Apparently Calling for Freedom from the ‘River to the Sea’ is also ‘Anti-Semitic’!!

Freedom of Speech on Palestine and Zionism is Under Attack from the Zionists and ‘Education’ Minister Nadhim Zahawi

Later today there will be a Zoom meeting with Shahd Abusalama, who was suspended on 20 January from teaching at Sheffield Hallam University after complaints from unnamed Zionist groups. After a massive campaign in her support including from her own UCU branch (97% of whom voted in her favour) she was reinstated.

Also speaking will be Professor David Miller who was dismissed by Bristol University after having been targeted by the same Zionists. In addition Pete Jones, Shahd’s PhD supervisor and also myself will be speaking.

In the past week there has been a renewed frenzy by the racist Jewish Chronicle on the subject of ‘anti-Semitism’ at British universities. Especially after the successful picket of the Cambridge Union where Israel’s far-Right Ambassador Tzipi Hotoveli was speaking.

There is a chant at Palestine demonstrations: ‘From the River to the Sea Palestine Shall Be Free’. Apparently this is not only anti-Semitic but it is criminal too! It must be the first time in history that calling for freedom from Apartheid is a criminal offence.

At least it is according to the idiot who is the Education Minister. Nadhim Zahawi, who proclaimed in The Telegraph that those who chant this slogan should be referred to the Police. (Ministers vow action after Hamas chant at Cambridge).

As the media get het up about Starmer being accused of having colluded in letting Jimmy Saville go free, we are marching ever onwards to a police state.

Someone should remind Zahawi and the other Zionist liars that B’Tselem, Israel’s largest human rights organisation, produced a report in January 2021 titled ‘A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid’. Presumably B’Tselem are ‘anti-Semitic’ too!

Hotoveli is the same person who invited the fascist Lehava Group into the Knesset Committee for the Advancement of Women to give advice on how to stop Jews and Arabs having relationships. Because just as in Nazi Germany, marriage between Jews and non-Jews is verboten (forbidden). That comparison by the way is also ‘anti-Semitic’ under the IHRA.Any form of relationship between Arabs and Jews in Israel is a social taboo.

On the web site of Lehava is the following piece of racist poison. Jewish women are not merely pure, unlike Arabs, they are daughters of kings! In a piece that could have been written by Julius Streicher, we have the following letter addressed to Jewish girls:

"To my dear Jewish sister, I wanted to ask of you, my sister, not to make my mistake, don't let some minority member bring you down and cause you to be impure. You're a king's daughter! The King of Kings! You have the privilege of being holy and pure, you're a Jewish woman! He wants you and the moment he gets his way you'll see what Hell is." (Letter on the Lehava website).

Hotoveli described the Nakba as "a very strong and very popular Arab lie." She clings to the Zionist fable that in 1948 the Palestinians left Israel of their own accord.  

Someone should tell her what her fellow right-winger, Bezalel Smotrich said recently to Israeli Palestine members of the Knesset that they "are here by mistake– because Ben-Gurion didn't finish the job and throw you out in 1948,"

The Jewish Chronicle has nothing to say about this racism because it’s target is non-Jews. In fact Smotrich, disgusting racist and ‘proud homophobe’ as he is, was at least being honest.

The Jewish Chronicle worked itself into a frenzy about the picket of Cambridge Union last week. Ministers vow action after Hamas chant at Cambridge their headline screamed.

Masked demonstrators at Cambridge University burned flares and screamed Hamas slogans during the Israeli ambassador’s visit on Tuesday – prompting outraged government ministers to demand action.

The masks were worn because of COVID, but to the JC anything to do with Palestinians is sinister. ‘From the river to the sea’ has become a Hamas slogan, despite being around long before Hamas was formed. This is nothing less than McCarthyist guilt-by-association.

Apparently it is genocidal to want the ‘Jewish’ state to be replaced by a democratic, secular state that doesn’t distinguish between Jew and non-Jew in terms of their civil and political rights.

The Jewish Chronicle’s editor Stephen Pollard is a founder member of the Islamaphobic Henry Jackson Society. Despite all the fulminating against anti-Semitism Pollard has no problem supporting genuine anti-Semites.  His one qualification is that they are also supporters of Zionism.

In 2009 Pollard went out of his way to defend a Polish fascist MEP Michal Kaminski who represent the town of Jedwabne in Poland. In July 1941 there was a pogrom in Jedwabne when Polish fascists herded up to 1500 Jews into a barn which they then set alight.

After a book by Jan Gross Neighbours revealed what had happened in Jedwabne there was a far-reaching debate in Poland. Most of the population of Jedwabne opposed a national apology but President Kwaśniewski disagreed and a memorial to those who had been murdered was erected in Jedwabne.

Kaminski was instrumental in urging residents to oppose the apology and to boycott the ceremonial event on 10 July 2001. The campaign against an apology had ‘strongly anti-Semitic overtones,’ according to Dr Rafal Pankowski, author of The Populist Radical Right in Poland. The Chief Rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich observed that

Mr Kaminski was a member of NOP, a group that is openly far-right and neo-Nazi. Anyone who would want to align himself with the Committee to Defend the Good Name of Jedwabne… needs to understand with what and by whom he is being represented.

Far from denouncing Kaminski and the support he received from Conservative members of the European Parliament (they were members of the same ECR Group, Pollard went out of his way to defend him!

Pollard wrote ‘Poland's Kaminski is not an antisemite: he's a friend to Jews’. When Jonathan Freedland, who is no slouch when it comes to making false accusations of anti-Semitism wrote Once no self-respecting politician would have gone near people such as Kaminski Pollard felt impelled to defend him:

“Jonathan Freedland attacked Michal Kaminski, the Polish MEP; Roberts Zile, the Latvian MEP; and me (Once no self-respecting politician would have gone near such people, 7 October). Freedland seems to have decided that Kaminski is an antisemite; but, far from this, Kaminski is – as his record in Brussels shows clearly – one of the greatest friends to the Jews in a town where antisemitism and a visceral loathing of Israel are rife.”

Pollard also wrote, in The Telegraph that Kaminski, "Far from being an anti-Semite is about as pro-Israeli an MEP as exists."

Kaminski, in an interview with Nasza Polska in March 2001, had argued that ‘Poles should not apologise for what they did until Jews apologised to them for their actions which included “murdering Poles”.’ The only problem was that over 90% of Polish Jews could not apologise, since they had been sent to Treblinka and Auschwitz.

There is a long history of anti-Semites combining hatred of Jews with love of Zionism. Adolf Eichmann in an interview after the war said that if he had been Jewish ‘I would have been a fanatical Zionist. I could not imagine anything else.’

Pollard has been particularly eager to defend genuine anti-Semites. One such was Roberts Zile, a Latvian MEP, who each March marched with the veterans of the Latvian Waffen SS.

Nonetheless Pollard was perturbed about ‘anti-Semitism’ at Sheffield Hallam University where we are told that

‘Jewish students branded the institution a “hostile environment” after it employed Palestinian activist Shahd Abusalama to teach a course on “post-colonial media culture”, despite her praise for terrorists and provocative statements about “Zionists”.

You would have to be brain dead not to understand that it is not anti-Semitism but anti-Zionism that people like Pollard object to. Genuine neo-Nazis like Tommy Robinson, who was given a hero’s welcome at last May’s pro-Israel demonstration (at which Hotoveli spoke) are kosher but Palestinian demonstrators are ‘anti-Semitic’.

Protesters at the Cambridge Union event holding signs saying 'Zionist scum not welcome here' (John Nguyen)

We are told that a

‘100-strong mob gathered outside Cambridge Student Union on Tuesday, chanting “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.

Yet despite Nadhim Zahawi’s strictures, ‘Cambridge, officers looked on.’  One can only wonder why! Perhaps they don’t realise that we live in a police state yet!

Police at the Cambridge protest (John Nguyen)

Universities Minister Michelle Donelan joined in telling the JC that ‘Universities should have a zero tolerance attitude to anti-Jewish racism on campus.’  Support for the Palestinians and opposition to Zionism has been transformed into the new anti-Semitism. It recalls what George Orwell described as political speech.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers.

I should also recall one particular incident that demonstrates just what a loathsome creature Pollard is. I wrote to him in 2010 about an American Jewish student, Emily Honochowicz, who went to demonstrate at the Qalandia checkpoint just outside Jerusalem. The Israeli military began attacking the demonstrators and Emily lost an eye. It was the same day as the Mavi Marmara. A tear gas canister was shot directly at her. I covered the story here. What could be more relevant than a Jewish student, whose only offence was to participate in a demonstration losing an eye (her family was later billed for her medical treatment!). But news like this is no news for a propaganda sheet like the Jewish Chronicle. Pollard wrote back

Dear Mr Greenstein,

Thank you for your email, which will make a fine addition to my 'delete' folder.

Stephen Pollard

From that day on I have had nothing but contempt for this vile lump of lard. 

Tony Greenstein

EXCLUSIVE: We name the lecturer responsible for the allegations that led to the suspension of Shahd Abusalama

TOTAL Victory for Shahd - Now let’s Scrap the IHRA Whose Only Purpose is to Chill Free Speech on Palestine

Register for the meeting here

https://tinyurl.com/9v9cv5uh

UPDATE: I want to make it clear that although the allegations against Shahd are claimed by the University to have been made externally to the University, there is no doubt that they originate from inside the university and Lesley Klaff in particular.

On Friday the Socialist Labour Network will be holding a zoom meeting in the wake of Shahd Abusalama’s suspension and reinstatement at Sheffield Hallam University. Speakers will include Shahd herself, Professor David Miller who was recently dismissed from Bristol University and Shahd’s supervisor, Peter Jones.

Sheffield Hallam's racist lecturer Lesley Klaff claims that the Tantura massacre when hundreds of men, women and children were killed in cold blood, never happened - a new Israeli film Tantura demonstrates that this is a lie with interviews with the veterans of the Alexandri Brigade who perpetrated the massacre. Klaff is no different to those who deny the Holocaust

After an outpouring of rage against the suspension of Palestinian academic Shahd on 20^th January, the University was forced to backtrack and reinstate her just one week later on an improved contract.

This is a victory, not just for Shahd but for all those who believe in freedom of speech on Palestine and academic freedom. It is a victory for those who have been targeted by false and malicious accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ for criticising Israeli Apartheid.

Shahd was subjected to a racist campaign by the so-called Campaign Against Antisemitism which specialises in targeting anti-Zionists

It is especially a victory for Palestinians in a week when a report from Amnesty International proved conclusively that Israel is an apartheid state. Accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ are the only defence that Israel’s supporters have today.

Shahd’s reinstatement demonstrates that the way to defeat the Zionists is to stand up to them and not appease them. Of course the Zionists are not happy. The Jewish Chronicle, a libel sheet which has lost a record number of libel claims, was its normal vituperative self. Its headline was ‘Student who praised terrorists as ‘heroes’ gets academic role at Sheffield Hallam University’.

Racist Lesley Klaff - responsible for the persecution of Shahd Abusalama

After the dismissal of Professor David Miller at Bristol University, the Zionists began to believe that they could, with the co-operation of tame and compliant university administrations, target any other academic who raised their head above the parapet. There have been a number of other incidents at universities such as Warwick, Leeds and Glasgow. The Jewish Chronicle crowed that ‘Miller’s sacking should be the beginning, not the end’.

Klaff's UK Lawyers for Israel feel an affinity with those who seek to demolish Palestinian homes to make way for Jewish settlers

The IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism has been used to target and harass pro-Palestinian lecturers. And yet its  defenders, such as Dave Rich of the Community Security Trust pour scorn on the idea that the IHRA has a ‘chilling effect’ on free speech on Palestine.

Far-right Sheffield Hallam lecturer Lesley Klaff

At Sheffield Hallam University the local University College Union branch, gave Shahd unequivocal backing. At a local UCU meeting last week 97% of those in attendance voted to support Shahd. Just 1 lecturer supported the suspension of Shahd, ‘human rights’ lecturer Lesley Klaff. On Klaff’s page on the university’s website she describes herself as ‘a member of UK Lawyers for Israel, an NGO which provides pro bono legal assistance to victims of antisemitism.’

In fact Lawyers for Israel is a far-right organisation dedicated to supporting the apartheid state and Jewish settlers who have spent over half a century stealing Palestinian land and terrorising the population. In December 2019 it held a public meeting with Naomi Linder Kahn, of the Israeli NGO Regavim.

Even the Zionist Labour Movement, which spearheaded the Campaign Against Corbyn has drawn the line at Regavim - not so Lesley Klaff

Regavim is a racist far-Right Israeli organisation which uses Israeli law, over which Palestinians have no say, to speed up the evictions of Palestinians and the demolition of their homes. It believes that far from Israel being in occupation of the West Bank it is the other way around. It describes Palestinians as ‘squatters’ who are occupying ‘Jewish land’.

Opposition to Zionism, and before the Holocaust 90% of Jews were anti-Zionist, is now 'antisemitic' according to Lesley Klaff

Regavim was founded in 2006 by Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right settler member of the Knesset who describes himself as a ‘proud homophobe’. In 2006 he organised the ‘Beast Parade’ in Jerusalem comparing gays to beasts (though he did say that unlike gays, the animals that took part were innocent). More recently he has said that Jerusalem’s  Gay Pride demonstration triggered the COVID pandemic in Israel!

Regavim is the organisation that UKLFI and Lesley Klaff, who like Keir Starmer is a ‘human rights lawyer’ was happy to invite to speak to them.

Amongst Smotrich’s contributions to co-existence in Israel/Palestine he advocated the separation of Arab and Jewish women giving birth in hospitals tweeting that

"It's only natural my wife would not want to lie next to someone who just gave birth to a baby that might murder her baby in another 20 years,"

The Zionist Jewish Chronicle doesn't take kindly to Shahd's reinstatement

Regavim also supports the openly fascist Lehava organisation in Israel which openly supports and organises physical attacks on Palestinians who have friendships with Jewish Israelis. Its leader Benzi Gopstein has called for the burning down of churches and mosques. Its campaign against miscegenation (sexual relations between Jews and Arabs) is reminiscent of the Nuremberg Laws which outlawed sexual relations between Jews and ‘Aryans’.

Rubbing shoulders with Lesley Klaff at UKLFI is none other than Daniel Berke, who is an advisor and solicitor for none other than that apostle for racial harmony, Tommy Robinson as well as Jonathan Hoffman, the linkman between far-Right Zionists and fascist groups like the EDL and Britain First,. No doubt Klaff’s work is cut out explaining the significance of human rights to these people!

Sharon Klaff - with Paul Besser of Britain First and Jonathan Hoffman

Another member of UKLFI is Robert Festenheim, a far-right Zionist who is another ‘advisor’ to Tommy Robinson.

Lesley Klaff has no problem working with Regavim, which was founded by an extreme racist and homophobe

Lesley Klaff is believed to be the sister-in-law of Sharon Klaff another far-right Zionist and an open supporter of both Pegida UK and Tommy Robinson. The Klaffs originate from South Africa where the political climate under Apartheid was more hospitable. Even there though they stood out as political oddities. “We dressed in black and khaki and the other Jewish youth movements called us Nazi Jews” boasted Annette Rosenberg, a contemporary of Klaff.

In the first world war Klaffs’ Grandfather was interned by the South African Government on suspicion of being a pro-German agent and a grave threat to national security.

Klaff’s father was the escort for Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism and Herut, which Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt described in a letter to the New York Times of 4^th December 1948 as

‘a political party closely akin in its organisation,  methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties’

Beitar the Revisionist Zionist Group Modelled on the Hitler Youth

Its a scandal that openly racist organisations should have been able to secure the suspension of a vulnerable Palestinian lecturer from Gaza by making baseless and false accusations of anti-Semitism.

The decision of Sheffield Hallam to suspend Shahd on the basis of accusations from racists external to the university is like suspending a Black or Muslim lecturer because a member of the BNP or National Front gas taken exception to them. If Sheffield Hallam is serious about its commitment to anti-racism then it needs to do two things:

i.                    Suspend Lesley Klaff until an inquiry unearths the full facts behind the malicious allegations made against Shahd. Although the university is claiming that the allegations against Shahd were made externally (which in itself raises questions) there is no doubt that their origin was internal to the university itself.

ii.                  To immediately suspend the use of the IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism pending  vote by all academic staff. As Geoffrey Robertson QC, Britain’s leading human rights barrister said, it is ‘not fit for  purpose.’

Most universities in Britain have only adopted the IHRA because they were threatened with a cut in their funding by Gavin Williamson, the former Education Secretary. Apparently the government was worried about anti-Semitism on campus.

It should be obvious, even to the most stupid university administrator, that a government whose Border and Nationalities Bill is making the lifestyle of Travellers and  Gypsies a criminal offence, which is threatening millions of Black and Muslim Britons with a potential loss of citizenship and which is seeking to push refugees in the Channel back away from the coast, to say nothing of the Windrush Scandal is not interested in opposing racism. 

The Tories concern over ‘anti-Semitism’ has nothing to do with the safety of British Jews. Their sole concern is their strategic and military relationship with the State of Israel. And if vulnerable Palestinians like Shahd pay the price for exercising their right to freedom speech then that is a price that is deemed worth paying.

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