Stirring up hatred – CAA exonerates the far-Right and blames Anti-Zionists and Muslims for anti-Semitism

The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism hypes up fears of ‘anti-Semitism’ as part of the Zionist campaign to ‘persuade’ British Jews that Israel is their real home

Despite the evidence from the CST's  Incidents Report that 115 out of 176 anti-Semitic incidents are from the far-Right, it is 'Islamist' and 'far-left' anti-Semitism that concerns the racist CAA

When Benjamin Netanyahu went to France, in the wake of the killing of four Jews in a kosher supermarket in Paris, to persuade French Jews that their 'real home' was not France but Israel, he got short shrift - both from French Jews and France's leaders.  [Leaders reject Netanyahu calls for Jewish mass migration to Israel] This is the Zionist answer to anti-Semitism. Run away from it, repatriate yourself. That is what the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism's real game is.  It wants British Jews to go to Israel.  That is why its focus is not on the far-Right but the anti-Zionist left and Muslims.

Community Security Trust's Incidents Report for the first half of 2017 show that 115 out of 176 incidents came from the fascist right - the CAA ignores the actual statistics

The CAA is very concerned that people understand that it is not the far-Right but the Left and Muslims who are anti-Semitic thus following the Netanyahu line

Can you imagine what the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism would have done if it had been members of PSC or prominent anti-Zionists who had been caught holding a picket of a Zionist meeting with members of the neo-Nazi Britain First?  The group that Thomas Mair, Jo Cox MP’s murderer was associated with.  It would have been all over social media and their web site.   We would never have heard the end of it.  There would have been articles in the Guardian and the Daily Mail all proclaiming the alliance between the far-left, Palestine haters and fascists.  Instead of course silence.

Gideon Falter is a Director of the racist JNF UK, an organisation which subscribes to the view that land should only be allocated to Jews in Israel - the JNF complains on its web site that 70% of Israeli Jews oppose allocating JNF land to non-Jews and that more than 80% prefer Israel as a Jewish state to a state of all its citizens

It wasn’t Palestinian solidarity organisations but the former Vice Chair of the Zionist Federation, Jonathan Hoffman, in addition to Sharon Klaff, Ambrosine Shitrit and other Zionist activists, who participated in a picket with Paul Besser, Intelligence Officer of Britain First. [EXCLUSIVE – Lifting the lid on Collaboration between the Far Right and Zionist Activists] Not content with consorting with Besser, they also welcomed open Hitler lover, Neil Horan, to their motley crewe. Horan was there to add his support to the picket of Palestine Expo on July 8^th and 9^th. [see  Far-right Britain First fosters ties with Zionist movement]

As a Zionist organisation the CAA propagates the view that British Jews are thinking of leaving Britain - hoping that this will become a self-fulfilling prophecy

The Community Security Trust is a thoroughly Zionist organisation and as I have shown is happy to hype and inflate the amount of genuine anti-Semitism in Britain.  Their Anti-Semitism Incidents Report for January-June 2017 shows a ludicrous increase of 30% in anti-Semitic hate crime in the last year. 

This racist cartoon is to be found on the CAA's site

Nonetheless the CST, because it does at least take its job of collating anti-Semitic incidents seriously, leaving aside the question of how it defines those incidents, accepts that most anti-Semitism comes from the Far-Right.  In its latest Report it has a graph showing that out of 176 anti-Semitic incidents, 115 of them were perpetrated by the far-Right, 49 by anti-Zionists and 12 by Islamists.

Another absurd claim is that 36% of British people are anti-Semitic (though it's down on 45% 2 years ago!)

I don’t accept that anti-Semitic incidents are perpetrated by anti-Zionists for the simple reason that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are diametrically opposed to each other.  If someone is anti-Semitic then they are not anti-Zionist.  There may be people who are both pro-Palestinian and anti-Semitic, but today it is the far-Right which combines both anti-Semitism and pro-Zionism.

Another myth is that criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic

The CST which unlike the CAA, is not overtly anti-Islamic, has no problem tweeting out that most anti-Semitism comes from the far-Right not Muslims.

The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism does the exact opposite.  It is a purely political Zionist organisation.  It has no interest in anything other than using contrived and manipulated opinion polls to hype up fears of ‘anti-Semitism’ amongst the Jewish community with the purpose of encouraging Jews to go to Israel.

CAA's message is that Labour is 'harbouring anti-Semites' - the bigger the lie the more people you'll fool is how CAA operates

Hence it shouts that ‘British Jews are concerned about Islamist, far-left and far-right anti-Semitism, in that order’

The CAA ludicrously claims on its Facebook page that 36% of British people are anti-Semitic and that one-third of British Jews are considering leaving the country. These lies have been debunked before, not least by the Jewish Chronicle in a poll by Survation, in direct response to a previous campaign by CAA.  

The JC reported that ‘Almost nine out of 10 – 88 per cent - say that they have not considered quitting the UK since last week’s atrocities, compared to just 11 per cent who have thought of leaving.’ 

Even the Jewish Chronicle was forced into debunking claims that over a third of British Jews were considering emigrating to Israel

This is slightly different from the  hysterical 1/3 figure that the CAA likes to quote.

CAA is a thoroughly Zionist organisation.  It is Chaired by Gideon Falter, who is a Director of JNF UK, an organisation whose sole purpose in Israel is to lease and allocate land for Jews only. When the JNF was forced, temporarily, to end their policy of only renting land to Jews, it whined that 

'A survey commissioned by KKL-JNF reveals that over 70% of the Jewish population in Israel opposes allocating KKL-JNF land to non-Jews, while over 80% prefer the definition of Israel as a Jewish state, rather than as the state of all its citizens.'

In other words it is a 100% racist organisation and it is no surprise that Falter and co. should be trying to stir up fears of anti-Semitism.  If British Jews do think that it is the left and Muslims are anti-Semitic then it is groups like CAA who are to blame for lying to them, with the support it has to be said of much of the British media, the BBC included.

Tony Greenstein 

Gilad Atzmon – BDS is a Jewish Conspiracy

Why Palestine Expo Should Have Boycotted Jewish Anti-Zionists

Prominent Palestinians condemn Atzmon as anti-Semitic

It is some time since I devoted a blog post to Gilad Atzmon – the anti-Semitic jazz player.  For some years he and his supporters posed an increasing threat to the Palestine solidarity movement, polluting it with their overt anti-Semitism and giving comfort to the Zionists and supporters of Israel.  The Zionists said that everything they did was in the name of Jews and Atzmon was perfectly happy to subscribe to that lie.

Gilad Atzmon - the anti-Semitic Jazzman

Even the Socialist Workers Party issued a Statement on Gilad Atzmon and Marxism 2005 (21st June 2005) supporting him.  This was in response to a Jews Against Zionism picket of a meeting the SWP held with Atzmon at Bookmarks.  It stated that 

‘The SWP does not believe that Gilad Atzmon is a Holocaust denier or racist. However, while defending Gilad’s right to play and speak on public platforms that in no way means we endorse all of Gilad’s views.’  

The racist Campaign Against Anti-semitism did their best to have Palestine Expo banned

Unfortunately Atzmon was both a racist and holocaust denier and the title of his talk to the assembled SWP members, John Rose included, was the legacy of Otto Weininger, a reactionary German Jew of whom Hitler allegedly said that there was only one decent Jew and he killed himself!

The SWP statement seems to have disappeared from the SWP’s site!  Presumably it therefore never existed.  There are though still reports of the SWP’s effusive coverage which have not yet been deleted!

Atzmon's take on Palestine Expo 2017

Following the issuing of a statement Granting No Quarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon by Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada, Professor Joseph Massad, Omar Barghouti and other leading Arabs and Palestinians in 2012, Atzmon has faded away becoming both more bitter and more overtly anti-Semitic.  In 2011/12 an open holocaust denier, Francis Clarke Lowes was expelled, firstly from Brighton and Hove PSC and then from the national PSC.  As a result of these events Atzmon and his baleful influence has become a thing of the past, much to the annoyance of the Zionists.

Despite this I still come across the occasional supporter of the Palestinians, although more rarely now than before, who still believe that Atzmon is a supporter of the Palestinian struggle rather than a washed up ex-Israeli whose anti-Semitism is a reflection of the racism of his Revisionist Zionist father.

Atzmon - blowing his own trumpet

It’s now six years ago since I issued A Guide to the Sayings of Gilad Atzmon, the anti-Semitic jazzman.  I confess that I haven’t followed much of what he has written since then although by all accounts it has gotten worse.  In 2012: Atzmon joined the far-Right conspiracy site, Veterans Today.  In 2014: Atzmon praised David Duke of the KKK and also gave open support to Holocaust Revisionists.  In 2015: Atzmon described the Paris shootings as a false flag, i.e. that it was perpetrated by Jews.

The SWP's original statement exonerating Atzmon

Atzmon’s primary theme is that the dispossession of the Palestinians is all the fault of the Jews and that to be Jewish and Zionist are one and the same thing.  Indeed Jewish anti-Zionists are the worst of all because they are using their anti-Zionism in order to subvert the Palestine solidarity movement.  Because they are 'ethnically' Jewish they are irredeemably Zionist.  Ali Abunima dealt with this nonsense in their statement:

Atzmon’s politics rest on one main overriding assertion that serves as springboard for vicious attacks on anyone who disagrees with his obsession with “Jewishness”. He claims that all Jewish politics is “tribal,” and essentially, Zionist. Zionism, to Atzmon, is not a settler-colonial project, but a trans-historical “Jewish” one, part and parcel of defining one’s self as a Jew. Therefore, he claims, one cannot self-describe as a Jew and also do work in solidarity with Palestine, because to identify as a Jew is to be a Zionist. We could not disagree more. Indeed, we believe Atzmon’s argument is itself Zionist because it agrees with the ideology of Zionism and Israel that the only way to be a Jew is to be a Zionist.

Atzmon has flirted with Holocaust denial for some years and openly works with fellow holocaust deniers such as Horst Mahler, a neo-Nazi and former member of the Red Army faction who was sentenced to 6 years in Germany for Holocaust revisionism. [see Gilad Atzmon – Now an Open Holocaust Denier]

Mahler, a member of the National Democratic Party wrote a book ‘'The End of Wanderings – Thoughts on Gilad Atzmon and the Jewish people'.  Mahler escaped from prison in Germany and fled to Hungary to escape prison before being deported back to Germany.  [see German Nazis fail to save terrorist Horst Mahler from prison ]

In June as Al Aqsa and others were involved in organising Palestine Expo 2017, the largest cultural and political Palestinian event in Europe, the Zionists stepped up their campaign against it calling it a ‘Jewish hate fest’ and alleging that its main purpose was anti-Semitic.  Groups like the misnamed Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the so-called Jewish Human Rights Group were to the fore in trying to get the event banned.  [Zionist 'Jewish Human Rights Watch' are Attempting to Destroy Expo 2017 the Biggest Palestinian Cultural Event ever in Europe]

In the face of these false allegations of anti-Semitism and support for ‘terrorism’, Jewish anti-Zionist groups and individuals mobilised to ensure that the Tory government did not cancel the event.  At the same time Gilad Atzmon was doing his best to try and persuade people that Palestine Solidarity and anti-Semitism were inextricably linked.

In Palestinian Expo 2017: The UK Government and The Lobby Atzmon wrote complaining that

‘Over the last decade, Palestinian solidarity has been hijacked by many Jewish organisations - JVP, IJAN, J-BIG – and also by other insipid left-leaning groups that in practice, have reduced Palestinian solidarity into a paradigm that is lame, meaningless and leads absolutely nowhere. This loose collective of tribal and Identitarian merchants has managed to reduce the magisterial Palestinian call for Right of Return into a squalid and self-serving Jewish internal debate about the ‘Right to BDS.’ The discourse of the oppressed is now defined by the sensitivities of the oppressor.’

You may find Atzmon’s incoherent ramblings difficult to understand.  Leave aside that the JVP – Jewish Voices for Peace is an American group that had little nor nothing to do with Palestine Expo. It is true that Jewish anti-Zionists in this country, unlike Atzmon, did their best to rally to defend Palestine Expo.  And what’s more we were successful and it went ahead. 

Atzmon though attempted to counterpose the Right of Return, which all Jewish anti-Zionist groups support to BDS.  He describes BDS as a ‘squalid and self-serving Jewish internal debate’  In fact BDS is something that originated in 2005, not from a Jewish internal debate but from Palestinian civil society groups in Palestine.  It was a call for solidarity and was immediately taken up in this country  by university lecturers in the Association of University Teachers union (later the University College Union) in 2005 when the AUT voted to support an academic boycott of Israeli universities.

Given that Netanyahu and the Israeli government has deemed BDS enemy number one and are spending $50m in the Gilad Erdan's Ministry of Strategic Affairs, the fact that Atzmon openly attacks it says everything one needs to know about his politics.

Atzmon complained that Palestine Expo 2017 , ‘could have been an attempt to re-instate the meaning of Palestine: its culture, its politics and its call for liberation.’  Perhaps if Atzmon had gone to the event he would have found out that that is exactly what it did.  What Atzmon meant by ‘the meaning of Palestine’ was, however, different from what most people mean.  He complained that it ‘Featur(ed) Jewish anti-Zionist voices, and endorsed by various Jewish organisations, it instead attempts to give voice to the most politically-correct and Jewish-friendly vision of solidarity available. And guess what, it didn’t work. Instead of welcoming this Zio-friendly approach, British Jews, utilising all their lobbies and employing every trick in the Hasbara playbook, have act institutionally and aggressively to cancel the event.’

Atzmon finds it hard to understand that Jewish anti-Zionist groups are in a minority and therefore not likely to be heeded by the majority Zionist groups in the Jewish community, although it is interesting that the Zionist calls for the banning of Palestine Expo were only from the far-Right of the Zionist movement in this country - the CAA and the so-called Jewish Human Rights Watch (which in practice is solicitor Robert Fenstenstein and a couple of mates).  The Board of Deputies, which is normally so voluble, realised that there were no conceivable grounds to ban Palestine Expo other than the explicitly racist one of deeming anything Palestinian as automatically anti-Jewish.

The fact that prominent Jewish speakers such as Miko Peled, the son of dissident Israeli General Matiyahu Peled, or Ilan Pappe as well as people like John Pilger spoke gave the lie to Zionist accusations that support for the Palestinians is anti-Semitic.  Many hundreds of British Jews attended this so-called 'hate fest'.  This however is what Atzmon dislikes most of all.  To him the ‘meaning of Palestine’ is an anti-Semitic meaning in which Zionist racism towards Palestinians is replaced by hatred of Jews.

It is because hatred of Jews is his most important priority that Atzmon rejects BDS.  He sees the prominent role of Jews in it as being evidence of it being a Zionist conspiracy.  In Gilad Atzmon Interview: Tangling with the Oppressor - What really matters is what Palestinians Do he attacked the academic boycott, because it was led by socialists and those on the left, Jewish and non-Jewish:

‘interfering with academic freedom isn’t exactly something I can blindly advocate. … I am against any form of gatekeeping or book burning. But it goes further, I actually want to hear what Israelis and Zionists have to say. I want to read their books. I want to confront their academics.’ ‘to impose a boycott is to employ a boycotter. ... the boycott is led by some minor academics with very little to say about ethics and even less to say about the specific conflict…. It has a lot to do with maintenance of some particular decaying old-school socialists within the fading progressive Western discourse. … When it comes to the current boycott we are unfortunately operating within a political mode rather than an ethical one. … Shouldn’t we ban as well any form of racially orientated activity? … I believe that the best way around it is to support freedom of speech categorically…’

For Atzmon ‘freedom of speech’ for the colonist trumps the freedom of the oppressed and that is why those who have illusions in him should think again.

Palestine Expo 2017 - The Largest Palestine Event in Europe - Packed and Successful

Despite the Best efforts of the Zionists to Ban It, Palestine Expo Has Been an Incredible Success

Well the Zionists, led by the far-Right Jewish Human Rights Watch (which watches over attempts to implement human rights) and the virulently Islamaphobic Campaign Against Anti-Semitism did their best to stop the biggest ever Palestine event in Britain and probably Europe.  They tried every racist trick in the book but even Sajid David couldn't find enough of a pretext to destroy free speech on Palestine.

A rapt audience - all the sessions were packed out with standing room only - this demonstrates the level of support for the Palestinians in Britain - hence the feverish Zio attempts to have the conference banned - they probably forgot this isn't Israel!

I had to return to Brighton at 3 pm.m but the sessions were not only impressive but too often really good sessions coincided with each other.

David Collier and wife enjoying Palestinian food b4 being escorted out

I went to 3 sessions - the first one was entitled Balfour to Apartheid.  The opening speaker was Ben Jamal, Director of Palestine Solidarity Campaign.  He was followed by Professor Tilley, of Southern Illinois University who authored a Report by the UN's Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia which  described Israel as an Apartheid state.  Of course this proved politically embarrassing for the UN and the head of ESCWA, Rima Khalaf, was forced to resign after the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres denounced the report and asked for it to be removed from the Commission's website.  Her talk on why Israel is an Apartheid state and why a Jewish state cannot be other than a racist state, given the systematic privileging of Jews in that state, was impressive.

Professor Tilley of Southern Illinois University spoke by Skype

I also went to hear two other equally impressive speakers Professor Ilan Pappe of Exeter University and John Pilger, who was impressive as always.  

Professor Ilan Pappe

All the talks, I understand, will be put on Youtube.

During lunch I and others spotted one David Collier, a Zionist snoop who makes a profession out of defaming activists and groups as 'anti-Semitic'.  He came up when he spotted me all friendly.  I asked him how he was enjoying the 'Jewish hate fest' that he and his compatriots had called Palestine Expo 2017.  He denied this and resumed his lunch, however we called for the security to evict him when he did.  His wife was most put out at this attack on freedom of speech, which is rich coming from those whose whole life is spent trying to suppress Palestinian freedom of speech.  Given the anti-Zionists are never allowed in Zionist functions and when they are spotted are usually assaulted Mr Collier should be grateful  that we didn't behave like his friends.

Miko Peled, son of a famous Israeli General addresses the conference

Zionist protest outside conference

Another Zionist, Jonathan Hoffman - friend of fascists and EDL  - was escorted out of the building too.  Outside there was a pathetically  small demonstration by a group of racists.

John Pilger, a life-long campaigning journalist

On another note entirely, I'm off on my holidays so this blog is likely to remain quiet for some time.

Tony Greenstein

Zionist attempts to ban conference - naturally it had to be anti-Semitic despite the large number of Jewish speakers

Racist solicitor Robert Festenstein Alleges Palestine Expo is an 'anti-Jewish hate fest'

Far-Right Zionist 'charity' Campaign Against Antisemitism Does its Best to Get Conference Banned

Racists demonstrate outside

Racist Zio is Desperate

Racist demonstration outside Palestine Expo 2017

Racists who found it difficult to accept a Palestine festival

The Racist 'Campaign Against Anti-Semitism' Fails in its Attempt to cancel Palestine Expo 17

Charity Commission Under Islamaphobe William Shawcross Turn a Blind Eye to the CAA’s Blatant Racism

Sign the Petition Calling for the Deregistration of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism

The Campaign against 'Anti-Semitism' do their best to have Europe's largest Palestinian event cancelled

This is why the CAA is allowed to do what it wants - because the Charity Commission is chaired by a racist and Islamaphobe

Despite having toyed with the idea of cancelling Palestine Expo 2017 even Sajid Javid, the Tories pro-Zionist Communities Secretary couldn’t find a reason to ban Palestine Expo.  Javid is . reported as saying at a Conservative Friends of Israel lunch in 2012,  that "if he had to leave Britain to live in the Middle East, then he would choose Israel as home. Only there, he said, would his children feel the 'warm embrace of freedom and liberty'.

I hate to disappoint Javid but if he was seeking refuge then Israel would be the last place that he would be welcomed.  Not to put too fine a point on it, not only is he not Jewish but he is Black.  He may be one of those disgusting Uncle Toms who think that money will make him an honorary White, and maybe in the British Tory Party these days it will, but in Israel he would be treated like all Black refugees.  He would be deported or refused admission or held in a concentration camp in Holot in Israel’s Negev desert.  See Israel's unwanted African migrants & Eritrean refugees in Israel sent to Uganda and Rwanda

This racist caricature of Muslims was posted on the CAA site and printed in a publication of theirs - this is their contribution to 'community relations' - it's a pity that the CAA weren't around a century ago, they could have produced some remarkable Jewish cartoons

The forthcoming Palestine Expo 2017 on July 8^th and 9^th at the South Bank Centre promises to be the biggest social, cultural and entertainment event on Palestine to ever take place in Europe.  It will include a session run by Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods and Free Speech on Israel on false allegations of anti-Semitism.  It has a number of Israeli and Jewish speakers such as Miko Peled and Prof. Ilan Pappe as well as people like John Pilger.

William Shawcross - the Islamaphobe who chairs the Charity Commission

None of this, of course, stopped the so-called Jewish Human Rights Watch aka far-right solicitor Robert Festenstein claiming it was an ‘anti-Jewish hate fest’.  It is not difficult to understand why the racist Campaign Against Anti-Semitism should have leant its voice to trying to stop a Palestinian event taking place. 

The Charity Commission appear to be wriggling out of their previous commitment at the instigation of their racist Chairman Shawcross

The CAA have though outdone themselves with the statement that

It is extremely troubling that this event is being held at an iconic, government-sponsored venue, right opposite the seat of British democracy. We are writing to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government expressing our concerns.

This is a classic example of how ‘terrorism’ is used as part of a campaign to limit and restrict freedom of speech.  The organisers Al Aqsa and associated individuals have allegedly supported ‘terrorist’ organisations in the past such as Hezbollah and Hamas.  There is a very simple answer to this.  Neither organisation is a terrorist group.  Both have, with varying degrees of success, fought the Israeli government.  That doesn’t make one a terrorist whatever Tory ministers and their lackeys say.

What the CAA are saying is that Palestinian=terrorist and therefore, in view of recent terrorist attacks, anything connected with the Palestinians should not be held ‘opposite the seat of British democracy’ i.e. Westminster.  It is difficult to think of a more racist statement than this.  Just imagine that someone had said that a Jewish event should not be held at Westminster for similar reasons.

The CAA's attack on me and Baroness Jenny Tonge

The real disgrace though is the lack of action of the Charity Commission, under their racist Chairman William Shawcross.  As the Huffington Post noted

Muslim charities have been disproportionately affected by investigations from the Commission since the appointment of Shawcross, with 38% of all disclosed investigations initiated between 1st January 2013 and 23rd April 2014 being on Muslim charities.’ 

Shawcross was a trustee and Director of the cold-war Islamaphobic Henry Jackson Society.  In 2012 Shawcross said “Europe and Islam is one of the greatest, most terrifying problems of our future”.

Shawcross is a paid up member of the British establishment. According to his Wikipedia entry From St Aubyn’s prep school in Rottingdean Brighton (since closed down) he went to Eton and Oxford  before joining the BBC World Service Advisory Council. In 2008 he became a Patron of the Wiener Library and in 2011 he joined the board of the Anglo-Israel Association and was appointed to the board of the Henry Jackson Society.

It is this which would appear to explain the Charity Commission’s reluctance to tackle even the most egregious example of racism by a Zionist group.  Of course if the CAA were an Islamic group and singled out Jews for the same attention then they would be deregistered tomorrow.

I have therefore written a further letter to the Charity Commission (see below).  It would seem that whatever the CAA does is going to be given the green light by the Charity Commission.  I will also be considering what further legal steps can be taken given what appears to be a refusal by the Charity Commission to take any action.

Tony Greenstein

Correspondence with Charity Commission

Charity Commission

Woodfield House,

Tangier,

Taunton TA1 4BL

Dear Ms Grenfell

Subject: Re: 20170322 - To Tony Greenstein – update - CAMPAIGN AGAINST ANTI-SEMITISM 1163790 CRM:0162547

To:    PCT - Taunton (Queue) <OperationsTaunton@charitycommission.gsi.gov.uk>

          RC Landing & Correspondence (Queue)

On 6^th, 20^th February 2017, 1^st March and subsequently I wrote to the Charity Commission concerning the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism.  The CAA was not operating to provide any public benefit but was acting as an overtly political and Zionist organisation whose speciality was the launching of partisan political attacks on those who are critical in any way of the State of Israel and Zionism.

It has, at the time of writing, made some 94 separate attacks on Jeremy Corbyn.  For an organisation supposedly devoted to anti-Semitism it displays a strange obsession with attacking and demonising anything to do with the Palestinians.  One example of the malevolent nature of its attacks was the article they posted on the death of Gerald Kaufman MP,  Sir Gerald Kaufman MP’s words have left a rotting stain on our institutions.    That you could allow, without passing comment, a charity to post such a disgusting and foul-mouthed article on the death of the Father of the House of Commons speaks volumes to your own lack of judgement.

No sooner than I had made a complaint against the CAA then on 26^th February the CAA devoted one of its posts to making a highly personal and defamatory attack on me, calling me a ‘notorious anti-Semite’ without any evidence whatsoever.  Tony Greenstein’s attempt to shut down Campaign Against Antisemitism showcases the similarities between far-left and far-right.  As someone who is Jewish this is particular offensive and anti-Semitic.

The CAA has recently taken the lead in attacking Palestine Expo, the biggest social, cultural and entertainment event on Palestine to ever take place in Europe and which is scheduled to take place on July 8^th and July 9^th at the South Bank Centre.  In an article CAA RAISES CONCERNS ABOUT PALESTINE EXPO HOSTED AT GOVERNMENT-OWNED CONVENTION CENTRE OPPOSITE PARLIAMENT it challenged the very right of Palestinians to organise politically, culturally or socially under the guise of ‘anti-Semitism’. It concludes its article by saying that ‘It is extremely troubling that this event is being held at an iconic, government-sponsored venue, right opposite the seat of British democracy. We are writing to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government expressing our concerns.’

This is an outrageously racist statement, even for the CAA.  It is suggesting that it is ‘troubling’ to hold a major Palestinian event near the Palace of Westminster, with the obvious implication that anything Palestinian is related to terrorism and that, in the light of recent events, it is poses some form of danger.  If such a suggestion were made about a Jewish event there would rightly be an uproar.

Yet the Charity Commission sits twiddling its thumbs, doing nothing, saying nothing and allowing the CAA to continue regardless.

Perhaps I should remind you that on 22^nd March, Alex Young from your Liverpool Office wrote to me stating, in respect of both of my complaints, not least that related to the failure to identify its trustees that ‘I am advised there is the prospect of  decisions on these matters within a week from today, after which we will communicate to you our view on the issues you have raised.’ 

On 8^th May, some 6 weeks later, I wrote to you asking why I had heard nothing despite your promises.  You wrote back the same day to inform me that you had taken over the examination of my complaint but that

‘It is not possible at this stage to give any timeframe for the conduct of this case. However, once I have completed my analysis I will let you know.

I appreciate that this will be frustrating for you, but I can confirm that I am looking in detail at the information you have provided.’

On 8^th May I raised further concerns regarding the involvement of the CAA in attacking certain parliamentary candidates in the middle of the General Election.  Instead of issuing advice to the CAA or indeed charities as a whole you said that it wasn’t a matter for you, which raises the question of whether or not you are fulfilling your statutory duty to regulate the charity sector.

You also seemed to be rowing back on the previous pledges you made when you stated that:

‘As we have informed you previously, we are considering all of the points you have made. It is not our policy, and we do not have the resources, to keep those who provide information to us, informed of progress on individual cases.’

This is a direct contradiction of your previous pledges, not only to complete the investigation within a week but to keep me informed.  I do not believe, for one minute, that you don’t have the resources to inform me as to the progress of my complaint.  There is no reason whatsoever for you not having completed your investigation and there is even less reason for you not having informed me of the outcome of any investigation.

The only inference that can be drawn is that you are prepared to turn a blind eye to the activities of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism despite its clear breaches of charity law.  I repeat what I have previously tried to make clear to you.  The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism is entitled to act as a political campaigning body it is not entitled to do this with all the financial advantages accruing from being a charity.

The petition we launched calling for the deregistration of the CAA has now reached nearly 3,000 people.  I look forward to you breaking your normal custom and practice and providing a full response into the complaints that I and others have made.

I also wish to make it clear that I am submitting a third complaint in respect of the CAA’s racist campaign against Palestine Expo 2017.

Please also advise me of the various avenues of appeal if you continue to refuse to respond to my complaints against the CAA.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Greenstein