of Justice ruled that produce from the settlements must be labelled according to origin this was called ‘the lowest kind of anti-Semitism’.

Allington reminds people that according to the IHRA ‘Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.’ But when Starmer sacked Rebecca Long-Bailey for a retweet that referred to Israel training the US Police in repressive techniques such as neck holds, he was clearly equating criticism of Israel with Jews. Allington was having none of it:

Recognising a statement about Israel as antisemitic in no way involves ‘conflat[ing] the [S]tate of Israel with Jewish people collectively’, and ‘conflat[ing] the [S]tate of Israel with Jewish people collectively’ is not the same thing as ‘[h]olding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the [S]tate of Israel’.

Anyone with the slightest degree of honesty would understand that if criticising the Israeli state is considered anti-Semitic then obviously the Israeli state is being conflated with Jews. Israel calls itself a Jewish State and grants citizenship to Jews as of right, wherever they live and denies it to Palestinians who have lived in what is now Israel. When 4 Jews were killed by terrorists in Paris in February 2015, Netanyahu stated that

“I went to Paris not just as the prime minister of Israel but as a representative of the entire Jewish people.”

If Israel is indeed a Jewish state representing all Jews then Jews naturally bear a responsibility for its actions, unless they disown its actions and those, like the Board of Deputies who claim to speak on their behalf. Just as British people are responsible for their government’s war crimes in Iraq. But Zionist propagandists like Allington like to pretend that Israel can act in the name of Jews whilst disowning the consequences.

Allington reserves his venom for the Canary, which he accuses of supporting ‘violent revolution... (as) a necessary precursor of positive social change.’ He takes particular exception to the assertion by one of its founders that:

‘The row over antisemitism in the Labour Party is actually fuelling antisemitism, whilst simultaneously weakening the term as itʼs applied to genuine antisemitism.’

The Board of Deputies in the name of Jews waged an incessant war against Corbyn. Clearly the implication was that ‘the Jews’ wanted to get rid of him. Everything the BOD did encouraged anti-Semitism.

Allington says of the Canary’s description of Israel as an ‘apartheid state’ that this is ‘trope rather than a ‘fact’.’ In other words it is an anti-Semitic figure of speech. It is here that Allington’s bias comes to the surface. 

Is the eviction of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem a trope or fact? Is the demolition of Palestinian homes to make way for Jewish settlers a trope? When Netanyahu says that Israel is a state only of its Jewish citizens, is that a trope? Are the comprehensive reports of B’Tselem, Israel’s main human rights group and Human Rights Watch that Israel is an apartheid state also tropes? Is having two sets of law in the West Bank, one for Palestinians and another for Jews a trope or is it the classic definition of Apartheid?

A state that defines itself ‘Jewish’ on an ethnic basis cannot be other than racist. The fact that Allington constantly refers back to the IHRA demonstrates how unfit this misdefinition (in reality not a definition at all) is.

Allington complains that Canary’s rejection of the IHRA allows ‘readers (to) respond to Canary articles on Labour Party issues by equating Zionism with racial supremacism’. That’s right. By junking the IHRA one can tell the truth about Israel!

Zionism is the ideology of a Jewish Supremacist state. That is why it is legal, under the Reception Committees Law 2011 for hundreds of Jewish only communities to reject Arabs living there.

The IHRA allows the absurd situation whereby TR News is given a clean bill of health since although

‘R News is undeniably ‘far right’’ it is ‘just as undeniably pro-Jewish’ despite the fact that it ‘promotes substantial components of what elsewhere functions as antisemitic propaganda. ‘

But this should be no surprise. Israel is in alliance with a host of far-Right governments such as Brazil’s Bolsonaro and Hungary’s Orban. Israel even supplies weaponry to Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Battalion.

What Allington, the CAA and Mann find difficult to understand is that criticising Israel for what it does has nothing to do with attacking Jews as Jews. Allington concludes that:

Israel, its supporters, and, along with them, all major Jewish communal institutions are presented as serially iniquitous in their behaviour.

Given that Jewish communal organisations all support the Israeli state and Zionism they can hardly complain if they are criticised.

In the final section ‘Survey of media use and antisemitic attitudes in the British population’ Allington’s argument rests on his 6 questions designed to paint the left as anti-Semitic. Allington’s explanation is that:

These statements were developed in order to supplement existing measures of antisemitism with measures of forms of antisemitic ideation that, being made in reference not to Jews qua Jews but to the national home of the Jews, were not widely recognized as such until the adoption of the IHRA Definition.

Allington is himself a good example of the Zionist who is an anti-Semite. The national home of Jews is where they live. British Jews are British by nationality and Jewish by origin or religion.

If Israel is our national home then that is an invitation to every common and garden anti-Semite to demand our expulsion as we don’t belong where we live. This is precisely why in Poland, 3 million of whose Jews died in the Holocaust, Polish Jews rejected the Zionists. In the last free elections in 1938, the anti-Zionist Bund gained 17 out of 20 Jewish council seats in Warsaw and the Zionists just one. Throughout Poland the Zionists were defeated because Zionism accepts rather than fights anti-Semitism. 

The main proposals that Allington came up with were an attempt to  financially bankrupt the alternative media. Allington cites with approval the fact that:

the Canary was targeted by a successful demonetisation campaign from Stop Funding Fake News, which led brands such as Macmillan Cancer Care, Ted Baker, the World Wildlife Fund, and Moonpig to cease advertising with the site, apparently forcing it to ‘downsize’ its operations (JC Reporter, 2019).

As things stand King’s College has lent its stamp of approval to this worthless report from an academic who should have been sent packing years ago.

After Rachel Riley launched the attack on the Canary, new subscribers made up for the loss of advertising. The best response to Mann, Allington and those who would destroy the small part of the media that isn’t owned by Tory billionaires, is to sign up to and support Canary’s Appeal. We should not allow Israel’s emissaries to dictate what we can and can’t read.

Tony Greenstein