Instead of confronting false accusations of anti-Semitism against its President, the National Union of Students have suspended her, appeasing supporters of Israeli apartheid

For over 40 years the Union of Jewish Students, has labelled critics of Israel ‘anti-Semites’ Last year it was Ken Loach today it is Shaima Dallali

The suspension of Shaima Dallali, by the National Union of Students, is a shameful and cowardly response to the attacks on a Black Muslim student leader by the apartheid supporting, Israeli funded Union of Jewish Students.

Faced with an attack on Shaima by the Conservative Government and the political establishment, for example the letter signed by 21 former NUS presidents, NUS simply caved in as Islamaphobic bigots like former Home Secretaries Jack Straw and Charles Clarke sought to oust Shaima.

After the ex-presidents’ letter, a letter in support of Dallali was circulated which called for there to be a simultaneous NUS investigations into Islamophobia and racism, as well as antisemitism. This was ignored.

Instead of setting up an ‘investigation’ into the bogus allegations, NUS should have gone on the offensive and called out the hypocrisy of a government that has demonised asylum seekers and is currently trying to send Black refugees (not white Ukrainians) to Rwanda whilst being concerned about 'antisemitism'.

Former Conservative Education Minister, the corrupt Nadhim Zahawi, warned about allegations of “systemic antisemitism” within NUS, threatening that the government may sever links with them. According to the Guardian Zahawi’s intervention followed ‘concerns raised by the Union of Jewish Students’.

Even more absurdly, James Wharton, Chair of the Office for Students, England’s higher education regulator, also cut off contact with NUS for ‘anti-Semitism’ in the same week as he addressed a political conference in Hungary that attracted far-right and antisemitic speakers. Wharton publicly endorsed the re-election of the openly anti-Semitic Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister! But then there is ‘anti-Semitism’ and ‘anti-Semitism’. Hatred of Jews is fine.  Hatred of Israel and Zionism isn’t fine.

The pretext for the attack on Shaima was a tweet she made 10 years ago when 17. The comment read “Khaybar Khaybar O Jews … Muhammad’s army will return Gaza”, referencing an assault on Jews 1400 years ago. It is doubtful whether she even understood what this meant. Nonetheless Shaima has apologised for the tweet, saying she is not the same person she was then. That should be the end of it.

But of course for UJS an apology is merely grist to the Zionist mill because their concern is not anti-Semitism but her opposition to the fake IHRA definition of anti-Semitism and Zionism.

As Shaima observed, the Zionist backlash against her election was part of a pattern, first seen with Malia Bouattia, who in 2016 became the first black Muslim woman to become NUS President. Just as with Shaima UJS began a systematic campaign of denigration against someone who was an anti-Zionist. NUS, with all its ‘liberation strands’, has succumbed to an identity politics that equates the identity of privileged white racist Jewish students with that of a refugee like Malia and a Black Muslim Shaima. Shaima wrote:

“Unfortunately, as a black Muslim woman, it is something that I expected because I’ve seen it happen to other black Muslim women when they take up positions in the student union or the NUS, where they are attacked based on their political beliefs or their pro-Palestinian stance.”

She said she had received a lot of Islamaphobic, racist online abuse.

“I’ve had private messages of people calling me a raghead, people telling me to go and kill myself, calling me a Jew hater and an antisemite. That has been difficult to read.

“And so many threats as well – if I continue to do this then things will happen to me. I just try to delete, to block, I try not to let it get to my head. It’s something I receive every day and I’m continuing to receive. It’s affected me mentally and physically. Sometimes I don’t feel safe.”

As a result of the attacks by UJS and others Malia Bouattia also began getting the normal Zionist abuse, including death threats. This is the effect of UJS’s lying allegations. UJS is a threat to the safety of Black and Muslim students not them to Jewish students.

UJS are well aware of the effect that their scurrilous racist campaigns have and yet they never condemn it. Indeed it almost normal for Zionist campaigns like this to engender vile racist attacks. Only tonight in the second episode of Al Jazeera’s The Labour Files, we heard the voice of a Zionist in a phone message for Jenny Manson, Jewish Voice for Labour’s Chair, telling her he wishes that she die in a gas oven. I’ve had the same.  Prick a Zionist and you will find an anti-Semite lurking below.

Malia Bouattia's Response to UJS accusations of 'antisemitism'

During the Zionist campaign against Malia, more than 50 heads of Jewish societies across the country wrote an open letter to her because of her anti-Zionism asking her to clarify her position on antisemitism, including comments in an article where she described the University of Birmingham – with its large Jewish society – as being “something of a Zionist outpost in British higher education”. This is only anti-Semitic if you conflate Zionism and being Jewish. Malia made it clear that:

I celebrate the ability of people and students of all backgrounds to get together and express their backgrounds and faith openly and positively, and will continue to do so

Despite its verbal opposition to ‘anti-Semitism’ UJS has never taken part in anti-fascist campaigns directed against genuine anti-Semites on the far-Right. When I was on the Executive of Anti-Fascist Action, UJS attacked AFA because it was seen as anti-Zionist. In the 70s with the Anti-Nazi League they did exactly the same.

The Board of Deputies was even worse. When the ANL was formed in 1977 the Board launched vehement attacks on it, not the National Front, because of the presence of anti-Zionists in it. Even Searchlight anti-fascist magazine, which under the late Maurice Ludmer was scrupulous in avoiding the question of Zionism, wrote in an editorial

In the face of mounting attacks against the Jewish community both ideologically and physically, we have the amazing sight of the Jewish Board of Deputies launching an attack on the Anti Nazi League with all the fervour of Kamikaze pilots... It was as though they were watching a time capsule rerun of the 1930's, in the form of a flickering old movie, with a grim determination to repeat every mistake of that era. [Searchlight 41, November 1978].

Zionism begins where the fight against anti-Semitism ends. Zionism accepts the anti-Semitic argument that Jews don’t belong living among non-Jews.  In 1895, during the Dreyfus Affair, the founder of Political Zionism, Theodor Herzl wrote in his Diaries that

In Paris... I achieved a freer attitude towards anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all, I recognise the emptiness and futility of trying to 'combat' anti-Semitism.

The Zionist belief that Jews should ‘return’ to Palestine chimed in with what the anti-Semites demanded. In a speech by Israeli Ambassador Yehuda Avner to Conservative Friends of Israel at the 1983 Tory Party Conference, Zionism was described as a movement of ‘self-repatriation’. [JC 21.10.83] 

Herzl understood this well when he wrote in his Diaries on June 12 1895:

The anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies. 

Today it is anti-Semites, from Christian Zionists to Viktor Orban, Tommy Robinson and Steve Bannon who are the most ardent Zionists. As Israeli historian, Yigal Elam wrote:

Zionism did not consider anti-Semitism an abnormal, absurd, perverse or marginal phenomenon. Zionism considered anti-Semitism a fact of nature, a standard constant, the norm in the relationship of the non-Jews to the presence of Jews in their midst… a normal, almost rational reaction of the gentiles to the abnormal, absurd and perverse situation of the Jewish people in the Diaspora. [Zionism and its Scarecrows, Khamsin 6]

UJS has a long history of attacking anti-Zionists as ‘anti-Semitic’. UJS is not a Jewish but a Zionist organisation. It is not open to anti-Zionist Jews nor would they want to be members. Section 2.1.1. of UJS’s constitution commits the organisation to:

Creating meaningful Jewish campus experiences and inspiring Jewish students to make an enduring commitment to their Jewish identity, Israel, and the community. 

When Shaima was elected as NUS President UJS got to work attacking her. In what was a repeat of the playbook tested out during the Corbyn era, UJS spoke of attacks on the Jewish community. And what were these attacks?  Not supporting Israel.

Shaima is just one more victim of UJS’s witchhunting. Victims have included George Johannes of the ANC, Ken Loach, Professor David Miller, Shahd Abusalama of Sheffield Hallam University and Jewish opponents of Zionism, myself included, though most of their recent victims are Black and Palestinian students.

In my blog I described how in 1986 UJS attempted to stop me speaking at the London School of Economics by making false accusations of, yes you’ve guessed it, anti-Semitism! When LSE’s Labour Club investigated the allegations they were found wanting. The Labour Club were then accused of ‘anti-Semitism’ and ‘fascism’!

UJS is affiliated to the World Zionist Organisation. The WZO is a funder and co-ordinator of the settlements in the West Bank. It even has a ‘land theft division’. Of this UJS says nothing. Indeed at no time has UJS ever criticised or condemned Israel for its flagrant breach of Palestinian human rights. Nothing perturbs it, be it torture of children, demolition of Palestine homes, imprisonment without trial. Its only concern is ‘anti-Semitism’, which it defines as opposition to Zionism.

If Jewish students in Britain were subject to a fraction of what Palestinian students face under occupation, including invasions of campuses, beatings, checkpoints and torture, then they would have just cause to complain of anti-Semitism.  As it is we should treat members of UJS for what they are - spoilt White Jewish racists.

Al Jazeera’s documentary ‘The Lobby’ showed Adam Schapira, a candidate for UJS President, openly admitting that UJS was funded by the Israeli Embassy.

From Vetting in Practice

The Experiences of Emma Clyne

Emma become Chair of the Jewish society at SOAS in 2006-7 despite not being a Zionist. Emma described the ‘intense pressure’ from UJS:

Before she became the chair of the SOAS Jewish Society, she had found it was like an Israel Society…. She took over the chair on condition that there was to be a clear distinction between the Jewish Society and the Israel Society. This led to a furious reaction from UJS which told her: “That’s not what the Jewish Society does. You can’t separate Israeli politics from Jewish identity. It is all the same.”

The antagonism reached a peak after she went to the launch of Independent Jewish Voices in 2007 and found the speakers “honest articulate and inspirational.” When she invited some of the speakers [like Sir Geoffrey Bindman QC] to a meeting at SOAS to discuss “the impact of nationalism on Jewish identity” the pressure on her increased, and she was told that UJS and the Israeli Embassy were very concerned about the meeting.

In an article for the Guardian’s Comment is Free [before anti-Zionists were banned] I described what happened next:

According to... Emma Clyne, posters for a meeting the society put on were repeatedly torn down. Ms Clyne told a meeting of Independent Jewish Voices on May 15 that she had to put new ones up every day.

A clue as to the reason for its silence might lie in an article in the Jewish Chronicle of April 27 ("Students in censorship row over IJV debate").

From Vetting in Practice

The then Chair of UJS, Mitch Simmons, stated

‘"It is the view of the UJS that certain views are not acceptable under free speech."

Netanyahu's comments are clearly racist and they describe Israel as it is.   Yet to call it racist is 'antisemitic' according to the IHRA even though it is true!

Imagine if a White South African student group had described certain views opposing Apartheid as ‘not acceptable’. Yet NUS Executive has granted UJS their wishes.  All of course under the guise of  defending poor Jewish students who are too fragile to withstand criticism of their favourite racist state.

In Vetting in Practice I described UJS as

“an organisation whose primary purpose is defence of Israel, right or wrong. It has consistently sought to portray opponents, especially Jewish anti-Zionists, as anti-semites. That is why it receives, according to the Jewish Chronicle (May 11) hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Silencing opponents of Zionism and supporters of the Palestinians is its stock-in-trade. I have personally spoken on most major university campuses in Britain and I cannot remember an occasion when the UJS didn't try to prevent the meeting going ahead.

Ken Loach

Another target of UJS was the veteran left-wing film-maker, Ken Loach. He was invited by his alma mater, St. Peter’s College, Oxford to speak. All hell broke out and UJS was at the centre of this McCarthyist witchhunt.  Loach was accused of ‘anti-Semitism’ although no one seemed able to produce a single statement of his that was anti-Semitic.

UJS does its best to have Ken Loach banned - they failed

Oxford J-Soc tweeted:

“Oxford University Jewish Society is deeply disappointed by the decision of Professor Judith Buchanan, Master of St Peter’s College, to host an event with filmmaker Ken Loach. On numerous occasions, Loach has made remarks that are antisemitic under the IHRA definition,

Calling Israel a racist state, or saying you don’t believe in a Jewish state or comparing Zionism to Nazism is ‘anti-Semitic’ under the IHRA. That’s why the Zionists fought so hard to have it adopted.  The IHRA conflates anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism. Its sole concern is with anti-Zionism not the genuine anti-Semitism of the far-Right.

UJS issued a statement along similar lines:

St Peter’s College, University of Oxford, should not be platforming a person who has repeatedly been accused of and has been an apologist for antisemitism.

Strangely enough neither group quoted what Loach had actually said. For UJS it’s enough to be accused of anti-Semitism to be guilty.  And what does an ‘apologist for anti-Semitism’ mean? Again no quotes.

The President of the Board of Deputies Marie van der Zyl issued a statement telling Professor Judith Buchanan, Master of St Peter’s College that

‘the decision to invite him [Loach] to speak at the college [was] ‘entirely unacceptable’ and calling for the event to be cancelled. That an Oxford college would not conduct its due diligence and allow Ken Loach to address students is entirely unacceptable. Higher education institutions have a duty of care to their students

Let us dissect that.  By inviting Ken Loach, an 85 year old man, to address a group of students these poor Jewish snowflakes might suffer irreparable harm!  It’s as if words don’t mean anything to these died-in-the-wool racists.

What was Ken Loach’s real offence? That he produced the play Perdition 35 years ago. The play was a fictional account of the Kasztner trial in Israel which the Zionists never refer to today.

Kasztner was the leader of Hungarian Zionism. The Jerusalem District Court upheld the allegations of collaboration against him. In the words of Judge Benjamin Halevi, Kasztner ‘sold his soul to Satan.’ Although the conviction was overturned  4-1 by the Supreme Court this was patently political and used dubious legal technicalities.

In fact on one charge of collaboration, giving testimony at Nuremberg in support of a Nazi war criminal, Kurt Becher, the allegation of collaboration was upheld by the Supreme Court. The Court didn’t know that Kasztner had also given testimony in support of Eichmann’s deputy, Hermann Krumey and another mass murderer Dieter Wisliceny. Krumey lived out his life in Germany, until Rudolf Vrba gave evidence against him.  Wisliceny was executed by the Czechs. See “Anti-Semitism” accusations used in attempt to prevent Ken Loach speaking at Oxford University

The Kasztner trial is covered in my forthcoming book  Zionism During the Holocaust.  Kasztner made an agreement with Eichmann for 600, increased to 1,684, of the Zionist and Jewish elite escaping deportation in a train out of Hungary. In return  Kasztner suppressed the Auschwitz Protocols, which 2 escapees from Auschwitz, Vrba and Wetzler had written exposing Auschwitz as an extermination camp.

The result was that Hungarian Jewry were kept in the dark as to where they were being ‘resettled’ and were told by Kasztner’s Zionist friends, that they were merely being taken to a safer place in Hungary.

It is to be hoped that after the investigation concludes that NUS will defend its President Shaima Dallali against any further attacks by racists, UJS included.

The Muddled and Confused Response of the Green Party to the IHRA is exemplified by Caroline Lucas’s Email to me

Why Does a Party That Professes Support for the Palestinians End Up Supporting the Zionists?

Being a Marxist, the question I always ask is why?  Why does someone, like Caroline Lucas, who is a perfectly decent human being who no doubt cares deeply and passionately about things like fracking and who professes support for the Palestinians, nonetheless continually fall on the wrong side of the fence?

Even the Leader of the Greens on Brighton & Hove Council, Phelim McCafferty, probably fooled himself into thinking that he is supporting the Palestinians whilst voting alongside Conservative and Unionist councillors as well as New Labour.  I suspect that the 10 Green councillors who followed him like sheep also believe that they can both support the Palestinians and a definition of ‘anti-Semitism’ which undermines that support. In short they end up supporting both the oppressed and oppressors.

What is happening now in terms of Caroline Lucas and the Green councillors is not unique.  I can remember back in 2005, when I stood for the Alliance for Green Socialism in Brighton Pavilion, the Green Party candidate was Keith Taylor, also a perfectly decent person, who is now an MEP for the South-East.  We did a hustings together and my main argument and difference with him was that the Green Party had no anti-capitalist or class politics. 

Volker Beck - the German Green MP, Zionist and a racist

I gave as an example the fact that Die Grunen had steadily moved to the Right in Germany where they had formed a coalition with the SPD.  The Green Foreign Minister, Joshka Fischer, had presided over the introduction of German troops into Afghanistan, the first time German troops had fought abroad since the 2^nd World War. The anti-war party had become the part of western imperialism and today the Green Party under Volker Beck is to the right of the CDU on Israel/Palestine.

How, I asked Keith, had it come to this? That a Green Party, when it gets into government, does something that no Christian Democrat government had ever considered? It is fair to say that Keith Taylor was stumped. Or why when there was Green participation in a government in Ireland they had gone along with the most vicious austerity politics before being booted out of office?

The answer seems obvious.  For all its radical fringe politics the Green Party sees itself as an Establishment Party. It believes that a capitalism of small producers can deliver the goods.  In essence it believes in a capitalism without exploitation which is a complete contradiction since capitalism is based on profit above need.

Caroline  Lucas and Phelim McCafferty on NHS Demonstration

Being in favour of environmentally friendly policies and all good things and true doesn’t really equip you to deal with conflicts like Palestine.  It doesn’t help you either when you gain control of a council like Brighton and Hove and then you come up against the workforce and the trade unions.  You begin to act like any other Conservative or even Labour Council which is exactly what happened between 2011 and 2015.

Both Caroline Lucas and a very sheepish Phelim McCafferty, who realises just how much he has pissed off people in Brighton and Hove  Palestine solidarity group argue that you can support the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism and support the Palestinians by resorting to casuistry and logic chopping. So Caroline believes that this abysmal definition, which as Stephen Sedley rightly said is not even a definition, it’s a Zionist rant about all the things they consider ‘anti-Semitic’, can be remedied if you add the Home Affairs Select Committee Report caveat.

The two caveats that the Committee added were that:

Ø It is not antisemitic to criticise the Government of Israel, without additional evidence to suggest antisemitic intent.

Ø It is not antisemitic to hold the Israeli Government to the same standards as other liberal democracies, or to take a particular interest in the Israeli Government’s policies or actions, without additional evidence to suggest antisemitic intent.

Yet this Report was flawed from the start.  With Chuka Ummuna and his friends on the Committee using it as a means to attack Jeremy Corbyn. The Committee Report as a whole was severely flawed (for example attacking people like the then Black NUS President Malia Bouattia without even giving her the chance to respond or calling her to give evidence). The reliance on these two caveats demonstrates the weakness of Caroline’s argument.

The mere fact that criticism of Israel is seen as anti-Semitic in the first place, with or without ‘anti-Semitic intent’ begs the question ‘what is anti-Semitic intent’. It is a catch 22 situation and demonstrates how flawed the IHRA is.

I understand that Phelim McCafferty went to the Labour group leader Daniel Yates to suggest the insertion of the caveats into the motion and he was refused. Having been turned down he just went back and accepted it.

I suggest that Caroline Lucas reads the excellent article by David Plank and Rosemary Bechler in Open Democracy which takes apart the Home Affairs Select Committee Report on Anti-Semitism.  Plank was a former government special adviser on social security and thus a former civil servant of some standing. He issued a devastating critique of this Report branding it a hatchet job that was politically motivated by antagonism to Jeremy Corbyn. See Chilling effects: the politics of anti-semitism in the UK

My article Anti-Semitism in the UK looks at the Home Affairs Select Committee Report in the light of Plank’s critique and finally Plank’s “Antisemitism in the United Kingdom” House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, HC 136 A Critique

The first of Plank’s Conclusion & recommendations sets the tone:

A.          I came to this report as a former specialist adviser to the then House of Commons Social Services Committee (Chair, Renee Short MP). It saddens me to find a report which so signally fails to live up to the standards set by select committees over the years. Most regrettably, my conclusion is that this Report is a partisan party political polemic which should not have been agreed and made public by a House of Commons select committee. It fails to meet the basic standards required of select committees as to their inquiries and reports. This is particularly distressing on so important and contentious a matter as antisemitism in our country.

Dina Porat, Zionist historian of the Holocaust and inspiration behind the IHRA - her job is to mould holocaust history in with the Zionist narrative

It doesn’t seem to have occurred to either Caroline or Phelim that there is a context to the IHRA definition.  It hasn’t sprung out of nowhere.  It is a product of a massive propaganda push by the Israeli government to brand their opponents as anti-Semitic. It was written at the suggestion of the Israeli state’s chief Holocaust historian Dina Porat, who was based at the Kantor Centre, Tel Aviv University.

Porat is the person who signed off on Netanyahu’s recent agreement with the Polish Government in respect of its recent Holocaust law. In March a law came into operation which made it a criminal offence to suggest that Poles had been complicit in the Holocaust or Nazi crimes. This despite the fact that in 2001, Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski had offered a national apology for the murder of up to 1,600 Jews who were herded into a barn, which was then set alight, by fellow Poles. Similar pogroms occurred in other areas of Eastern Poland.

Netanyahu did a deal with the Polish regime which removed the criminal penalties whilst retaining the offence itself thus allowing fines to be exacted. The reason why Netanyahu agreed this sordid deal was that Poland is one of Israel’s closest allies in Europe. It is a far-Right government which contains a number of anti-Semites in it. The Law and Justice Party, which forms the government, opposed the apology for Jedwabne. The leader of the party in the European Parliament, Michal Kaminski, going as far as to suggest it was Poland’s Jews who should have been apologising to Poles!

Picket of Yad Vashem in July 2018 against the visit of the anti-semitic and racist Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a close ally of Netanyahu - holocaust survivors played an important part in the picket

Yehuda Bauer, Professor of Holocaust Studies at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University and former chief historian at Yad Vashem, its Holocaust propaganda museum, denounced the agreement.

‘It’s a betrayal of the memory of the Holocaust and the interest of the Jewish people. And the reason for it is entirely pragmatic: the diplomatic, political, and economic ties between the Israeli government and the government of Poland.’

Yad Vashem, despite its role as a propaganda institute which uses the Holocaust as an ideological weapon, was equally forthright. It denounced the joint statement between the Polish government and Netanyahu as containing ‘highly problematic wording that contradicts existing and accepted historical knowledge in this field,”

Jewish Chronicle Editor Stephen Pollard defended Poland's antisemitic Michal Kaminski who opposed a national apology for Jedwabne

Dina Porat, who is the chief historian to Yad Vashem declared that ‘we can live with” the statement which effectively exonerated Poland of any complicity in the Holocaust.  The reason I mention this is that Porat, who is quite content to alter the historical record when it comes to the Holocaust, if Israel’s political needs so dictate, was also the person who pushed hardest for the IHRA. Kenneth Stern, the person who actually drafted the IHRA recalled 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.  The Working Definition of Antisemitism – A Reappraisal

Given its antecedents the IHRA should have been rejected on that account alone.  The idea of amending a document with a background in Israeli propaganda organisations is absurd.  Would you compile a definition of Islamaphobia on the basis of what British nationalist organisations come up with? Israel is an apartheid state.  It displaces and demolishes Palestinian homes to replace them with Jewish settlers.  What it does is far worse than anything Tommy Robinson will ever do yet I assume that McCafferty and Lucas haven’t yet signed up to the programme of this tawdry British fascist. So what is the attraction of this Israeli state redefinition of anti-Semitism? 

What has also thrown the Greens into a state of panic and confusion is that organisations claiming to represent British Jews have been at the forefront of the campaign to support the IHRA. Because they have no class analysis of racism they are bewildered. As one of those signed up to the Equalities Agenda, as it’s called, the Greens have no ability to differentiate between those who are oppressed – Blacks and Muslims in Britain and the Palestinians and Jews. Jews, although they are a minority in Britain are a White minority. They are not oppressed.

To these liberals, and really the Green Party is a liberal party at heart with a green tinge, there is no understanding that racism is not about personal interactions but the actions of the state. Racism is about power. They have no understanding of how class and race politics interact. Which means in practice that they are stuck in identity politics and every identity, oppressed or oppressor is equal.

The IHRA is flawed from start to finish.  It really has nothing at all to do with anti-Semitism which is why Caroline Lucas’s defence of her stance on the IHRA is so shocking.

Tony Greenstein

Email exchange Tuesday 16^th October

Dear Tony,

Thank you for your email and for sharing a copy of the open letter published on your blog. My apologies for not writing back sooner.

You make lots of arguments but for me this essentially comes down to one key point, namely that I disagree with you as to whether the IHRA definition prevents criticism of the Israeli government and its actions by automatically labelling it antisemitism. I don’t agree that the definition means criticism of Israel is automatically antisemitic. Rather, it makes clear that there has to be some kind of manifestation of hatred towards Jews for that to be the case.  I recognise the definition is being used to try to shut down criticism and debate in some contexts, but I think that’s a misuse of the definition and will continue to say as much. I therefore advocate its adoption – with the very helpful clarifying amendments from the cross party Home Affairs Select Committee on this specific point. I have no intention of ceasing my work speaking out about the illegal occupation of Palestine, Israel’s human rights abuses, the blockade of Gaza and so forth.

Best wishes, Caroline

Dear Caroline,

Thank you for getting back to me about the IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism. Your position though is entirely illogical.

I don’t doubt that you support the Palestinians but unfortunately you support a definition of ‘anti-Semitism’ whose sole purpose it is to equate that support with hatred against Jews.

The IHRA definition conflates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. By ‘anti-Zionism’ I mean a critique of Israel that goes beyond criticism of particular policies to what is termed the Jewish State itself. In other words why does Israel behave as it does.  Is it simply an aberration? Is it because Netanyahu is in power but if the Israeli Labour Party was in government such things wouldn’t happen?

Anti-Zionism  is where you are drawing the line. I accept that you don’t hesitate to criticise particular policies but you don’t draw the conclusion that there must be something fundamentally wrong about the Israeli state compared to all other states.

It is as if 42 years ago you had criticised the South Africa government for its policies of shooting the inhabitants of Soweto but drawn the line at criticising Apartheid.

You accept that the definition is being used to shut down criticism of Israel but then you say that this is a misuse of it.  I disagree. Such ‘misuse’ is inherent in the definition itself. When Stephen Sedley, the Jewish former Court of Appeal Judge says, that:

Endeavours to conflate the two (anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism) by characterising everything other than anodyne criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic are not new. What is new is the adoption... of a definition of anti-Semitism which endorses the conflation.

Is he wrong?  Why? Hugh Tomlinson QC stated that

‘there is likely to be lack of consistency in its application and 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 antisemitic without applying any clear criterion of assessment.

Is that also wrong? Geoffrey Robertson QC argued that

the looseness of the definition is liable to chill legitimate criticisms of the state of Israel and coverage of human rights abuses against Palestinians.

Perhaps he too is wrong? All three of the above are arguing that what Professor David Feldman wrote, that the definition is ‘bewilderingly imprecise’, is deliberate. It is precisely because of its lack of any precision that the IHRA is so dangerous.

Stephen Sedley goes further and states that the IHRA ‘fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite.’

Even the author of the definition, Kenneth Stern of the American Jewish Committee, in testimony to Congress described the targeting of a Professor Rebecca Gould at Bristol University, for writing an academic article on how the Israeli state uses the Holocaust to sanctify itself, as ‘chilling and McCarthy like.’

I don’t incidentally argue that the definition ‘automatically’ labels criticism of the Israeli state as anti-Semitic. It is far cleverer than that.  As others have pointed out, it is the definition’s deliberate vagueness that makes it such a useful weapon in the hands of the opponents of free speech.

However I disagree with you that ‘there has to be some manifestation of hatred’ for something to be anti-Semitic. That would be logical but the definition is anything but logical. This is very clear from the way the definition is being used and the way the illustrations are being decoupled from the 38 word definition. In addition, the very definitions themselves lend themselves to such a decoupling. This is particularly true of 3 of the examples:

i.             ‘Applying double standards’ to Israel that are not applied to other countries.  That clearly has nothing to do with hate. It concerns political criticism of Israel.

ii.            ‘Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.’ This too relates to political critique not hatred. There are clearly similarities in pre-Holocaust Nazi Germany and Israel e.g. the marriage laws, the quest for racial purity as manifested in the denial of nationality for Arab citizens.

iii.           ‘claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor’ also has nothing to do with hate but is a political critique.

I am leaving to one side the incoherence of a definition which says that Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination and Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel are anti-Semitic. If Israel is the fulfilment of Jewish self-determination, i.e. the Jews are a nation, then it is obviously correct to hold them responsible for Israel’s actions. Likewise if Israel is the Jewish national state then why shouldn’t someone accuse Jews of being more loyal to Israel? Is it racist to accuse British people of being more loyal to Britain than France?

The question that puzzles me is why the hell would you want to use a definition of anti-Semitism that is so politically incoherent and which lends itself to the suppression of free speech? What is it about the definition that, despite all these flaws, makes it so attractive?

The only conclusion I can reach is that you are unwilling to go against the Establishment consensus. That you value your position as a member of the British Establishment, albeit its radical green fringe. I am referring to a consensus forged by the State Department in Washington which first adopted the IHRA definition (in its previous EUMC guise). The IHRA is a definition of anti-Semitism which chimes with America’s foreign policy interest in supporting Israel, right or wrong. 

Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount that ‘man cannot serve two masters’. I would say that you cannot both support the Palestinians and a definition of anti-Semitism that renders such support anti-Semitic.

I would ask you to rethink your support of the IHRA, a definition of anti-Semitism which, as you admit, has been used to shut down criticism. Not only do you not need a definition of anti-Semitism to oppose it but if you really want a definition, then the Oxford English dictionary’s ‘hostility to or prejudice against Jews’ is far more useful than a 500+ word one.

Best wishes

Tony

Open Letter to Caroline Lucas MP 6^th October 2018

Dear Caroline,

During last year’s General Election you wrote to me explaining that:

‘it’s vital that we do more to tackle antisemitism and this was my motivation in backing the IHRA definition.’ 

You went on to explain ‘the importance of not conflating criticism of Israel with genuine anti-Jewish racism’ and in the same breath spoke about ‘drawing where helpful on the IHRA definition, at the same time as protecting freedom of speech and promoting Green Party policy on Israel and Palestine.’

This is probably as good an example of cognitive dissonance as it gets. You went on to ask me ‘If you are aware of any more helpful definitions, particularly when it comes to illustrative examples, I’d be interested to see them’ whilst explaining that you wished to withdraw your support from an Early Day Motion supporting the IHRA but ‘At the moment I am not able to remove my name but shall enquire whether that’s possible if I am re-elected to Parliament on June 8.’

You concluded by assuring me that:

 ‘I reject any idea that support for Palestine equates with antisemitism and share your concern about any attempts to prevent activities or silence voices designed to highlight the ongoing occupation of Palestine and the Israeli authorities' complicity in human rights and other abuses

Despite your obvious confusion I was pleased that you were willing to withdraw your support for the IHRA. One should always welcome the sinner who sees the light and repenteth on the road to Damascus. Unfortunately it appears that you have reverted to your sinful past.

I was tempted to ask you why it was necessary “to do more to tackle anti-Semitism” when it barely exists in this country. I’m not aware of any Jewish Windrush-style deportations or Jewish deaths in custody or the Stop and Search of Jews in Golders Green or indeed violence against Jews as Jews. Jews are living in a golden age. The assumption that anti-Semitism is increasing is one of those taken for granted establishment myths that become true by virtue of repetition.

I understand that the Green Party is due to debate the IHRA at its conference this weekend and you are backing an Executive motion supporting the IHRA. On 13^th August you issued a statement expressing your support for the IHRA at the same time as reiterating your support for the Palestinians.  This is like someone who murders his parents whilst professing his love for them.

The whole purpose of the IHRA is to conflate anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. I doubt if there is a single Palestine solidarity activist in the country who hasn’t been accused of ‘anti-Semitism’. Likewise there isn’t a single Jewish supporter of the Palestinians who hasn’t been called a ‘traitor’ ‘self-hater’ or ‘kapos’.

Your decision to support and whitewash the IHRA, in all its McCarthyist glory, is shameful. It suggests that yours and the Green Party’s commitment to civil liberties and human rights is skin deep. The IHRA has nothing whatsoever to do with combating anti-Semitism. That is why the anti-Semitic regimes of Hungary and Poland, both of which are part of the 31 country International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, endorse the definition.

There is nothing in the IHRA that anti-Semites such as Tommy Robinson (an ardent Zionist) can’t sign up to.

In your statement you say that you support the IHRA because ‘on balance... the definition provides an instructive framework that can help with the vital work of education, understanding and campaigning’

I don’t know what an ‘instructive framework’ is and I suspect neither do you. Perhaps Professor David Feldman, Director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism is wrong when he says that the core definition, “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews.”  is‘bewilderingly imprecise.’ Perhaps you know something he doesn’t?

Sir Stephen Sedley, the former Court of Appeal Judge, who is himself Jewish, in his article Defining Anti-Semitism, whilst commenting on the Opinion of Hugh Tomlinson QC that the IHRA was ‘unclear and confusing’ suggested that it was ‘calculatedly misleading’.

Renowned human rights lawyer, Geoffrey Robertson QC described the IHRA as ‘not fit for purpose.’ One wonders what it is about the IHRA definition that you have discovered that eminent human rights lawyers, academics and the most radical judge to sit in the Court of Appeal has missed out on?

Both Robertson and Sedley pointed out a curious thing about the IHRA that you in your enthusiasm seem to have missed. Far from educating people as to what anti-Semitism is, the IHRA actually makes it more difficult because it raises the bar, defining anti-Semitism as ‘hatred’ rather than ‘hostility’.

You asked me about any other helpful definitions of anti-Semitism. Could I suggest the Oxford English Dictionary definition? ‘Anti-Semitism is hostility to or prejudice against Jews.’ Or perhaps Oxford academic Brian Klug’s definition, in his Kristallnacht memorial lecture at the Berlin Jewish Museum in 2014:

antisemitism is a form of hostility to Jews as Jews, where Jews are perceived as something other than what they are

The OED defines anti-Semitism in terms of ‘hostility’ whereas the IHRA defines it in terms of ‘hatred’. The two are not the same. If someone says ‘I don’t want my daughter to marry a Jew although I’ve got nothing against them’ then according to the IHRA they are not anti-Semitic. You go on to say that

‘The legitimate concerns about free speech can be powerfully addressed by our continuing as a Party to champion... the rights of the Palestinian people to peace, freedom and justice.... The definition... explicitly allow for this and make clear that criticising Israel or its policies, for example, is only antisemitic if it’s deliberately manifesting or inciting hatred

.’

You are wrong on all counts. It’s like saying you can oppose poverty whilst supporting austerity  If you conflate support for the Palestinians with anti-Semitism, and 7 of the 11 IHRA examples of ‘anti-Semitism’ include the Israeli state, then you cannot help but undermine support for the Palestinians.

It is simply untrue to say that the definition only forbids criticism of Israel that manifests or incites hatred. Have you read it? The IHRA says that ‘criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic.’ In other word criticism of Israel that is unlike that of other countries is anti-Semitic.

Granted the IHRA allows you to criticise specific actions of the Israeli state, but if you criticise the state itself, as a Zionist and Jewish supremacist state, then that is anti-Semitic. It’s like being told that it was fine to criticise the actions of the Apartheid state of South Africa but you couldn’t criticise the state itself.

As Sedley put it ‘characterising everything other than anodyne criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic (is) not new.’ Israel is unlike any other state in the world but according to the IHRA if you say this then you are anti-Semitic. Perhaps you can tell me which other state in the world, apart from Burma, demolishes the homes and villages of one section of the populace in order to replace them with settlers from the dominant racial group?

In most states citizenship is the legal embodiment of nationality however Israel is the state of the Jewish nation, wherever they reside, which means it excludes 20% of its citizens from the national collective. That is why there is no Israeli nationality. Perhaps you know of another state where this is so?

One of the IHRA’s 11 examples of anti-Semitism states that ‘Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.’. I fail to understand why opposing the right of the ‘Jewish people’, itself a contentious formulation, is an example of hatred and therefore anti-Semitic. Is it racist to oppose Scottish or Welsh self-determination? And what is the connection between saying Israel is a racist state and anti-Semitism? Indeed what is the connection between the first and second halves of this sentence? You can support Jewish self-determination and still believe Israel is a racist state. I find it difficult to believe that you find this non-sequitur educative!

You say that you will ‘continue to use my voice to speak out against the abuses of the Israeli authorities, to demand that the human rights of both Palestinians and Israelis are upheld’. I presume when you refer to Israelis you mean Israeli Jews! Palestinian oppression is a political not a human rights problem. Just as Apartheid in South Africa was at its core a political question.

Most states in the world are racist but very few have racism at the very core of their identity. Racism is the DNA of the Israeli state.  It is a Jewish Supremacist State as the recently passed Jewish Nation State Law confirmed.

To give but one example. At the moment Israel’s 5 yearly local elections are being held. In Tel Aviv Likud, the party of government are campaigning on the slogan ‘It’s either us or them’. The them are the Arab minority of Jaffa and the African refugees of South Tel Aviv. It is a campaign to racially purify Tel Aviv and Jaffa, to make it a ‘Hebrew city’. In what other state in the world would a governing party be campaigning to ‘cleanse’ a city of its minority populations? Yet to point this out is ‘anti-Semitic’ according to the IHRA definition that you have embraced.

You suggest that although ‘The IHRA definition isn’t perfect (but) it’s a working definition.’ I hate to tell you this but it has been a working definition for 13 years!

You also state that ‘letting the perfect be the enemy of the good is distracting from the actions all political parties need to take to show real leadership on antisemitism.’  This is fatuous. Completely puerile. Words devoid of all meaning. There is nothing good about a definition of anti-Semitism that anti-Semites can sign up to but which defines anti-racists and anti-imperialists as anti-Semites.

What amazes me is that you are endorsing the weaponisation of anti-Semitism, and a definition whose primary purpose is the suppression and chilling of free speech. Even Kenneth Stern, the author of the IHRA, has come to recognise that this is what the IHRA has become.

As Stern acknowledged in testimony to Congress, ‘The definition was not drafted, and was never intended, as a tool to target or chill speech on a college campus... at a conference in 2010 about the impact of the definition, I highlighted this misuse, and the damage it could do.’

Whereas the author of the IHRA has become alarmed at how it is being used you seem either oblivious or indifferent. Among the many examples of how the IHRA has been used is the case of Professor Rebecca Gould of Bristol University. On the basis of an article she had written in 2011, Sir Eric Pickles, the anti-Semitic former Chair of Conservative Friends of Israel called on Gould to ‘consider her position’. Kenneth Stern described this as ‘chilling and McCarthy-like’ yet you turn a blind eye to this and simply pretend that the IHRA is about combating anti-Semitism. The group who targeted Professor Gould, demanding that she be sacked for having compared Israel with Nazi Germany, was the far-Right Campaign Against Anti-Semitism. The CAA complained that ‘the lecturer is able to continue to teach unimpeded.’

It is therefore baffling that the Green Party, in response to a CAA attack on Shahrar Ali, a candidate for the Green Party leadership, stated that “We have reached out to the Campaign Against Antisemitism to ensure we fully understand their concerns and to respond accordingly.” Apart from waging a continuous war against Jeremy Corbyn as an anti-Semite, the CAA is almost certainly funded by the Israeli state as part of its campaign against BDS.  What you were really doing was reaching out to Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli state. Perhaps next time the GP thinks of reaching out to this racist group, which routinely classifies all Palestine solidarity as ‘Jew hate’ they will first read my criticisms of them in Electronic Intifada. Below is a delightfully racist caricature of a Muslim that appears on their website. If someone drew a similar caricature of a Jew then all hell would break loose.

The obvious question that you and the Green Party have failed to ask is why is there a need for a definition of anti-Semitism at all? You don’t need a definition of fascism to oppose fascists and you don’t need a definition of anti-Semitism to oppose anti-Semitism. If you want one you can adopt the legal test of the reasonable person on the Clapham Omnibus. If asked what anti-Semitism is they would most likely say ‘a person who doesn’t like Jews.’ You don’t need a 500+ word definition unless your purpose is to conflate criticism of Zionism with anti-Semitism.

Your attitude to the IHRA, that it is compatible with freedom of speech is like saying that the right of women to choose to have an abortion is compatible with legislation outlawing abortion.

I am left asking what is the real reason for you changing your position on the IHRA? The only answer seems to be that the British Political Establishment has reached a consensus in support of the IHRA, as a means of defending British foreign policy and the special relationship with the United States and you are unwilling to break with that consensus.

The weaponisation of anti-Semitism is a means of cloaking in a moral shield British foreign policy in the Middle East. It would appear that for all its posturing, the Green Party is just another pro-capitalist, establishment party whose aim is to green capitalism.  When the British ruling class has adopted a definition of anti-Semitism that embraces Israel you feel obliged to join in.

Kind regards

Tony Greenstein