CAA writes to Charity Commission after SOAS Students’ Union tells investigator antisemitic lecture was not antisemitic

Campaign Against Antisemitism has written to the Charity Commission after SOAS Students’ Union, which is a registered charity, told a Charity Commission investigator that “we do not believe that there was any antisemitism” at an antisemitic lecture, and that the lecture was “an appropriate meeting for the Palestine Society to run in the way it was run”. The comments were in a letter from the trustees of SOAS Students’ Union to the Charity Commission which has been seen by Campaign Against Antisemitism.

The lecture in November was given to SOAS Palestine Society by Thomas Suarez to promote his book, “State of Terror”. Throughout the lecture, antisemitic comments were made which SOAS Palestine Society failed to challenge.

Volunteers from Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Demonstration and Event Monitoring Unit (DEMU) found that during the lecture, it was claimed that Zionists are mobilising subversive power to “outlaw” criticism of their activities, the creation of Israel was a “racist”, “facist” endeavour, the actions of Zionists and Israel are comparable to those of Nazi Germany, and Zionists historically radicalised Jewish children and engineered increases in antisemitism, all of which is antisemitic according to the International Definition of Antisemitism.

The only intervention by SOAS Palestine Society was to threaten to “call security” when they became suspicious that a woman was recording the lecture.

Citing recent findings of the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee and the International Definition of Antisemitism, Campaign Against Antisemitism has written to the Charity Commission to point out the blatant antisemitism contained in the lecture, including the following quotations:

• “Zionists are so terrified of daylight on their cult, that there are moves afoot to outlaw any derogatory reference of the word”
• “The wildcard to this is the US participation in World War I. Even at the time, some people alleged that Palestine was payback for the use of Zionist pressure to get the United States to enter World War I. There is no proof of that. What is clear in Cabinet records is that there was something going on with World War I, with Zionists in the United States and the US entering. That is clear in the records, but to go so far as to say there was a deal made with that is not a premise.”
• “the idea of going somewhere where one could act out racial superiority was seductive”
• “Israel has one of the largest militaries, but its most powerful weapon, the weapon without which all of its others would be impotent is its narrative, its creation of its autobiography. This narrative does not merely put a pretty gloss on this reality, as all nations have their narratives, it actually turns the truth upside down. And this complete arsenal in this narrative is embodied in a three-word bullet. That bullet is a three-word phrase: ‘The Jewish state’. This is a unique phenomenon in the World. No other nation has such a device as this. Israel does not use Judaism as a national religion. In fact, I may be wrong, but as far as I am aware, Judaism is not a national faith of Israel. Rather, crammed into those three words are all of Jewry, Judaism, Jewish history, culture, persecution, and most cynical and exploitative of all, the Holocaust. This three-word phrase expropriates all of these into a human shield.”
• “The fascist nature of the Zionist enterprise was apparent to US intelligence, British intelligence and Jewish informants.”
• “The radicalisation of children was the methodology of the Jewish Agency.”
• “Zionism was a parallel movement to Nazism”
• “Israel can hold Jewish identity for ransom”
• “Zionist so-called immigration was from the beginning the expropriation of land, labour and resources”
• “[Zionists] conspired to try and increase antisemitism in order to force Jews to Palestine”

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Regulatory Enforcement Unit has also complained directly to SOAS, prompting an investigation.