The Met Have Informed Me That I Won’t Be Charged for Comparing Israel’s Gaza Holocaust to the Nazi Holocaust

I was arrested on October 4, the 88^th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street when the Met Tried to Force the British Union of Fascists on Jewish East Enders – 300,000 Stopped Them – the Met is Still the Same Racist Force

You may remember that I was arrested on October 4^th for daring to make a comparison between Israel’s holocaust in Gaza and the Nazi holocaust. Two days ago I was informed by the Police that they weren’t bringing any charges.

Israeli military Captain. Daniel Hatniel serving as deputy of Israel’s West Bank intelligence command & ex-spox of an MK

“The little finger of a soldier of ours is worth as much of Gaza… Amalek like Hamas symbolize an idea.. There must not be one of the Amalek left on earth” pic.twitter.com/oA3fDWtEks

— Younis Tirawi | يونس (@ytirawi) February 10, 2024

The Police trying to find a way through Cable Street 88 years ago - genuine anti-Semitism has never bothered the Met

It is ironic that on October 4, 1936 the Met, under Commissioner Philip Game, tried to force thousands of Sir Oswald Moseley’s British Union of Fascists and National Socialists through the Jewish East End. However up to 300,000 East End workers, including Catholic dockers and thousands of non-Jewish workers were having none of it. What ensued became known as the Battle of Cable Street. The Met then was riddled with anti-Semites just as today it is riddled with Islamaphobes. After battling for hours Philip Game was forced to admit defeat as barricades were thrown up.

Notice published in the Jewish Chronicle urging Jews to keep their heads down - when it comes to genuine anti-Semitism the Jewish & Zionist Establishment has always preferred a policy of keeping one's head down

The Met hasn’t changed even if the target of its racism has changed. But even now it has a penchant for arresting anti-Zionist Jews who don’t conform their idea of ‘proper’ Israel supporting nationalist bigots.

In 1936 the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Zionists told Jews they should stay at home and keep their heads down. Jewish workers ignored them in their thousands. Today there is no Jewish  working class.  Jews have migrated socio-economically upwards and politically rightwards such that their best friends today are bigots like Tommy Robinson and friends.

In my response I told DC O’Connor it was as I had predicted when I applied to vary my bail. The Police never had a case for racially/religiously aggravated harassment. It was simply another example of the Police deliberately trying to close down free speech on Palestine . If there was any harassment it was on the part of the police.

The person whose complaint against me led to my arrest was notorious Zionist fanatic Richard Millett who above describes a holocaust survivor who opposes genocide as 'scum' - this is the kind of person the Met takes seriously

I pointed out the even more outrageous arrest, two weeks later, of Professor Haim Bresheeth, a 79 year old Israeli academic suffering from cancer who was kept all night in a cold cell in Holborn police station by these bastards in uniform. He too was told he wouldn’t be charged.

Professor Haim Bresheeth - 79 year old Israeli academic who the Police arrested

It is noticeable that on no occasion have the Police arrested supporters of Israel’s genocide for their language. Supporting genocide is not an offence in the Met’s eyes, Opposing it is, despite the fact that committing or aiding the commission of war crimes or genocide is a specific offence in the International Criminal Court Act 2001, Section 52 of which specifically states that:

(1)   It is an offence against the law of England and Wales for a person to engage in conduct ancillary to an act to which this section applies.

(2)   This section applies to an act that if committed in England or Wales would constitute—

(a)   an offence under section 51 (genocide, crime against humanity or war crime), or

(b)   an offence under this section,

However the Met pick and choose which legislation they will enforce and which legislation they won’t enforce. They call it the ‘rule of law’ but in reality they turn the law into an instrument of political oppression.

The Met and the Anti-Terrorist Police are also engaged in a wholesale abuse of anti-terror legislation in order to clamp down on Palestine solidarity activists. In short the Police are, ever more obviously, becoming a political police whose job it is to attack critics of British foreign policy.

This man, believed to be one of the Zionist counter-demonstrators, was photographed pointing out Palestinian protesters to arrest. This is the collusion Palestine solidarity activists face in London

At the weekly protest at Swiss Cottage the Police eagerly video the speeches Palestine solidarity supporters make for any hint of a pretext with which to arrest them. Arrests are made, despite the Police being fully aware that charges are highly unlikely to follow. It is another form of intimidation. That is one reason why I informed Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley, in a complaint I made on 15 November, that I will be bringing proceedings against the Met for Wrongful Arrest and Unlawful Imprisonment. You can read my complaint letter here.

When it comes to the billions of pounds lost in COVID fraud the Met are remarkably disinterested in enforcing the law

I have also made it clear that I will continue to compare Israel’s behaviour in Gaza with that of the Nazis. The false IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which asserts that such a comparison is anti-Semitic  is not, by its own admission, legally binding. In the Opinion of Hugh Tomlinson KC:

‘It is perhaps worth pointing out that the fact that conduct is “contrary” to the IHRA Definition could not, of itself, render  that conduct “illegal” in any sense.’

The IHRA has been described by Geoffrey Robertson KC as ‘not fit for purpose’.

Sir Stephen Sedley, a former Court of Appeal judge and himself Jewish, went even further in an article in London Review of Books, ‘Defining Anti-Semitism’, when he wrote that the IHRA ‘fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite.’ So what the hell are the Metropolitan Police doing implementing a definition that is not legally binding, which is not fit for purpose and isn’t even a definition.  Apart from pleasing their political masters?

I intend to go back to the demonstration at Swiss Cottage in the near future to explain why Israel’s behaviour is certainly comparable with the Nazis. In some respects it may even be worse. Even the Nazis didn’t single out hospitals and their medical staff for death and destruction. It is a little known fact that the Jewish hospital in Berlin survived unscathed throughout the war and was still in operation when Berlin was liberated. If I am arrested again, so be it.

The theft of Palestinian organs, from those Israel has murdered, is another example of their Nazi-like mentality

If my speech offends racist Zionists and genocide supporters that's also fine. No one is forcing them to listen. Perhaps they will even learn something. In Israel it is not unusual to make such comparisons. As Stephen Sedley ruled, in the landmark case on free speech, Redmond Bate v DPP,  

“free speech includes not only the inoffensive but also the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and provocative, provided it does not tend to provoke violence. Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having

For example the late Professor Ze’ev Sternhell, a child survivor of the Premszyl ghetto in Nazi occupied Poland wrote an article in Ha’aretz, that in Israel there was a ‘Growing Fascism and a Racism Akin to Early Nazism’. No doubt the idiot who approved my arrest would have had no compunction in arresting a holocaust survivor for making such a comparison!

Jewish kids dressed as Israeli soldiers in N15 area with fake guns walking past local mosque as children leave

The comparisons begin with Defence Minister Yoav Gallant when he began the genocide, when he described Palestinians as “human animals” – the very same phrase that Himmler used about the Jews on October 4, 1943, in a talk to SS generals. Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich spoke about how “justified and moral” it would be to starve two million Palestinians, which is no different from the Nazi policy towards the Russians and Hans Frank’s implementation in Poland of ‘death by hunger’ against the Jewish ghettos.

We are facing a full square attack on basic democratic rights and freedom of speech by the police, backed by the State, Starmer and much of the judiciary. Erstwhile liberals such as Liberty are keeping quiet whilst anti-genocide activists are gaoled and harassed.

However those who stand silent are likely to find that the situation gets worse rather than better. So join the pickets of Hotoveli each Friday night and show that the Police and Starmer will not be allowed to introduce a police state by the back door.

Tony Greenstein 

Open Letter to the Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University, Professor Christopher Husbands

Shahd Abusalama is Another Academic to Have Fallen Foul of Zionism's McCarthyist Lobby

To:       c.husbands@shu.ac.uk

Dear Professor Husbands,

On January 21 Shahd Abusalama, a PhD student, was suspended by Sheffield Hallam University on the eve of teaching her first class. Shahd has been subject for the past 4 years to harassment from the Zionist lobby and its fetid supporters for the fact of being a Palestinian willing to speak out about Israel’s war crimes.

Shahd was told that a complaint had been lodged with the university but was not told who made the complaint or what the substance of the complaint was, although that was not hard to guess. It was of course ‘anti-Semitism’.

Of one thing Zionists are certain. Just because Israel demolishes their homes or evicts them to make way for Jewish settlers as well as arresting and imprisoning their children, if not killing them outright, the Palestinians have no reason to resist the Occupation or the other foul misdeeds that they get up to. No the only reason why Palestinians still resist a 55 year old occupation is because they hate the Jews out of some unique pathological condition that they suffer from.

According to the CAA this is anti-Semitic. In fact it is literally true. The Talmud has been used to justify Israeli atrocities, see e.g. https://reformjudaism.org/blog/torat-hamelech, a book by 2 rabbis which justified the murder of children and infantsTorat Hamelech

It therefore follows that anyone who supports the Palestinians must also do so because of anti-Semitism. Even anti-Zionist Jews who are widely recognised as the ‘wrong sort of Jew’, in so far as they are recognised as Jewish at all, are also susceptible to this ‘anti-Semitism’. After all anti-Semitism is a virus.

Rather than going through all the details to Shahd’s case and what happened there is an excellent article on Electronic Intifada, UK Israel lobby takes aim at Palestinian university lecturer.

Below I copy my letter to Sheffield Hallam’s Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Chris Husbands.

Tony Greenstein 

This is the real agenda of those who targeted Shahd but  Professor Husbands is either too stupid or too malevolent to understand this

Dear Professor Husbands,

I write concerning your (now revoked) suspension of Shahd Abusalama from her role as a lecturer because of an anonymous complaint against her. After over a week Shahd stated that she still hasn’t had sight of the allegations. When you announced the investigation into her you didn’t even inform her of this fact. This is Kafkaesque.

It was on the evening of 21 January, just prior to her first class, that Shahd was informed that she had been suspended. No reason was given. Shahd’s suspension has now been revoked because of ‘issues’ with how you handled her case but no further details have been provided.

Shahd is a refugee from Gaza. She was born and raised in Jabalia refugee camp and witnessed at first hand Israeli bombing raids on the camp and attacks on unarmed civilians in Gaza. What she says makes uncomfortable reading for the Zionist lobby in this country and it is that, not anti-Semitism, that is the reason for her suspension.

According to the 'Israeli war room' opposing the IRHA is itself antisemitic!

As Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield Hallam you have a responsibility to defend academic freedom and freedom of speech. In this you have lamentably failed. Your behaviour is reminiscent of the failure of Martin Heidegger, Rector of Freiburg University to speak out against the dismissal of his mentor Edmund Husserl and other Jewish academics.

When Victor Klemperer was dismissed from his post at Dresden University he recounted in his diaries that the only person to say farewell was the cleaner. It is unfortunate that most academics are afraid to speak up against injustice however you do not have Nazi terror as an excuse for your cowardice.

Shahd has long been under attack by supporters of the Israeli state. Her ‘crime’ according to the so-called Campaign Against Anti-Semitism is having defended another student who used the term ‘Palestinian Holocaust’ whilst saying that she would not use such a term. If you or your protégés had bothered to access her Twitter feed then you would have seen a nuanced and thoughtful exposition. Something entirely lacking in your own explanations.

The attacks on Shahd have come about because of her insistence on speaking out against Israeli Apartheid, conclusions both B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch have reached. It has nothing to do with comparisons between Israel and the Holocaust. They were merely the pretext. You are directly responsible for this state of affairs because it was you who insisted that Sheffield Hallam bow to the dictates of the Tory government and Gavin Williamson when you adopted the IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism in February 2021.

The vile Islamaphobic CAA has been to the forefront of the campaign against Shahd, led by racist Gideon Falter, who is Vice-Chair of the ethnic cleaning JNF

Perhaps you might recall the statement which you put out at the time? It read:

The definition is a useful tool for understanding what constitutes antisemitism and investigating allegations. Freedom of expression is an integral part of our values, therefore we are committed to promoting and protecting free speech. The ability to rigorously discuss and challenge ideas goes right to the heart of what it means to be a university.

This was a lie, wasn’t it? You adopted the IHRA not to protect freedom of speech but to destroy it. The IHRA has no other purpose. It is certainly not a definition of anti-Semitism. Your adoption of this ‘definition’ was an act of political expediency. You adopted it despite criticism from many distinguished legal and academic scholars.

Former Lord Justice of Appeal, Sir Stephen Sedley, who is himself Jewish, wrote that the IHRA ‘fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite’. Human rights barrister, Geoffrey Roberson QC said the ‘IHRA definition of antisemitism is not fit for purpose’. Another prominent barrister, Hugh Tomlinson QC described the IHRA as having:

a potential chilling effect on public bodies which, in the absence of definitional clarity, may seek to sanction or prohibit any conduct which has been labelled by third parties as nti-Semitic without applying any clear criterion of assessment.

An observation that perfectly describes your actions. Kenneth Stern, who drafted the IHRA definition, in testimony to Congress described the use of the IHRA by the CAA to try and effect the dismissal of Rachel Gould, a Jewish lecturer at Bristol University, as ‘chilling and McCarthy-like’.

A child could have told you that you don’t need to have a definition of anti-Semitism in order to recognise it. The Oxford English Dictionary definition: ‘hostility to or prejudice against Jewish people’. is perfectly adequate. My father who took part in the Battle of Cable Street against Moseley’s fascist thugs didn’t need a definition of anti-Semitism to know what he was fighting. As Justice Potter Stewart remarked ‘I know it when I see it.’ The real purpose of the IHRA, with 7 of its 11 illustrations of ‘anti-Semitism’ mentioning Israel, is to conflate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

It is of course 'antisemitic' to compare what Israel does with the holocaust. Only Zionists are allowed to do that. Note the assumption that the holocaust is a Jewish only event from which the disabled and Gypsies and others are excluded

The specific allegation which led to Shahd’s suspension was comparisons of Palestinian oppression to that of the Jews under Hitler. There is nothing anti-Semitic about such a comparison. It might be right or wrong but comparing Israel to the Nazis is not anti-Semitic.

There are many Jews, including Holocaust survivors, who make just such a comparison. Perhaps you can explain why it is anti-Semitic to compare mobs in Germany shouting ‘Death to Jews’ with mobs in Israel chanting ‘Death to the Arabs’?

If you are right then Hannah Arendt, herself a refugee from the Nazis, was also anti-Semitic for comparing Israel’s marriage laws to the Nuremberg Laws in Eichmann in Jerusalem.? Just like Nazi Germany, it is forbidden in Israel for a Jew to marry a non-Jew.

Perhaps Deputy Chief of Staff in Israel Yair Golan was wrong to compare Israel with Nazi Germany?  And maybe Professor Ze’ev Sternhall of the Hebrew University, a child survivor of the Przemsyl Ghetto in Nazi occupied Poland, was also anti-Semitic to write of a ‘Growing Fascism and a Racism Akin to Early Nazism’ in Israel?

Yehuda Elkana, a child survivor of Auschwitz and Rector of the Central University of Europe was, by your standards, also anti-Semitic when he wrote that

the deepest political and social factor that motivates much of Israeli society in its relations with the Palestinians is not personal frustration, but rather a profound existential "Angst" fed by a particular interpretation of the lessons of the Holocaust

When the IHRA says that making such comparisons is anti-Semitic what it is doing is providing elites with an excuse to close down discussion on topics that question their own war mongering. The question is a simple one.  Do you or do you not support the censorship of political debate and thought? If you do then you are in the wrong job.

Holocaust education today is used, not to draw universal lessons, such as opening our borders to refugees, but in order to legitimise the racism of the British and Israeli states, not least the oppression of Palestinians. But according to you and those who suspended Shahd it is anti-Semitic for Palestinians to reply in kind.

As Gideon Levy wrote in Ha’aretz:

I have yet to hear a single teenager come back from Auschwitz and say that we mustn’t abuse others the way we were abused. There has yet to be a school whose pupils came back from Birkenau straight to the Gaza border, saw the barbed-wire fence and said, Never again. The message is always the opposite. Gaza is permitted because of Auschwitz.

The lying Jewish Chronicle led the attack against Shahd

The context to all of this is the recent dismissal of Professor David Miller at Bristol University, also after a concerted series of attacks by the pro-Israel lobby. The Jewish Chronicle’s reaction was that ‘Miller’s sacking should be the beginning, not the end’. That is what  Shahd’s suspension was really about – a Zionist witchhunt.

I am aware of who it was who was responsible for making the complaint against Shahd. The person in question is an open supporter of Jewish Supremacy. Your suspension of Shahd was no different to suspending a Black student after a complaint from a member of the British National Party. You should hang your head in shame, assuming you understand the meaning of the word. There are however a number of steps that you can take to make amends.

Firstly you owe Shahd Abusalama an apology and compensation for the hurt she experienced.

Secondly you should immediately ditch the IHRA. If you really need a definition of anti-Semitism then the Jerusalem Declaration on Anti-Semitism is more suitable as it avoids equating anti-Zionism and hostility to Israel’s Apartheid State with anti-Semitism.

Thirdly, given your role in this affair, the honourable thing to do would be to resign as you are clearly unfitted for the role of Vice-Chancellor. I realise that today politicians don’t resign unless they are dragged out of their office but to paraphrase Malcolm in MacBeth, nothing would become your office like the leaving of it.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Greenstein

In this Twitter thread Shahd explains her position on the use of the Holocaust when criticising Israel

Israel’s Attack on Gaza Is Why Antiracists Should Ditch the IHRA Misdefinition of Anti-Semitism That Protects Israeli Apartheid

 Support the Labour Campaign for Free Speech’s Model Resolution that Replaces the IHRA with the Jerusalem Declaration on Anti-Semitism

Watch Asa Winstanley's Latest Video on How the Israel Lobby Brought Jeremy Corbyn Down with False Accusations of Anti-semitism

The Jewish Chronicle was hot off the mark with an exclusive no less! ‘EXCLUSIVE: Labour grassroots campaign to jettison IHRA definition of antisemitism’ in the shock horror mode normally adopted by the tabloids. And what was this Exclusive?  That the Labour Campaign for Free Speech which lists Chris Williamson, Jackie Walker and myself on its Steering Committee were proposing a motion to Labour Party Conference in favour of replacing the Zionists’ IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism with the Jerusalem Declaration of Anti-Semitism.

The IHRA Misdefinition, previously called the Working Definition of Anti-Semitism [WDA], was first proposed by Dina Porat of the Stephen Roth Institue of Tel Aviv University. You can read about the origins of the WDA in a Report on the WDA – Six Years After in a Conference in Paris in August/September 2010.

Particularly interesting is the contribution by Kenneth Stern, the principal drafter of the WDA, "The Working Definition – A Reappraisal" Stern  wrote that

the idea for a common definition was, as far as I know, first articulated by Dina Porat, who leads the Stephen Roth Institute,... in  April 2004. I recall Dina, who gets very animated when she latches on to a good idea,  talking to me, to my colleague Andy Baker, and just about anyone else she could  corner about the need for a definition.  

Dina Porat is today the Chief Historian at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Propaganda Museum and is one of the leading ideologues of Zionism.

It is useful to read Stern’s article because it explains the thinking behind the IHRA. Stern’s criticism of the previous attempts of the EUMC to formulate a definition of anti-Semitism was that it had constructed a list of Jewish stereotypes and come up with what he described as a ‘clunker of a definition’ because it ‘didn’t know how to deal with the problem of a Jew being attacked on the streets of  Paris or anywhere else as a stand-in for an Israeli.’

Stern argued that a definition of anti-Semitism could not be created on the basis of stereotypes of Jews because it was ‘unworkable to require a clear view of what is in the mind of any  actor (many of whom are never found) before making a classification.’

Stephen Pollard, Editor of the Jewish Chronicle is mystified why what is happening in Israel should impact on Jews in Britain - perhaps he should have a quiet word with the BOD!

And in this statement you can see why the IHRA, even if Stern was in good faith, went off the rails. Stern created a definition based on people’s political beliefs. It’s difficult to understand his thinking. Stern says that the WDA was created for the collection of statistics but it’s unclear how someone comparing Israeli policy and the Nazis fits into that. But regardless Stern was wrong. It is is essential to understand the motives of someone in order to classify whether it was an anti-Semitic attack.

If someone attacks me in the street because I’m wearing a rolex watch that is not an anti-Semitic attack.  It is a straightforward robbery. The fact that I am Jewish is irrelevant.  But if I’m attacked because my attacker is of the belief that all Jews are rich and I am therefore singled out, then of course that is an anti-Semitic attack.

If someone is attacked because the attacker believes all Jews support Israel then that is an anti-Semitic attack because the person was attacked because s/he is Jewish. Of course the reason why so many people believe that British Jews are responsible for what happens in Gaza is because Zionist organisations like the Board of Deputies repeatedly support Israeli war crimes whilst, at the same time declaring that they are ‘the voice of the Jewish community.’

No less than Stephen Pollard of the Jewish Chronicle had the gall to send me his Editor’s Letter this week which proclaimed:

Quite why people going about their daily lives in parts of North London should be linked to Israeli military action is something which lies in the mind of the Jew haters and their fellow travellers

Could it have something to do with its support for the actions of Israel in Gaza?  Whilst most of the world condemns Israel as a Apartheid state, the Board intoned on behalf of all British Jews that:

“We are deeply concerned and saddened by the escalation of violence, and the seemingly unremittent  rocket fire against Israeli civilians by Hamas in Gaza. These attacks are abhorrent and, despite the protection of Iron Dome, have sadly already caused loss of life. Israel has the right to defend its citizens and it is the responsibility of Hamas to immediately halt all rocket fire from Gaza.

Not a single word about the devastation and loss of life in Gaza.  Palestinian Lives Simply Don’t Matter. So of course some people will be fooled into believing that all Jews support Israeli war crimes and thus it is the Board itself which has placed British Jews in danger.

The Working Definition of Anti-Semitism was foisted in 2005 on the European Union Monitoring Committee. In 2014 the EUMC’s successor body, the Fundamental Rights Agency, removed the WDA from its website and in 2016 the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, an obscure inter-governmental body adopted it or rather it adopted the 38 word core IHRA definition. That too is now shrouded in controversy as the IHRA Secretariat have deliberately misrepresented the decisions of the 2016 Conference in Bucharest.

The IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism has been used to close down free speech on Palestine and at the moment there is a particular targeting of academics. This much is admitted by the person who drafted it, Kenneth Stern, in testimony to Congress and an article in the Guardian.

That is why the Labour Campaign for Free Speech is urging local Labour Parties to adopt a Model Motion adopting the Jerusalem Declaration on Anti-Semitism.

See Why We Should Critically Welcome The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism [JDA]

Below you can see all the dishonest ploys of the Jewish Chronicle, all in one article. We are told that the Zionist Community Security Trust (which acts effectively as an arm of Israel’s Mossad (MI6)) says it “could hamper efforts to tackle antisemitism”. They don’t explain how it will manage this! What they really mean is that efforts to close down campaigns in support of the Palestinians will be less effective.

When Dave Rich of the CST say that the JDA ‘was drawn up without widespread consultation of Jewish community organisations’ what he means of course is Zionist organisations.

The IHRA limits the Palestinian right to define their own struggle by branding it as ‘anti-Semitic’. Palestinians who experience racism every day of their lives, as in the vandalism and destruction of the Al Tafawk Childrens’ Centre last weekend by the Israeli Military, are told that they are anti-Semitic if they complain.

Palestinians struggle for their rights against Zionist oppression not because they are anti-Semitic but because they, like most people, don’t like being oppressed! It really is that simple.

But David Rich, an academic prostitute on hire to Mossad’s CST, gives the game away when he complains that:

While IHRA warns against comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, the Declaration suggests such comparisons are “contentious” but not antisemitic.

That is true. When Jewish demonstrators march in Israel to the chant of ‘death to the Arabs’ we should call them for what they are – Judeo-Nazis. And when people like the late Profess Ze’ev Sternhell wrote an article ‘In Israel, Growing Fascism and a Racism Akin to Early Nazism’ no doubt Rich would call him anti-Semitic despite Sternhell being a child survivor of the holocaust. 

Rich also complains that denying the ‘Jewish people their right to self-determination’ would not be anti-Semitic. Why should it? Only nations have such a right and Jews are a religion not a nation.

Clearly the JDA has got the Zionists and their academic puppets worried that their chosen instrument of demonisation of anti-Zionism, the IHRA, is meeting more resistance than they bargained for.

If you are in the Labour Party please move this resolution

Tony Greenstein

See:

Unlike the IHRA Misdefinition of Anti-Semitism the JDA Makes a Clear Distinction Between Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism

Why do we need to define anti-Semitism?

Model motion: Abandon IHRA and adopt the Jerusalem Declaration

This motion has been drafted as a model motion to go to Labour Party conference 2021, but it can be tweaked for other purposes. Please note that this has to go through your branch first, then your CLP and needs to be submitted to the NEC by September 13 in order to be heard at Labour Party conference. Remember that a CLP can either submit a rule change (which needs to be submitted by June 11) or a ‘contemporary’ motion like this one.

1. We note

1.1. That the ‘working definition’ published by the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) has been rejected by numerous legal practitioners and academic scholars , because it conflates anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism and has been used to ‘chill’ freedom of speech on campuses.

1.2. Among the many critics of the IHRA are:

• Its principal drafter Kenneth Stern who explained that: “The definition was not drafted, and was never intended, as a tool to target or chill speech on a college campus. In fact, at a conference in 2010 about the impact of the definition, I highlighted this misuse, and the damage it could do.”
• Professor David Feldman (vice-chair of the Chakrabarti Inquiry and director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism) who has described the definition as “bewilderingly imprecise”.
• Sir Stephen Sedley, the Jewish former Court of Appeal judge, who has written that the IHRA “fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite”.
• Hugh Tomlinson QC who has warned that the IHRA definition had a “chilling effect on public bodies”.
• Geoffrey Robertson QC who has explained that, “The definition does not cover the most insidious forms of hostility to Jewish people and the looseness of the definition is liable to chill legitimate criticisms of the state of Israel and coverage of human rights abuses against Palestinians.” Robertson, a prominent human rights barrister, also wrote that the definition was ‘not fit for purpose’.
• Tony Lerman, the founder of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, wrote that “it’s not fit for purpose, but it also has the effect of making Jews more vulnerable to antisemitism, not less, and exacerbating the bitter arguments Jews have been having over the nature of contemporary antisemitism for the last 20 to 25 years.”

2. We believe:

2.1. That the adoption of the IHRA definition and all eleven examples by the Labour Party’s NEC in 2018 has not brought an end to the ongoing claims that the Labour Party is riddled with anti-Semites. In fact, the opposite has occurred. It has encouraged the leadership of the Labour Party to accelerate the expulsion and suspension of critics of the Israeli state and Zionism.

2.2. The government’s threat to defund universities that refuse to adopt IHRA is a serious attempt to shut down free speech and academic freedom

2.3.  That unlike the IHRA, the JDA, whilst not without its flaws, is about anti-Semitism not anti-Zionism.

3. We resolve:

3.1. To reverse the Labour Party’s NEC decision and jettison the IHRA definition. 

3.2. To adopt the Jerusalem Declaration, which has been “developed by a group of scholars in the fields of Holocaust history, Jewish studies, and Middle East studies to meet what has become a growing challenge: providing clear guidance to identify and fight antisemitism while protecting free expression”. In contrast to IHRA, it has been written “in good faith”, as Professor Moshe Machover said

3.3. To campaign for freedom of speech, which includes the right to call out Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians as racist, discriminatory and oppressive.