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The police have no shame

Two-tier policing laid bare

Concerns of serious disorder recently prompted the Metropolitan Police to ban a demonstration from taking place in Tower Hamlets over this past weekend.

The event, initially advertised as a march and subsequently as a static protest, was organised by the UKIP political party as part of a series of events reportedly billed as a ‘mass deportations tour’.

The British Government’s former independent adviser on political violence and disruption was as astonished as we are by the contrast of this decision in comparison to the Met’s policy on Palestine marches for the past two years.

For two years, hate march after hate march has coursed through London. They have called for “Jihad”, which the police explained away, and chanted “Globalise the intifada”. They have dressed as terrorists and chanted ancient battle cries warning Jews: “Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jews! The army of Mohammed is returning”.

For two years, Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has gaslit Londoners, telling us that he lacked legal powers and that the marches were peaceful anyway. He has spent approaching £100m of our money ‘policing’ these marches by threatening to arrest people like CAA Chief Executive Gideon Falter for being “quite openly Jewish” and interrogating a man for wearing a “provocative” Star of David necklace.

The Met’s decision about the march in Tower Hamlets, whatever its specific merits or otherwise, was made in response to “significant community concerns.” Our community’s concerns have been so significant that people are avoiding town completely and even emigrating, but that has not swayed the Met’s policy even after two long years.

Enough is enough. This is two tier policing. Sir Mark Rowley must resign immediately or be sacked.

CAA Director of Investigations and Enforcement Stephen Silverman discussed the use of police powers hitherto unused in relation to the regular hate marches on GB News.

Doctor whose interim suspension was lifted is arrested

Dr Rahmeh Aladwan has been arrested.

We have submitted numerous complaints to the General Medical Council (GMC) regarding this doctor, who is a prolific poster of the most deranged material and claims about Jewish people, and is self-evidently unfit to serve as a regulated professional. Nevertheless, the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) inexplicably disagreed, allowing her to continue to practice as a trainee pending further investigation, and we threatened legal action.

But now even the Met Police — hardly the most proactive institution in the fight against antisemitism — believes that her conduct is so incendiary as to have potentially crossed the criminal threshold.

What an absolute embarrassment to our medical regulator, and what a disgrace that it cannot see what ordinary people and even the Met Police can. Clearly, the GMC and the MPTS are unfit for purpose.

A day after we threatened legal action, the doctor was re-referred to the tribunal, and a hearing was held on Friday, at which it was decided to hold a new, full hearing on the matter of the interim suspension.

We are continuing to monitor developments and doing everything that we can to ensure that all of the relevant authorities – from the police to the regulators – uphold their duty.

Gideon Falter, Chief Executive of CAA, spoke to Julia Harley-Brewer about antisemitism in the NHS

Threats to behead a Jewish academic

Threats to chop off heads.

Nazi accusations.

Genocidal chanting.

That is what Professor Michael Ben-Gad has recently faced at City St George’s, University of London.

His lectures have also reportedly been disrupted by activists claiming that he has blood on his hands, supposedly because he served, as part of the mandatory draft, in the IDF decades ago.

To his credit, Prof. Ben-Gad says that he will not be cowed by the activists, whom he reportedly and justly compared to Hitler’s Brownshirts.

But this sort of horrific environment has also become an everyday reality for too many Jews on too many campuses across this country.

Since the 7th October 2023 Hamas terrorist attack in Israel, a deluge of abuse and intimidation has overwhelmed Jewish students and staff on university campuses across the country.

The vicious campaign to target Professor Ben-Gad is the latest manifestation of this alarming and dangerous rise in antisemitic harassment within these environments. It is generally recognised that the normalisation over the last two years of the kind of hateful rhetoric being directed at him was a factor in the terrorist atrocity in Manchester at the beginning of this month, in which two Jews were murdered while attending synagogue on Yom Kippur.

The behaviour of the students involved was not only reprehensible, but the incident demonstrates the environment that has been allowed to develop at City, as well as on campuses across the country. Something is desperately wrong.

City St George’s must investigate these incidents immediately and report them to the police where necessary.

We are in touch with Prof. Ben-Gad and are writing to the University.

Join our team and help us fight the menace of campus antisemitism

We are recruiting a full-time, entry-level Education and Outreach Officer, to run our campus and schools programmes and more.

Help make a difference in the fight against antisemitism!

For more information, please visit antisemitism.org/jobs/education-and-outreach-officer.

CAA Student Ambassadors induction

Following the success of our Student Ambassador programme last year, this past week we hosted our newest cohort of Student Ambassadors from universities across the country.

Our ambassadors – a mix of Jewish and non-Jewish students – took part in a full-day induction designed to introduce them to their roles, explore examples of campus antisemitism and provide an in-depth understanding of the various elements of our work.

The day provided an opportunity for Ambassadors to connect with each other and our team while preparing to confidently advocate against antisemitism on their campuses.

They left the induction equipped to make a real difference to the welfare of their peers and in the fight against antisemitism.

We wish them every success and are confident that they will be a fantastic cohort of current and future leaders.

A shocking betrayal of the Jewish community in Brighton

Brighton’s Jewish community appeared to be censored and silenced at a recent full meeting of Brighton and Hove Council.

A Jewish deputation arguing against a proposed Israel boycott measure and condemning Hamas had its speaking time slashed in half, and references to the 7th October Hamas attack were removed. The deputation was labelled “genociders.”

Mayor Amanda Grimshaw intervened as Sue, one of the representatives, attempted to deliver her deputation. What followed was a series of speeches from Labour Leader Bella Sankey and others that strongly criticised Israel, with only Cllrs Lyons and Meadows speaking in defence of the Jewish community.

Members of the community have said that the censorship appeared intended to clear the way for the Council to pass a motion repeating false allegations of genocide in Gaza and calling for divestment from Israel — a move that departs from official Labour Party policy.

According to our representative polling of the Jewish community, 84% of British Jews agree that boycotts of Israeli artists, academics or businesses selling Israeli products constitute intimidation — making Brighton’s motion particularly alarming.

This is a profound betrayal of the local Jewish community. Brighton Council has chosen political posturing over the concerns of its residents. These performative gestures contribute to the toxic atmosphere in our country that enables antisemitism.

For shame.

Former Lib Dem Harrogate councillor reportedly arrested

Former Liberal Democrat Councillor Pat Marsh has reportedly been charged with racial hatred.

She was arrested in early 2024 and was rightly removed from the Lib Dem group on the Council, after we and others publicised posts from her social media.

She then sat as an independent for a short while before resigning from the Council.

We understand that a complaint was submitted to the Lib Dems against her, but the Party decided only to issue her with a formal warning, despite the grievous allegations.

We are now asking the Lib Dems to clarify if she is in fact still a member of the Party.

Can’t decide what to wear this Halloween?

While we haven’t quite branched out into costumes yet, we do have a fetching selection of t-shirts and hoodies that enable you to declare your opposition to antisemitism in style.

Visit antisemitism.org/shop to find out more!

The shamelessness of the police continues to astound us

To have spent two years denying that they have certain powers that we have urged them to apply against the Palestine marches, only to apply them now in relation to a demonstration impacting a different minority community, is an insult to the Jewish community and all Londoners who believe in a single tier of justice for everyone.

We were the first to call out policing failures within weeks of 7th October 2023. Some criticised us then for doing so, but everyone now sees what we already saw then: police chiefs who did not take the concerns of the Jewish community seriously. It is appalling that none of them have faced any repercussions or had the decency to resign.

What It Means to Be a Student Ambassador for Campaign Against Antisemitism

Since the atrocities of 7th October 2023, British universities have, regrettably, become focal points for some of the most troubling manifestations of antisemitism in recent memory. Jewish students across the country have faced intimidation, verbal and physical abuse, and the open glorification of terrorist organisations. University campuses — once bastions of tolerance, inquiry and the pursuit of truth — have too often witnessed rhetoric and conduct entirely at odds with those principles.

Yet amid these challenges, Jewish students and their allies have shown exceptional courage and resolve. Across the United Kingdom, young people have organised, educated and spoken out, often in the face of considerable hostility. They have stood tall in their Jewish identity, determined that it should never be a source of danger or shame. Their work represents the very best of student activism and community leadership.

The Role of a CAA Student Ambassador

The Campaign Against Antisemitism Student Ambassador Programme offers a unique opportunity for students to take a leading role in the fight against antisemitism on campus. Student Ambassadors act as representatives of the charity within their universities, working closely with our team to monitor antisemitism, support affected students, and promote awareness and understanding among the wider student body.

Ambassadors receive comprehensive training on the history and modern forms of antisemitism, ensuring that they are equipped to identify and respond to incidents effectively and with confidence. They build partnerships with fellow students and academic staff, organise educational events, and liaise with the campus support team at Campaign Against Antisemitism to ensure that antisemitic incidents are properly reported and addressed.

Each Ambassador becomes part of a national network of student leaders who share insights, develop strategies, and work collectively to fight the oldest hatred on campus.

Skills, Experience and Opportunities

Becoming a Student Ambassador is not only an act of community service; it is also a valuable professional experience. Participants gain skills in leadership, communication, event management, advocacy, and strategic planning — all of which are highly transferable to future careers in a wide range of fields.

The year began with intensive antisemitism training, featuring the latest data and analysis on trends in the United Kingdom. Ambassadors then put this knowledge into practice, collaborating on campus initiatives and engaging with university officials to ensure that institutions fulfil their legal and moral obligations to safeguard Jewish students.

In addition, participants have opportunities to spend time within Campaign Against Antisemitism’s London office, working alongside our expert staff, and to attend an exclusive summer roundtable event featuring distinguished speakers and policy specialists.

Standing Up and Making a Difference

At a time when Jewish students are experiencing levels of hostility unseen in living memory, the Student Ambassador Programme offers an opportunity to take a stand — not just against antisemitism, but in defence of the principles that universities are meant to embody.

By joining the programme, students become part of a national movement of committed young leaders determined to ensure that campuses across Britain remain places of learning, respect and inclusion.

Apply for next year

If you would like to apply to become a Student Ambassador for the next academic year, please visit antisemitism.org/become-a-student-ambassador.

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Investigation launched following allegations of former policeman’s conspiratorial posts about Jews and Israel 

An investigation has been launched following the allegation that Rizwan Mustafa, the founding Chair of the West Midlands branch of the National Association of Muslim Police (NAMP), published incendiary posts relating to Jews and Israel.

Mr Mustafa reportedly shared content that called for the destruction of Israel and asked: “Where is the Caliph of the Muslims? Don’t you care that the Jews are defiling the place of the prophet’s nocturnal journey with their filth? The Jews are the most hostile people towards the believers.” 

He also allegedly “shared conspiracy theories” about the origins of Al Qaeda and Islamic State.

A former policeman, Mr Mustafa was reportedly in charge of training new recruits.

The disturbing findings were released in the recent report on the Government’s Prevent strategy. The report was headed by William Shawcross, who was appointed as the Independent Reviewer of Prevent in January 2021.

Simon Foster, the West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner, has now announced the launch of an investigation into Mr Mustafa.

In a tweet, Mr Foster said: “I am deeply concerned about this matter and am treating it with the utmost seriousness.

“I have immediately requested that West Midlands Police conduct an investigation into this matter and report to me as a matter of urgency, so that I can then determine the best course of action, based on the outcome of that investigation.”

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CAA looks back on a year of achievements in the fight against antisemitism

While antisemitism remains at stubbornly and unacceptably high levels, as 2022 comes to a close, it is an opportunity to take stock of all that has been achieved in the fight against the world’s oldest hatred.

At Campaign Against Antisemitism, we are proud of the accomplishments that we have secured over the past year, thanks to your support. These include the following:

  • The Court of Appeal sent the anonymous antisemitic online troll Nicholas Nelson to eighteen months in prison after he was convicted following a pioneering legal strategy devised by Campaign Against Antisemitism and counsel to unmask and prosecute him. After he received an unduly lenient sentence, we successfully called on the Attorney General to refer him to the Court of Appeal, which agreed with us and sent him directly to prison.
  • Grenfell volunteer coordinator Tahra Ahmed, was jailed for eleven months after Campaign Against Antisemitism and CST sought her prosecution over her antisemitic claims that the fire was a Jewish ritual sacrifice on social media. We worked closely with police to secure her prosecution, which was years in the making.
  • The Hon. Piers Portman was refused leave to appeal and was jailed for four months and fined in connection with an antisemitic altercation with Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Chief Executive Officer, Gideon Falter. He was ordered to pay a fine of £10,000 and to pay compensation of £10,000, which Mr Falter has donated to Campaign Against Antisemitism.
  • The antisemite Alison Chabloz was sent to over five months in prison after being convicted once again under the Communications Act following action by Campaign Against Antisemitism.
  • Abdullah Qureshi was found guilty of an antisemitic hate crime after Campaign Against Antisemitism revealed that his plea deal with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had let him off aggravated hate charges. The CPS was forced to reinstate the charges following pressure from us, Shomrim and CST.
  • Neo-Nazi Ben John was sent to prison for two years after Campaign Against Antisemitism and others successfully called for a review of his unduly lenient sentence.
  • The co-founder of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Tony Greenstein, humiliatingly capitulated in his failed defamation case against Campaign Against Antisemitism for calling him a “notorious antisemite” as the Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal. Over the course of the proceedings, we bankrupted him and accordingly he could also no longer serve as a trustee of the Brighton Trust. Defamation cases are vital in establishing the legal basis for identifying antisemitism and calling it what it is.
  • Following appeals by Campaign Against Antisemitism, aided by our Honorary Patron Lord Austin, the French far-right fugitive and Holocaust-denier Vincent Reynouard was finally arrested in Scotland and faces an extradition hearing early next year. We are grateful to our partners in France for collaborating with us for many months to help bring this about.
  • Adidas ended its partnership with Kanye West after almost 200,000 people signed Campaign Against Antisemitism’s petition, which was backed by celebrities and influencers including David Schwimmer and Chelsea Handler.
  • Within hours of us contacting Google, it corrected an offensive definition of the term “Jew” that was presented to anyone searching for that word as the first result. Campaign Against Antisemitism maintains relationships with major technology companies and social media platforms so that we can seek swift resolution of any problems.
  • The Charity Commission launched an investigation into the National Union of Students (NUS) after Campaign Against Antisemitism and Robert Halfon (then the Chair of the Education Select Committee) wrote to the Commission with a dossier detailing the history of NUS’s appalling relations with Jewish students.
  • Relatedly, Shaima Dallali was removed as the President of NUS following pressure by numerous Jewish groups, including UJS and Campaign Against Antisemitism, and former NUS Presidents.
  • Campaign Against Antisemitism worked with the Daily Mail to reveal a scandal at the American School in London, over the course of which the headmistress resigned.
  • Ofcom rebuked the BBC over its coverage of the antisemitic Oxford Street incident last year, which followed outrage from Campaign Against Antisemitism and many others in the Jewish community. We have helped give voice to the community’s anger at the BBC, including with a rally one year ago and by projecting examples of antisemitic coverage onto the BBC headquarters.
  • Campaign Against Antisemitism continues to help victims in cases that do not generate headlines but make a big difference in the lives of ordinary Jews facing discrimination, including in the workplace, for example in the case of a young Jewish employee at a pub whose manager was removed following antisemitic abuse, and a Jewish civil servant who received an apology over a problem at work.
  • Campaign Against Antisemitism’s analysis challenged Sir Keir Starmer’s claim that the local election result in Barnet indicated that the Labour Party had overcome its antisemitism scandal and, along with others, we challenged the Conservatives in Bury over a pattern of concerning incidents.
  • We launched a first-of-its-kind study surveying in real-time the adoption of the International Definition of Antisemitism by local authorities across the UK. It is the only such resource, and complements our existing resource covering universities.
  • Together with the Church of England’s Diocese of Manchester, we launched our Love Thy Neighbour teachers’ guides, which are also featured on BBC Teach.
  • Our podcast, Podcast Against Antisemitism, recently celebrated one year on the airwaves. It is the world’s only podcast dedicated to antisemitism and is in the top five percent most shared podcasts globally on streaming giant Spotify, and is in the top ten percent most followed podcasts. Guests have included David Baddiel, Eddie Marsan, Robert Rinder, Simon Brodkin, Nicole Lampert, Elon Gold, Dr Dara Horn, Modi Rosenfeld, Eve Barlow, Natan Levy and numerous other celebrities, influencers, rabbis, academics, activists and authors.
  • We were excited to launch our first-ever internship programme for university students, which was a great success, building lasting relationships with rising young figures seeking to combat racism against Jews.

These are just a selection of what our volunteers, who work day in and day out, have achieved, with the support of our staff and lawyers, who are paid for by donors who give what they can to make this work possible.

To keep up to date with our work, please subscribe or follow @antisemitism on all major social media platforms.

From all of us at Campaign Against Antisemitism, we wish all of our supporters a happy and peaceful 2023!

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Senior local authority officer exposed as operating incendiary far-right anonymous social media channels

A senior local authority officer has been exposed as operating incendiary far-right anonymous social media channels.

Leon Mayer, who works as a systems development officer at Swindon Borough Council, is reported to have secretly run Twitter and YouTube accounts that published inflammatory rock songs with racist references to Jews.

Mr Mayer has also reportedly been photographed on hikes organised by the far-right group Patriotic Alternative.

According to watchdog Red Flare, Mr Mayer operates the @NatKumquat handle on Twitter and the Kumquat Nat account on YouTube, a platform that he has reportedly referred to as “Judentube”.

Both accounts have apparently shared antisemitic and far-right content, including songs called Swindon Is Dead, Dresden and Kalergi Express, a reference to the antisemitic “Kalergi Plan” conspiracy theory, which alleges that Jews are “taking over the world” by encouraging immigration, as well as marriage and sexual relationships between members of different races.

When YouTube took down the video of a song called Dissident Detected (Shut It Down!), Mr Mayer complained on his Twitter account: “(The song) gets taken down by Judentube for possible ‘Hate Speech’. They write themselves.” 

Another song, You Called?, proclaimed, “It hasn’t ended, you know that. Walk into the light, Victory will soon be hailed,” and was posted with a video showing a photograph of Hitler as a baby.

The Twitter account also reportedly featured defences of Hitler and disparaging references to Jews and other minorities.

It also commented “Pure Gold” in reference to an antisemitic YouTube post by “Mordecai Sheckelberg”, an account that reportedly mocks the Holocaust.

The JC uncovered these and further inflammatory social media posts.

Confronted by the JC outside his home in Swindon, Mr Mayer reportedly denied being Kumquat Nat, but conceded: “I’ve used an alias similar.” It is understood that both accounts were deleted within hours.

He denied being a member of Patriotic Alternative but said: “I know of them.” Asked by the JC if he had been on any hikes organised by Patriotic Alternative, Mr Mayer replied: “I went on one once, to see what it’s about.” When asked if he was a member of the far-right group, he said: “I’m not a member. I’d have thought you’d have to be paying money or something.” He was asked if he was sympathetic with their policies and replied: “I agree with some of it, yeah. I agree with some of lots of parties. I agree with not becoming a minority within the country.”

Asked by the JC where he stood on Jews, he reportedly replied: “Not really a problem. With the ones who are at the top of things, they’re a problem, like in banking and such things, which is common knowledge.” Pressed on whether he is anti-Jewish, he reportedly said: “No, I’ve said this before, only these oligarchs within certain systems, like the media, which you can’t deny, and other such things that they’re the majority within. The rich ones, but that’s what they do. You could say the same about the Catholics.” 

Swindon Borough Council, which has adopted the International Definition of Antisemitism, said that Mr Mayer was being suspended pending an internal investigation into the allegations.

Image credit: JC

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One year after incident, Jewish civil servant finally gets apology over HR failure

A civil servant who works in a Whitehall Department attended a talk last year delivered by the Head of Human Resources (HR) of their unit. During the talk, the speaker, who is themself from an ethnic minority, said that when they worked at a different Ministry, they were the only senior leader from an ethnic minority.

In the question and answer segment at the end of the presentation, the civil servant gently raised the point that the Permanent Secretary of that Ministry at the time was Jewish, but the Head of HR brushed away the civil servant’s comment, claiming that they had merely been talking about senior leadership in the HR department, which apparently was clearly not the case.

The civil servant, who has understandably requested anonymity, followed up the incident with an e-mail to the Head of HR who delivered the presentation and also wrote separately to the CEO of the Department. The civil servant, who is Jewish, was then told that they had acted in a “shocking” manner and that the query had “felt like an attack”. The civil servant later spoke again to the Head of HR who told them, in no uncertain terms, that they did not view Jews as an ethnic minority.

The civil servant felt that the incident caused them considerable distress and discomfort at their place of work, without recourse to the very department – human resources – that should be available in such circumstances. Moreover, they felt that their ethnic identity had been marginalised and belittled.

The civil servant occupied a relatively junior position in the civil service at the time and, notwithstanding the professional risks, spent some time trying to resolve this issue with senior management, to no avail. No apology was forthcoming and the senior management refused to acknowledge that any mistake had been made, even as certain leading figures in the unit were recognised across the larger organisation for their work on inclusion and diversity.

The civil servant was in contact with their union before turning to Campaign Against Antisemitism for additional support and guidance.

Having exhausted every avenue for resolving the issue informally, the civil servant proceeded to submit a formal complaint.

Almost a year after the original incident, the civil servant did finally receive an apology from the Chief Executive of the unit, but it only related to the distress that was caused and still did not address the original incident or the substance of the matter.

After a further delay of several months, the civil servant was told by the unit’s new Head of HR that antisemitism would be addressed better in future, including promotion of antisemitism training among senior leadership, and making efforts to ensure that Judaism is recognised as an ethnic minority.

A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism: “Whether it is overt racism towards Jewish people or more subtle aggressions that make Jews feel marginalised or belittled, no industry is immune to antisemitism.

“It is particularly alarming when these incidents arise in the context of HR or diversity and inclusion programming, as these resources are meant to protect all employees, especially those from minority backgrounds. Those tasked with providing these services should be more attuned than anyone to the sensitivities of inclusion and discrimination and to the support that vulnerable employees may require. Clearly those services failed in this case.

“This civil servant courageously pursued the matter to the end, and we are pleased to have provided them with support in doing so. It is regrettable that it took so long for lessons to appear to be learned by those in positions of authority, and time will tell if they have been. We hope that by publicising this incident, others with responsibility for the wellbeing of those in the civil service or any other industry will take heed.”

If you have been the victim of antisemitism and require assistance, please e-mail us in confidence at [email protected] or call +44 (0)330 822 0321.

Image credit: Can Pac Swire

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Suspect arrested in connection with swastika graffiti in Pikesville, Maryland, while antisemitic graffiti in Bethesda still under investigation

Charges have been issued in connection to antisemitic graffiti found on residential mailboxes last week in Pikesville, Maryland.

Benjamin Katz, 31, has been arrested by Baltimore County Police in connection with the graffiti, which reportedly resembled a large swastika with the word “Cox” spraypainted above, an apparent reference to Dan Cox, a politician who won a recent gubernatorial primary election.

Accordingly, police have determined the vandalism to be politically-motivated, but antisemitic graffiti found in Bethesda, also in Marlyand, is still under investigation.

The Montgomery County Police Department is looking into the “white power 1488” and swastikas found on the Bethesda Trolley Trail over the weekend, near Bradley Boulevard and Arlington Road.

Campaign Against Antisemitism reports on news and incidents relating to antisemitism throughout the United States.

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CAA delivers “highly informative” antisemitism training to Essex Police

Campaign Against Antisemitism has recently completed the delivery of a multi-part training course to Essex Police.

The training was provided to around 60 police officers and other staff over the course of three sessions.

The training follows past engagement with the force on antisemitism cases, and we have delivered similar courses to other forces in the past, including Devon and Cornwall Police.

The material in the course has been described by officers as “ very useful” and “highly informative”, drawing on the personal perspectives and experiences of the course leaders, as well as their expertise.

One police officer has previously said: “I would recommend this training to anyone who wants to know more about antisemitism and for anyone who thinks that there is no longer a problem with hatred against Jews.”

We are grateful to Essex Police officers for their positive engagement with the training and are confident that they will apply insights into their policing.

Campaign Against Antisemitism regularly provides antisemitism training to regulators, police forces, public bodies, university societies and other institutions, free of charge.

If you would like to arrange antisemitism training for your association, please e-mail [email protected].

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Jewish home has phone line cut twice, allegedly by neighbour who referred to “those bloody Jews”

A Jewish home in Stamford Hill has had its phone line cut twice, allegedly by a neighbour reported to have referred to “those bloody Jews”.

The victim was reportedly threatened by her neighbour on Firsby Road that her internet would be cut off. The neighbour is reported to have referred also to “bad Jews”.

A BT Openreach engineer came to fix the victim’s internet after the first time that it was cut, and the neighbour reportedly came out to cut it a second time while the engineer was still in attendance.

The victim is suffering from complications from COVID-19 and needs the internet to update the clinic on a regular basis.

The incident was reported by Stamford Hill Shomrim, the Jewish volunteer neighbourhood watch patrol.

If you have any more information, please contact the police on 101 or Stamford Hill Shomrim on 0300 999 0123, quoting reference number: CRIS 4611794/22.

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s analysis of Home Office statistics shows that an average of over three hate crimes are directed at Jews every single day in England and Wales, with Jews more than four times likelier to be targets of hate crimes than any other faith group.

image credit: Google

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Swastikas discovered and removed from trees in New York park

Swastika graffiti was discovered on trees in Forest City Community Park in Wantagh, Nassau County, on 14th April, the eve of Passover and Easter.

A pentagram Satanic symbol was also discovered at the New York park.

In response to the incident, the swastikas will be scrubbed off and the Parks and Public Safety departments will conduct more patrols and additional check-ups of the park and its facilities, according to authorities.

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project.

Image credit: Google

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Nicola Sturgeon reiterates her Government’s commitment to International Definition of Antisemitism while SNP candidate comes under fire for allegedly breaching it

Nicola Sturgeon has reiterated her Government’s commitment to the International Definition of Antisemitism, even as one of her Party’s candidates in upcoming local elections has been accused of breaching it.

Responding to a comment that her Government included two ministers from the Scottish Greens (the Scottish branch of the Green Party), which was described as having “out-Corbyned Corbyn”, the First Minister and SNP leader told the assembly of 250 Scottish Jews: “I am not able to speak for another political party. But I do speak for and am accountable for every minister in my Government. My Government is a signatory to the IHRA [International] Definition of Antisemitism and all ministers have to be clear that they sign up to that and accept that — and that includes the two Green ministers. There is no tolerance in my government for antisemitism or discrimination, prejudice, racism of any kind. I want to assure you of that very, very clearly.”

Last year, Campaign Against Antisemitism helped to expose the Scottish Greens’ controversial record in relation to antisemitism.

Ms Sturgeon also praised Jewish students, whom she had met recently, for their frankness in discussing the discrimination that they had faced on campus. “I want to make this point very forcibly,” she said, “So long as anyone feels discriminated against, we as a Government have more work to do.”

The First Minister also spoke about Holocaust education, saying: “As generations pass, it is vital that future generations understand what happened. However, understanding the Holocaust is not the same as understanding what it’s like for Jewish communities in countries across the world today.”

On the subject of antisemitism in politics, Ms Sturgeon conceded that the SNP had faced problems. Indeed, Campaign Against Antisemitism’s latest Antisemitism Barometer has shown that 39% of British Jews believe that the SNP is too tolerant of antisemitism.

As it happened, at around the same time, her Party was being urged to fire an SNP candidate in the upcoming local elections after it emerged that he had allegedly tweeted that it was “sickening that Israeli Jews bring up their kids to hate and kill,” using a photo of an American-Jewish family.

The picture in the seven-year-old post is of Bill Bernstein, a kippah-wearing former gun shop owner from Nashville, posing with his daughter Gertrude, both with guns.

Wullie Graham, who is standing in Pollok ward in south Glasgow, was accused by political rivals of having published an antisemitic post and his Party was called on to remove him as a candidate.

In a statement, the SNP said: “Mr Graham has apologised for a post in 2015 that he readily admits was stupid and indefensible. He has taken steps to reach out to the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities as he seeks to make amends and learn from this.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism advocates for zero tolerance of antisemitism in public life. To that end we monitor all political parties and strive to ensure that any cases of concern are properly addressed.

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Jewish woman wearing Ukrainian pin badge confronted with Nazi salute on the London Underground

It has been reported that a man performed a Nazi salute at a Jewish woman on the London Underground when he saw that she was wearing a Ukrainian pin-badge.

Charlotte Saloman, 37, was travelling between Paddington and Baker Street on 5th April when the incident took place. Ms Saloman was first alerted to the potential danger when she noticed a man whom she believes to have been in his early 30s boarding the train and who soon began staring at her and her badge.

Ms Salomon said: “He sat opposite me and stared at my pin. Then he stood up, did a halfway-up arm salute, and moved further down the carriage. At first, I was puzzled, then I realised what the gesture was. I made eye contact with another passenger. They looked confused as well.”

Ms Salomon, Deputy Chair of the Saffron Walden Conservatives Association, was on her way to the House of Lords to take part in an event about women fighting antisemitism.

After sharing her account of the incident on Twitter, Ms Salomon received messages of support, but others contained offensive sentiments, including one that read “Heil Hitler” followed by a swastika.

It has been reported that the police are now investigating this incident.

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s analysis of Home Office statistics shows that an average of over three hate crimes are directed at Jews every single day in England and Wales, with Jews more than four times likelier to be targets of hate crimes than any other faith group.

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Detroit synagogue targeted by bomb threat hoax on day after Jewish festival

A synagogue in Farmington Hills, Michigan, received a telephone call on 18th March from someone who claimed to have planted a pipe bomb at the synagogue.

The Temple Adat Shalom building was evacuated, and police and police dogs sent in to search for the device.No bomb was found, and the incident was described as a “cruel hoax designed to terrorise our communities,” by Rabbi Aaron Bergman in an e-mail to the congregation.

The hoax threat came the day after the conclusion of a Jewish festival that celebrates a biblical attempt to wipe out the Jewish people.

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project.

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85 percent of French Jews believe antisemitism is widespread in their country, according to new survey

A new survey of French Jews has found that 85 precent believe that antisemitism is widespread in their country.

The survey was published by IFOP, a French international polling and market research firm.

The survey also found that 64 percent of the overall French population believes that antisemitism is widespread.

According to the survey, 68 percent of French Jews have faced antisemitic harassment or abuse. Twenty percent of French Jews have reported being the victims of at least one antisemitic physical assault. It was noted that attacks were more likely if the victim was wearing a religious symbol.

Around 30 percent of people polled said that “Jews are richer than the average French person,” while 37 percent believed that Jews had “too much influence in the French economy and financial system.”

It is over 65-year-olds who are more likely to have antisemitic prejudices according to the survey.

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project.

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Authorities investigating graffiti at Massachusetts school

Authorities are investigating antisemitic and racist graffiti found at a school in Massachusetts.

The graffiti was found on bathroom walls at Natick High School on 8th March.

Anna Nolin, the Natick School District Superintendent, wrote in an email that “Natick Public Schools and the Natick Police Department do not stand for this type of behaviour. This behaviour is inappropriate, not aligned with our core values, and will not be tolerated. We will hold students or others involved fully accountable.”

This incident happened only a few weeks after “social justice training” was held for Natick School District personnel.

The discovery comes just a month after antisemitic, racist and anti-gay graffiti was discovered in a girls’ bathroom at Holten Richmond Middle School in nearby Danvers.

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project.

Image credit: Google

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Man who left antisemitic flyers at Sacramento synagogue and school jailed

Nicholas Wayne Sherman, 34, was sentenced on 1st March to 180 days of incarceration in Sacramento County Jail for leaving antisemitic leaflets at a synagogue and an elementary school in Carmichael, California, in October 2021.

He left “Aryan Nations” flyers on the doorsteps of homes and at the elementary school in Carmichael, many of which had swastikas drawn or printed on them.

Later that month, Mr Sherman tied papers to a menorah and a metal fence at the synagogue. These papers included antisemitic comments such as “Hitler was right” and photos of Adolf Hitler.

Mr Sherman was arrested in December 2021 and pleaded no contest to his charges. Eleven other misdemeanour charges were filed against him, although all were dismissed.

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project.

Image credit: Shalom Le Israel

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Health officials with Jewish-sounding names receive hate messages and threats over COVID measures

Health officials with Jewish-sounding names in Salem, Massachusetts have been targeted with antisemitic messages and threats over COVID measures.

The city’s Mayor, Kim Driscoll, announced that members of the Board of Health and Health Department whose names suggested that they were Jewish had been directly targeted with messages and threats online, by e-mail and via voicemails.

In a statement, Ms Driscoll said that such actions were “repugnant and worthy of condemnation” regardless of one’s perspective on “COVID mitigation measures.” She added: “We reject and condemn vile, racist, antisemitic, and regressive attacks.”

Describing the “actions and messages” as “atrocious and utterly unacceptable,” Ms Driscoll urged citizens to do their part in “denouncing hate.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project. 

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Jewish students allege that they suffer “severe and persistent harassment” at Brooklyn College as federal investigation is launched

A federal investigation has been launched following complaints by two Jewish students at Brooklyn College that they have been subjected to “severe and persistent harassment” on a Masters’ programme.

The ten-page complaint was filed on behalf of the students by the Louis D. Brandeis Centre for Human Rights Under Law. A senior figure at the Brandeis Centre  described the alleged harassment campaign against the unnamed students as “part of an effort to erase and misunderstand Jewish identity.”

The Office for Civil Rights of the US Department of Education has confirmed that it is investigating. Part of the City University of New York, Brooklyn College has 2,841 graduate students on its roll, of whom around 500 identify as Jewish. The case could cost the college its federal funding if the allegations are confirmed.

The complaint alleges that Jewish students on the Mental Health Counselling course had been “bullied and harassed in class discussions and on social media” and that Jewish students were targeted using the same “ethnic stereotypes, antisemitic tropes and divisive concepts that faculty members promote in their courses.”

The complaint cites examples such as a professor who claimed that Ashkenazi Jews in America had become “oppressors”, while another professor allegedly rebuked a Jewish student for ranking his/her Jewish identity before his/her white identity, suggesting that the student “did not understand oppression.”

After telling The New York Jewish Week that the harassment was “part of an effort to erase and misunderstand Jewish identity,” Denise Katz-Prober, the Director of Legal Initiatives at the Brandeis Centre said that this was “dangerous” because of the misunderstanding demonstrated by the recent comments made by with Whoopi Goldberg. She added: “It is an attempt to whitewash the Jewish historical experience, which results in the downplaying of antisemitism.”

Ms Katz-Prober said that colleges and universities had an obligation under the Civil Rights Act 1964 to prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, colour or national origin in any programme or activity that receives federal financial assistance. 

The complaint, specifically citing the actions of two unnamed professors and two unnamed administrators, alleges that since the beginning of the 2020-2021 academic year, professors “maligned Jews on the basis of race and ethnic identity” by advancing the narrative that “all Jews are white and privileged and therefore contribute to the systemic oppression of people of colour.”

When the Jewish students complained to administrators, they were allegedly told to “get your whiteness in check” and to “keep your head down.”

The complaint also asserts that Jewish students were bullied on a WhatsApp chat group and that after a female student expressed a desire to “strangle a Jewish student” and others showed support, a Jewish student who objected was accused of being racist. 

One of the students who filed the complaint told The New York Jewish Week it was “the hardest thing” that they had ever done and that they would not be doing it “if it wasn’t so blatant.”

The student said that this was “a very Jewish school” and that Jews should not “have to be scared; this shouldn’t happen.”

They added that class participation was “a very big part of your grade and the fact I have been told by a white teacher to keep my head down and to ‘get your whiteness in check’… really upset me.”

The student added that in a classroom discussion on how people of colour feel vulnerable in public, fellow students downplayed the accounts of Jews who expressed fear of being targeted.

They also said that two other Jewish students had dropped out of the programme – including one due to stress.

In a statement Brooklyn College said that it “unequivocally denounces antisemitism in any form” and does not tolerate it on its campus. The College said it could not comment on ongoing investigations, but was “committed to working cooperatively and fully with the US Department of Education.” The statement also noted its “We Stand Against Hate” initiative, which features lectures, workshops, concerts and other events “that reflect the school’s ongoing commitment to celebrate the voices that make up our diverse campus community” and also served as a “platform to denounce antisemitism.”

The Office of Civil Rights has investigated several complaints against universities alleging antisemitic harassment following which all have entered resolution agreements promising to take steps to combat antisemitic harassment and discrimination against Jewish students on campus.

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project. 

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Conspiracy theorist who admitted defacing seventeen bus stops in London with graffiti, including the words “Jews and gays are aliens”, denies the offence was racially or religiously aggravated

A conspiracy theorist who admitted defacing seventeen bus stops in London with graffiti, including the words “Jews and gays are aliens”, has denied that the offence was racially or religiously aggravated

Nicholas Lalchan, 47, from Edmonton, London, used a black marker pen to deface the bus stops, causing £100 of damage each time.

When he was charged, Mr Lalchan, who is Canadian, allegedly said: “New world order. The fourth Reich. We will see.”

Mr Lalchan was convicted of stirring up racial hatred by a jury at Aldersgate House Nightingale Court in central London in September 2021, having admitted possessing a marker pen with intent to cause criminal damage and being convicted of doing so with racial or religious motivation, which he had denied.

When police searched his home, they reportedly found leaflets, marker pens, maps of bus routes and a USB stick containing pictures that referenced Jewish people and conspiracy theories.

Judge Gerard Pounder told Mr Lalchan: “All it takes is for a small Jewish child to see this, and for them to get very upset. You were deliberately hostile and you aimed it at a specific group of people, whether that be gay people, a Jewish priest [sic] or Jewish people.”

Mr Lalchan’s lawyers are now appealing against his conviction for stirring up racial hatred so the court has adjourned sentencing. Explaining next steps, Judge Pounder said: “Your counsel will tell you what’s going on. It’s very complicated. I’m adjourning this until 18th March. That will just be to find out what’s happening in the Court of Appeal and fix a further date for sentence.”

As he was leaving the dock, Mr Lalchan said: “MI5, MI6 is looking to recruit me, they are trying to get me to work against the crown. Your Honour I don’t want to work for MI5, MI6, CIA.” When the judge told him that he would have an opportunity at a later date to make a statement, Mr Lalchan reportedly replied: “It might be too late then, Your Honour. Things are very fluid at the moment. Every single secret service is a traitor to its own population.”

Mr Lalchan is currently on bail and does not need to attend the next hearing. 

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s analysis of Home Office statistics shows that an average of over three hate crimes are directed at Jews every single day in England and Wales, with Jews more than four times likelier to be targets of hate crimes than any other faith group.

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‘Merchant of Venice’ cancelled in New York City school amid fears it is “inappropriate”

A New York City school cancelled its production of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice amid parental concerns about the antisemitic themes in the play.

According to a report in the New York Post, Jewish parents expressed concerns that the play may not be appropriate for the teenage drama students at Morton Middle School in Manhattan. 

The Shakespearean tragedy tells the story of the Jewish moneylender Shylock, depicted as the stereotype of “a greedy Jew”, who is insulted by his Christian enemies. A Smithsonian Magazine analysis has observed that there were more than 50 productions of the play in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1939, lending “credence to the charge of antisemitism,” according to the magazine.

Theatre for a New Audience (TFNA), the Manhattan-based organisation collaborating with the students on the play, told the New York Post that they had taken into consideration the “polarising elements of the play” when developing the project and had worked with input from the ADL to ensure that the “challenging themes” would be treated with the “proper critical analysis, sensitivity, and thoughtfulness.” 

Nevertheless, the school decided to abandon the production, saying its decision was not taken “lightly,” that they had “worked diligently” with TFNA and had “listened to the members of our community to resolve concerns.”

According to school sources, opinion was divided. One member of the school community said that you needed “knowledge and context” to understand how “bad and dangerous the antisemitism” in this play was. But other parents were “opposed” to scrapping the production, while yet others calling for a dialogue, with one parent noting that, while he had “reservations,” by cancelling the play, the school was missing “a teachable moment.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project. 

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Tennessee Bible class reportedly taught pupils how to “torture a Jew”

The parent of a Jewish student in a Tennessee school has expressed outrage after the teacher in a Bible class allegedly pushed Christian ideology and told students how to “torture a Jew”.

In a Facebook post, Juniper Russo wrote that although the class at East Hamilton Middle School, in Hamilton County, Chattanooga, was meant to teach the Bible from “an unbiased and non-sectarian viewpoint,” the class was, she claimed, used for “blatant Christian proselytising.”

Ms Russo wrote that she had been hesitant to enrol her daughter in the class, run by the Bible in the Schools programme, but had done so as her daughter had disabilities that made other classes inaccessible. 

According to Ms Russo, assignments given to students included questions about whether they read the Bible at home and which books of the Bible they read. She said that students were told about an atheist student who took the class and became a Christian believer and were shown a video which, according to Ms Russo, portrayed Christianity as “light, sunshine and colour” and “all other global religions as storms, darkness and shadows.”

While Ms Russo was already uncomfortable with the teaching, she decided to take her daughter out of the class after, she claimed, it “turned hostile” when the teacher allegedly “wrote an English transliteration of the Hebrew name of God on the whiteboard.” Telling the class that this name was “traditionally not spoken out loud” she allegedly added: “If you want to know how to torture a Jew, make them say this out loud.”

Ms Russo said that her daughter “felt extremely uncomfortable” hearing this comment and that she no longer felt “safe in the class.”

Ms Russo reported that when she tried to arrange a meeting with the teacher, the school administration and the director of the local Jewish Federation, she was told by the principal that her concerns were being taken seriously but that the teacher refused to meet her, claiming that it was against the policy of the Bible in the Schools programme.

Ms Russo also noted that the incident followed the recent ban by nearby McMinn County of Maus, a graphic novel about the Holocaust.

The Bible in the Schools programme has been operating in the area’s public schools since 1922. According to the programme’s website, it allows students to study the Bible from a “literary or historical perspective” and from a “viewpoint-neutral, court-approved curriculum.” It claims to be “inclusive to students from all walks of life.”

A spokesperson for Hamilton County Schools (HSC) said that it was investigating the “parent complaint” concerning the course. When completed, and “in accordance with school board policy,” HCS would “take appropriate steps.”

In a statement, the Jewish Federation of Greater Chattanooga said that it was aware of the issues concerning the Bible class and noted that both the school and HCS were “investigating the claims and taking them seriously.” The group said that it looked forward to “a healthy dialogue with the Bible in the Schools organisation.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project.

Image credit: Google

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GoFundMe called to Canadian parliament after accusations that cash was used to fund antisemitism seen at Ottawa protests

A Canadian parliamentary committee is asking representatives of the crowdfunding platform GoFundMe to testify about how the company ensures that money raised is not used to promote antisemitism, white supremacy and other forms of hate. The demand was issued after it emerged that GoFundMe was used to raise more than C$10 million to support anti-vaccination protests that featured antisemitic tropes and white supremacy and which brought the Canadian capital, Ottawa, to a standstill.

Urged by British Columbia New Democrat MP Alistair MacGregor, the Public Safety Committee (PSC) is asking representatives of the crowd-funding website to answer questions about how its funds were allegedly used to promote hate. GoFundMe announced that it was “reviewing” the anti-vaccination fundraising campaign to ensure that it complied with its terms of service and is understood to have frozen funds to protestors in the meantime.

Mr MacGregor said that he was concerned about “the anonymity of some donors” and what controls GoFundMe had to ensure that the money was not funding “extremist views like antisemitism, white supremacy and other forms of hate” that were “prominently” seen in the Ottawa protests.

The MP said that Canada must subject GoFundMe to “a closer examination,” as the “prime motivation” and “endgame” of its “anonymous donors” were not known. Their aims were unknown “and that’s a very real, big problem,” said Mr MacGregor.

In its statement, GoFundMe said that it had requested more information from the organiser regarding the use of funds. Tamara Lich, one of the protest organisers, said that the crowd-funding company had been given all the information that it sought and was confident that the suspension would be lifted. In the meantime, the controversial social media platform Gab, which is popular with the far-right, has provided links to cryptocurrency websites as a way to keep donations flowing during GoFundMe’s suspension of fundraising.

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project. 

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Concerns raised that Texas synagogue hostage-taker may have been influenced by antisemitic Urdu sermons that YouTube has failed to remove

Concerns have been raised that the Texas synagogue hostage-taker may have been influenced by antisemitic Urdu sermons that YouTube has failed to remove from its platform.

Malik Faisal Akram, 44, a Briton who took four hostages at the Beth Israel Synagogue in Colleyville before being shot dead by the FBI, was reportedly obsessed with two hardline Pakistani clerics popular on YouTube.

Israr Ahmed has 2.7 million subscribers on the social media network and was particularly popular with Akram, according to the JC. On his videos, he reportedly called Jews “the ultimate source of evil [and] the biggest agents of Satan”, adding that they “control the banking system of the world.” In another video, entitled “History of the Jews”, Dr Ahmed claimed that Jews had been acting against humanity for over 2,000 years. “The name of Jews became an expletive,” he said. “They became akin to pigs.”

Interestingly, one YouTube user reportedly asked why English subtitles for the sermons were not provided, prompting another to reply: “I’m happy that there are no subtitles. If these are available with subtitles, this’ll be removed from here.”

Meanwhile, the cleric Tariq Jamil has claimed in a video to his nearly six million subscribers that Jews “distorted” the holy books, among other inflammatory remarks. Akram reportedly organised a “rock star” welcome to Mr Jamil, who leads the hardline Islamic movement Tablighi Jamaat, when he visited Akram’s hometown of Blackburn in 2017. The local Tablighi mosque, Makki Masjid, had loudspeakers installed on the roof so that a crowd overflowing outside could hear his sermons.

According to Akram’s family, he joined Tablighi Jamaat and became a dedicated follower of is leader, Mr Jamil, in 2003. Within a year, he began adopting the harsh strictures of the sect, including growing a long beard and forcing his wife to wear a veil, against her wishes, according to reports. He also apparently began disappearing for months at a time in Pakistan and Britain. It is understood that Akram also raised funds for the group in Britain, a campaign of which Mr Jamil’s visit to Blackburn was part.

Akram was reportedly later banned from the Tablighi mosque after calling for jihad against Israel and the United States inside the mosque, as well as insulting the Gulf states who were warming ties with Israel. It is not believed that Akram had further engagement with Tablighi Jamaat after the ban.

A spokesperson for Google, which owns YouTube, said that the company was reviewing the videos and subscription channels highlighted by the JC. In 2019, YouTube updated its hate speech policy, leading to a significant increase in videos being removed from the platform. The guidelines state that antisemitism and hate speech are prohibited and that videos that breach the policy will be removed.

Previously, YouTube removed Urdu sermons by other figures after the JC reported them, but allowed the creators to continue to upload videos. The videos referenced the “Jewish lobby” and described Hitler as “an angel”. It is not known whether Akram watched those videos, but YouTube failed to remove the channels and continues to profit from them.

A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “Scenarios like this make you wonder what exactly it takes for social media companies like YouTube to forgo a fraction of their profits by removing antisemites from their platforms. The substance of these racist sermons was apparently not enough for YouTube. Perhaps now, this evidence that the sermons may have incited Malik Faisal Akram to take Jews hostage in a synagogue will move the company to act. Or does it take actual dead Jews to persuade social media networks not to take the blood money that comes from broadcasting videos such as these? Government regulation of social media cannot come fast enough for the next victims of a social media user incited by those they watch or read online.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism has long called for tougher regulations on social media sites and that social networks proactively search for and remove hate speech from their platforms.

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Turkish media tries to link Jews with Armenian genocide

Turkish pro-government media published an article that appears to try to link Jews with the Armenian genocide which took place in 1915, during WWI, under the Ottoman regime.

The article, alleging that “Jewish influence behind the scenes” had been involved in the “Armenian deportation,” was a long and rambling conspiracy theory, stretching from fourteenth-century Venice to 1970s London, referencing WWI and Nazi ideology. Its thesis supports the position of the Government of Turkey, which denies responsibility for the Armenian genocide.

The pro-Government media which supports the ruling AK Party has frequently published articles containing antisemitic content. This latest essay, headlined “Young Turks, Jews, Freemasons and the Armenian deportation,” was published by Daily Sabah. The outlet is known for its pro-Government line, undermining claims that the Turkish Government has instructed Turkish media to reduce the inclusion of antisemitic tropes in output as the country seeks reconciliation with Israel.

The article was tweeted by the newspaper with the claims of “Jewish influence” highlighted.

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project. 

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Neo-Nazis scream “The Jew is the Devil!” at rally in Florida

“The Jew is the devil!” “Jews rape children and drink their blood” and “Jews brought slaves here” were among some of the slogans chanted by the National Socialist Movement (NSM) at a rally on Saturday in Florida.

The NSM is an explicitly neo-Nazi group, which calls for an all-white “greater America”, which would remove citizenship from non-whites, Jews and the LGBT community.

Videos of their march were released on Twitter. They appeared to show a driver being assaulted, monkey noises being made at a black woman, and other racist and antisemitic slurs. Reports further suggested that the group was wearing clothes with Nazi insignia.

Some local leaders spoke out to condemn the antisemitic slurs and the protest.

No arrests were made at the time, as the Orange County Sheriff’s Office argued that people have a First Amendment (free speech) right to demonstrate. The sheriff did say that “hatred has no place in our society” and that “any reports of criminal activity will be thoroughly investigated.”

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said that “Antisemitism and hatred are not welcome in this community. Despite displays of hate in Central Florida this weekend, our collective commitment to building an inclusive, compassionate community for all is stronger than ever.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project.

Image credit: Stop Antisemitism

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Disappointment as UN acknowledges but fails to adopt International Definition of Antisemitism

A speech by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has disappointed mainstream Jewish groups for merely “acknowledging” the International Definition of Antisemitism but failing to adopt it.

However, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, has welcomed the Secretary-General’s commitment to combatting antisemitism.

Speaking at a UN event marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Mr Guterres said that “a shared understanding” of antisemitism could serve the work of the UN, as well as “all global efforts to uphold human rights.”

Mr Guterres then read aloud the Definition, but without mentioning all of the examples, which are integral to the Definition and its application. The Secretary-General also acknowledged “the efforts of countries that have agreed on the common definition of antisemitism.”

Mr Erdan had raised expectations over the speech when he told a news outlet that Mr Guterres would use his remarks to announce the UN’s adoption of the Definition along with its application at all UN bodies, hence there was some disappointment that the Secretary-General fell short of these expectations. The UN has thus not gone as far in signalling its readiness to combat antisemitism as numerous countries which have adopted the Definition.

Nevertheless, Mr Erdan interpreted the speech as effectively “adopting” the Definition and “applying it in the UN bodies,” adding that he had raised the issue in several meetings over the past year with Mr Guterres, who had now “effectively recognised” the Definition. In a statement, the Israeli Mission to the UN said that the speech meant that the Definition could be used to “fight antisemitism within various UN bodies.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project. 

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US Vice President criticised for “disgusting” Holocaust Memorial Day trip to Honduras for inauguration of President beset by antisemitism allegations

Vice President Kamala Harris has been criticised for a trip to Honduras on Holocaust Memorial Day to meet the country’s new President whose husband and running-mate have been beset by allegations of antisemitism.

On her arrival in Honduras, Vice President Harris tweeted a tribute to the six million Jews who perished in the Shoah, writing: “Today, we honour the six million Jews and other victims murdered by the Nazi regime during the Holocaust.” She continued: “We must teach our children the truth about the atrocities…so that together we give meaning to that timeless pledge, ‘never again’.”

Ms Harris was in Honduras to attend the inauguration of the new socialist President Xiomara Castro, in a bid to get her help to stem the crisis on America’s southern border. The leaders also held a meeting at which Ms Harris announced that the US would be sending more aid, including more Covid vaccine doses, to the Central American nation. The Biden administration sees cooperation and investment in the Northern Triangle countries – Honduras, Mexico and El Salvador – as the way to ease the crisis on its border. 

Ms Castro’s husband Manuel Zelaya, a former President, claimed after the country’s 2009 coup that “Israeli mercenaries” were torturing him “with high-frequency radiation,” while Ms Castro’s running mate, Salvador Nasralla, has reportedly said that Jews control the global money supply. Mr Nasralla also stated in 2020 that “the boss” of the country’s outgoing President Juan Orlando Hernández, was “the Government of Israel.”  

‘It’s totally disgusting and unacceptable that the US Vice President would attend this inauguration and give legitimacy to this vile behaviour, especially on the day we honour and remember the six million Jews and millions of others killed in the Holocaust,”  said Lee Zeldin, a Jewish Republican Congressman. 

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project. 

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Seattle Jewish Federation fury at “inadequate” response to alleged antisemitism by senior policeman

A Seattle Jewish organisation has described the official reaction to antisemitic acts allegedly perpetrated by a senior police officer as “completely inadequate” and “an affront” to the Jewish community.

The criticism from the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle (JFGS) follows the response by city officials in the Kent area of Seattle, Washington, to offences in the summer of 2021 when Assistant Police Chief Derek Kammerzell allegedly posted a Nazi military insignia on his office door and made jokes about the Holocaust.

Mr Kammerzell was suspended for two weeks and ordered to attend cultural-sensitivity training. His claim that he did not know the symbol was of Nazi origin was accepted. In a statement released at the end of the year, Kent officials said that, based on labour law and on advice from two law firms that had reviewed the case, they believed a two-week suspension was “an appropriate and defensible response.”

JFGS described the response as “inexcusable” and said that it demonstrated “a complete lack of understanding of the impact” on the local Jewish community.

The group described the two-week suspension and sensitivity-training as “completely inadequate, especially at a time when incidents of hate against the Jewish people are higher than they’ve been in almost 45 years.”

JFGS called on the City of Kent to “publicly recognise the harm and hurt” caused to the Jewish community, adding that the “absence of true accountability” and “the sheer lack of consequences” were “shocking.”

This was an affront to the entire Puget Sound Jewish community, the group said said, adding: “Synagogues, Jewish community centres, and Jewish organisations rely on lawenforcement to help protect them from violent, antisemitic attacks.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project. 

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Labour MPs Grahame Morris, Nadia Whittome, John McDonnell and Lucy Powell all under pressure in relation to antisemitism

Four Labour Party MPs – Grahame Morris, Nadia Whittome, John McDonnell and Lucy Powell – are now under pressure in relation to antisemitism.

The Mail on Sunday revealed that the Labour MP Grahame Morris is the director of the controversial “Palestine Deep Dive” company. Research by Labour Against Antisemitism uncovered Mr Morris’ association with the company, of which he is the founding director. The MP reportedly admitted being a director of the purportedly educational organisation and that he had failed to declare this directorship to Parliament.

The company’s website has previously published an article claiming that “Israel’s racism” has “let loose the pogroms so reminiscent of Czarist times and Kristallnacht in Germany, 1938.” According to the International Definition of Antisemitism, “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” is an example of antisemitism.

The website has also attacked BBC’s Panorama for contributing to a “smear campaign” against Labour, due to its investigation into antisemitism in the Party. The website reportedly apologised for this latter article by the controversial musician and activist, Roger Waters, last month. Mr Waters has made other outrageous claims on the website as well.

The website has interviewed the activist and comedian, Alexei Sayle, who has claimed that allegations of antisemitism “amongst supporters of Jeremy Corbyn are a complete fabrication.” Palestine Deep Dive has also reportedly platformed the controversial figure Tariq Ali, who has previously tried to link Israel to the racist killing of George Floyd – a trope for which Rebecca Long Bailey was fired from the Shadow Cabinet – among other inflammatory claims.

Grahame Morris is believed to be the only sitting MP in the entire House of Commons not to have endorsed the International Definition of Antisemitism. In 2012, he himself apparently tweeted: “World’s richest Jacob Rothschild, John Paulson & George Soros Are All Betting That Financial Disaster is Coming.”

Mr Morris reportedly said that, although he is a director of the company, he has “no involvement in the editorial decisions” of the website, and he issued an apology for failing to register his directorship with the House of Commons.

A spokesperson for the company reportedly said that the website “has not knowingly published material that may be considered antisemitic, nor has it been challenged as such. If this would ever be the case, it would be removed.”

Meanwhile, former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell MP and fellow Socialist Campaign Group member Nadia Whittome MP both reportedly shared a platform with expelled Labour member and outspoken filmmaker Ken Loach. Sir Keir Starmer pledged during his leadership campaign that any Labour member who shares a platform with a member expelled in relation to antisemitism would be disciplined, but he has consistently failed to fulfil this promise.

Reports have also emerged that Lucy Powell MP, the Shadow Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, has been campaigning with Cllr. Majid Dar, a Labour councillor in Manchester who was suspended following allegations of antisemitism. Cllr Dar’s sister, Yasmine Dar, is an ally of Jeremy Corbyn and served as the head of Labour’s disputes panel. She is infamous for claiming that the Party did not have a problem of institutional antisemitism even as her brother was suspended over antisemitism allegations.

Scandals relating to antisemitism continue to rock the Labour Party at other levels as well. For example, a Labour councillor in West Lancashire, Ron Cooper, has tweeted: “If Corbyn was Labour Leader again then hundreds of thousands of members would rejoin the Party. @Keir_Starmer Stands for nothing #Purge of socialists and following commands from Israel.” Cllr. Cooper was swiftly suspended from the Party pending an investigation, and currently sits as an independent councillor, the whip having been withdrawn.

There are also unverified reports that Maureen Madden, the Chair of the North Tyneside Constituency Labour Party, has been expelled from the Labour Party. She has reportedly shared Rothschild conspiracy theories in the past.

Furthermore, Jewish Voice for Labour, the antisemitism-denial group and sham Jewish representative organisation, has tweeted in response to verified reports of Chinese espionage in Parliament: “Chinese interference in Parliament is unacceptsble [sic] and the security services were correct to draw attention to it. When are they going to turn their attention to the widespread Israeli Parliamentary interference #LFI #CFI #LDFI.” Claims that the Jewish state or lobbyists on its behalf wield excessive power in foreign nations is a common trope.

Joe Glasman, Head of Political and Government Investigations at Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “Sir Keir Starmer’s failure to fulfil his pledge to discipline MPs and others who share platforms with expelled members continues to haunt him. He tells non-Jewish audiences that he has closed the door on antisemitism in his Party – while whispering to Jewish audiences that there is still more to do – but his own MPs and officeholders continue to push the door wide open. With the new disciplinary system yet to be tested, Labour cannot be said to have gotten to grip with its scandal of institutional racism against Jews.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism has lodged a complaint against Jeremy Corbyn, holding him responsible for conduct that is prejudicial or grossly detrimental to the Labour Party, as the Leader during the period of the EHRC’s shameful findings. Given the serious detriment that this conduct has caused, we are seeking Mr Corbyn’s immediate resuspension and, if the complaint is upheld, we will be requesting his expulsion. On the day of the publication of the EHRC’s report, we also submitted a major complaint against Mr Corbyn and other sitting MPs. These complaints are yet to be acknowledged by the Party, and they must be investigated by an independent disciplinary process that the EHRC has demanded and Sir Keir has promised but has yet to introduce.

The Labour Party was found by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to have engaged in unlawful discrimination and harassment of Jews. The report followed the EHRC’s investigation of the Labour Party in which Campaign Against Antisemitism was the complainant, submitting hundreds of pages of evidence and legal argument. Sir Keir Starmer called the publication of the report a “day of shame” for the Labour Party.

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019 showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has surpassed that of the far-right.

Campaign Against Antisemitism advocates for zero tolerance of antisemitism in public life. To that end we monitor all political parties and strive to ensure that any cases of concern are properly addressed.

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Outrage after Iranian official wanted in connection with deadly AMIA bombing is invited to inauguration of Nicaraguan President

Nicaragua is facing outrage after an Iranian official wanted in connection with the deadly AMIA bombing attended the swearing-in of controversial President Daniel Ortega for a fourth term following an election widely viewed as rigged.

Mohsen Rezaee, a Vice President of Iran and two-time former Presidential candidate, attended the ceremony this week despite being wanted by Interpol for his role in the bombing of the AMIA Jewish centre in Buenos Aires in 1994.

Mr Rezaee was the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps at the time of the AMIA bombing, which he is believed to have masterminded and which killed 86 people and injured hundreds. The United States has designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organisation.

Mr Rezaee has been wanted by Interpol since 2007.

The Organisation of American States’ antisemitism envoy, the Brazilian lawyer Fernando Lottenberg, called for Nicaragua to abide by its duties as a member of Interpol, saying: “I repudiate the presence of the Vice President of Iran at the inauguration of Daniel Ortega in Managua. Mohsen Rezaee is under a red alert from Interpol. Nicaragua, as a member of Interpol, should soon comply with it.”

Argentina has its own arrest warrant out for Mr Rezaee, and the country’s Foreign Ministry said that “his presence in Managua constitutes an affront to Argentine justice and to the victims of the brutal terrorist attack against the AMIA.” 

During his visit, Mr Rezaee also met with Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez.

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project.

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Belgian police investigate “gas Jews” soccer chants in Antwerp

Belgian police are investigating videos circulating on social media which appeared to show a group of soccer fans in Antwerp giving Nazi salutes and shouting antisemitic slogans and chants that included references to Hamas and to gassing and burning Jews.

According to the local newspaper which reported the incident, it took place at a restaurant near the soccer stadium and involved fans of Antwerp’s Beerschot team.

In an unrelated development, the Royal Belgian Soccer Association fined Brugge soccer team, Club Brugge, around £2,000 for antisemitic chants heard at three recent matches. Fans of the club were heard shouting “Whoever doesn’t jump is a Jew.”

Antisemitic soccer chants occur regularly where the fans of certain teams perceive the rival team as having strong Jewish support or links to the Jewish community, such as Amsterdam’s Ajax and Britain’s Tottenham Hotspur. There are times, however, that the soccer chants have also been heard outside the context of sports, including at a graduation party of high school students in the Netherlands.

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project. 

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Tumblr blocks “sensitive” search terms on its app to avoid being kicked out of App Store

The American social networking and microblogging platform, Tumblr has made changes to its app in order to block more than 400 search terms, including “antisemitism,” “racism” and “xenophobia”, in a move intended to reduce the risk of Apple banning it from the App Store.

Although some of the banned terms are designed to block access to pornography, Tumblr has stated that other terms relating to “potentially sensitive content” were banned so that the platform could “remain available within Apple’s App Store.”

In order to comply with Apple’s guideline, Tumblr said that it was “having to extend the definition of what sensitive content is as well as the way you access it.”

In 2018, the platform changed its community guidelines to explicitly ban hate speech.

In a blog post at the time, Tumblr stated that it was incumbent “on all of us to create a safe, constructive, and empowering environment.”

Tumblr said that to achieve this, its community guidelines needed “to reflect the reality of the internet and social media today,” as the internet was “being exploited by hate groups.”

Following the 2018 changes, users were able to report hate speech directly in the mobile app. Those guidelines were used to remove antisemitic, anti-Muslim, and anti-LGBT content.

The platform notes that under the new changes, users may see fewer results when searching for certain terms or phrases “that fall under the expanded definition of sensitive content,” and that in certain circumstances, a search “may not produce any results at all,” with users seeing a message stating that “content has been hidden.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project. 

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Visibly Jewish man punched in the face in Manchester

CCTV footage has shown a visibly Jewish man being punched in the face in Manchester.

Reports state that the suspect was drunk and in the midst of a heated argument with a woman, believed to be his partner, before he ran up to the Jewish man on the street and punched him in the side of the face.

It is understood that while the male suspect fled the scene, the woman was detained by the authorities.

The scene of the incident was attended by members of Salford Shomrim, the Jewish volunteer neighbourhood watch patrol, and Hatzola, a volunteer-run emergency medical service. 

The incident occurred at 22:59 on 26th December on Leicester Road in Manchester and was reported by Salford Shomrim. If you have any more information, please contact the police on 101 or Salford Shomrim on 0161 740 8000, quoting reference number: CAD 2747 26/12/21.

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s analysis of Home Office statistics shows that an average of over three hate crimes are directed at Jews every single day in England and Wales, with Jews more than four times likelier to be targets of hate crimes than any other faith group.

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Jury finds Charlottesville rioters who carried Ku Klux Klan torches and chanted antisemitic slogans liable for $26 million in damages

A jury in Virginia has found that prominent white supremacists and white-supremacist organisations are liable for more than $26 million (£19.5 million) in damages from the August 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, in which one civil rights activist was killed and dozens were injured.

During the rally, held to oppose the planned removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, white supremacists marched through the town carrying torches and chanting “Jews will not replace us.”

The case, seeking damages for the physical and emotional injuries caused at the rally, was brought about by the civil rights organisation “Integrity First for America”, alongside those injured in the violence as well as other town residents. The jury in the civil trial heard testimony for four weeks and took three days to deliberate.

Evidence entered in the trial known as Sines v. Kessler included social media posts, text messages and online chats between the rally organisers. According to the jury, the plaintiffs proved that the defendants – who included event organiser Jason Kessler and Richard Spencer, thought to have coined the term “alt-right” – violated a Virginia conspiracy law in advance of the event.

In her testimony, Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt said that there was “a great deal of overt antisemitism and adulation of the Third Reich.” Ms Lipstadt added that “very few things” surprised her, but she was “taken aback” by the evidence she saw.

According to reports, antisemitic slurs and hate speech were frequently heard from defendants during the trial, with defendant Michael Hill pledging during testimony that he was “a white supremacist, a racist, an antisemite, a homophobe, a xenophobe, an Islamophobe, and any other sort of ‘phobe’ that benefits my people, so help me God.’”

Commenting on the result in a statement, Integrity First for America said that the case had sent “a clear message” that “violent hate won’t go unanswered.” The statement added: “At a moment of rising extremism, major threats to our democracy, and far too little justice, the case has provided a model of accountability.”

During the 2017 violence, white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr drove his car into a crowd, killing civil rights activist Heather Heyer and injuring dozens. Mr Fields was convicted of murder in 2019 and sentenced to life in prison.

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project. 

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New York police look for suspect who grabbed kippah from Jewish man’s head and made antisemitic comment

A man in Manhattan had his kippah grabbed from his head by an unidentified male who also made an antisemitic comment, it was reported on Friday.

According to the NYPD Hate Crimes Unit, when asked to give back the kippah, the assailant allegedly threw it at the 34-year-old victim. Police said the attacker and the victim did not know each other. 

In a tweet that referred to a “disgusting” act, Mayor Bill De Blasio wrote: “Get the message: if you commit an act of antisemitism in our city you will face the consequences.” 

Alongside an image of the suspect issued by police, Mayor De Blasio added: “If you have any information on this disgusting act, contact the NYPD immediately.” 

A local website cited statistics from the NYPD noting that up until 31st October 2021, hate crimes against New York City’s Jewish residents had increased by 48 percent since 2020, with 164 attacks compared to 111. 

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project. 

Image credit: New York Police Department

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President of Colombia condemns police cadets who dressed up as Nazis in ceremony to honour Germany

The President of Colombia has condemned police cadets who dressed up as Nazis in a ceremony meant to honour Germany.

President Iván Duque said on Friday that “any apology for Nazism is unacceptable,” after images emerged last week showing the Simón Bolívar police academy in Tuluá displaying Nazi flags and other items and cadets were seen wearing swastika armbands. One cadet also appeared to have put on a Hitler moustache.

“I condemn any demonstration that uses or refers to symbols associated with those responsible for the Jewish Holocaust,” Mr Duque wrote on Twitter. He said that all those responsible would be held to account, with the head of the academy already dismissed.

The event was reportedly organised as part of an “international week” aimed at “strengthening the knowledge of our police students”.

The ambassadors of Israel and Germany urged Colombia to do more to educate people about the Holocaust.

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project.

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White supremacist sticker discovered on Jewish grave in Tasmania

A white supremacist sticker was affixed to a Jewish grave in Tasmania, Australia.

The sticker, with the words “White Force – Old School Aussie Hate”, was stuck over a Star of David on a grave at Launceston’s Carr Villa Cemetery.

The vandalism was reportedly discovered by a Jewish mother and daughter who visit the cemetery every week.

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project.

Image credit: Anti-Defamation Commission

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The Government has listened: Home Secretary to proscribe Hamas in full following campaign by CAA and allies

The Home Secretary is today announcing that the antisemitic genocidal terrorist group, Hamas, is to be proscribed in full by the British Government, subject to the consent of Parliament which is not in doubt.

For several months, Campaign Against Antisemitism has been meeting with the Home Secretary and other ministers, calling on the Government to proscribe Hamas, whose ideology and activities are Islamist, nationalist, antisemitic, misogynistic and homophobic. Many also consider the organisation’s militant teachings to be a corruption of Islam.

We also drew up a detailed dossier, which we provided to the Home Secretary and all MPs, making the case for proscription in order to close the loophole in British law that has allowed Hamas to operate in the UK and which was particularly visible during the recent record-breaking surge in antisemitism in Britain during the conflict between Hamas and Israel.

During the campaign, we have worked alongside numerous allies within and outside the Jewish community.

In a major speech today, the Home Secretary will say: “Hamas is fundamentally and rabidly antisemitic. Antisemitism is an enduring evil which I will never tolerate. Jewish people routinely feel unsafe – at school, in the streets, when they worship, in their homes, and online. This step will strengthen the case against anyone who waves a Hamas flag in the United Kingdom, an act that is bound to make Jewish people feel unsafe.”

She is also expected to say: “Hamas has significant terrorist capability, including access to extensive and sophisticated weaponry, as well as terrorist training facilities, and it has long been involved in significant terrorist violence. But the current listing of Hamas creates an artificial distinction between various parts of the organisation — it is right that the listing is updated to reflect this. This is an important step, especially for the Jewish community. If we tolerate extremism, it will erode the rock of security.”

Until now, the UK has only proscribed the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades — the so-called ‘military wing’ of the terrorist group, leaving the supposed ‘political wing’ free to operate and its supporters at liberty to proselytise. Britain previously relied on the European Union’s proscription of the entirety of Hamas as a de facto ban in the UK, but following the UK’s exit from the European Union, this reliance was no longer tenable.

There is no material distinction between the supposed ‘wings’ of Hamas, which share the same personnel and where political leaders launch military operations. However, because of this loophole, Hamas flags can be flown, its ideology can be promoted, funds can be raised, material can be disseminated, and its representatives can operate in the UK.

Over the years—and particularly in recent months—our Demonstrations and Events Monitoring Unit found evidence of support for Hamas on British streets, and this is undoubtedly tied to the recent surge in domestic antisemitism. Thanks to this proscription, it will now be illegal to display Hamas flags and symbols or finance or publicly support the terror group.

The proscription of the Islamist terrorist group Hizballah in its entirety in 2019 is a fine precedent for this ban of Hamas. Just as the proscription of Hizballah in full, following a long campaign by CAA and others, sent a powerful message to the Jewish community — and Islamists — that antisemitism and terrorism will not be tolerated in the UK, so does the proscription of Hamas, particularly at a time of a record-breaking surge in antisemitism in Britain.

The first ever poll on the subject, conducted by Campaign Against Antisemitism last year, showed that an overwhelming 91% of British Jews want the Government to proscribe Hamas in its entirety.

Gideon Falter, Chief Executive of Campaign Against Antisemitism, said: “We thank the Home Secretary for listening and taking this action to outlaw support for Hamas, which seeks the genocide of all Jews worldwide. Proscription of Hamas in full shows British Jews that the Government stands firm against those who seek to harm us, and it also brings the UK into line with our allies.

“During the recent surge in anti-Jewish racism on British streets we saw numerous examples of people wearing the Hamas emblem and even the Hamas-style headband traditionally worn by its suicide bombers. The Home Secretary’s announcement tells Islamists in this country and abroad in no uncertain terms that antisemitic terror and its supporters have no place in decent society and now they can be prosecuted if they peddle their hatred in Britain. Today is a good day in the fight against antisemitism.”

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Earlier this year, he daubed crosses in blood on Jewish houses, and this week he banged on doors in the middle of the night, petrifying children

Earlier this year, crosses were daubed in blood in Jewish houses on Portland Avenue in Stamford Hill in what was described as a “grotesque escalation”.

Now, the same person – apparently identified by DNA from the blood – woke families on the same street in the middle of the night by banging on their doors and windows, petrifying children

The suspect is known to the local community.

The latest incident took place overnight on 17th November and was reported by Stamford Hill Shomrim, the Jewish volunteer neighbourhood watch patrol.

If you have any more information, please contact the police on 101 or Stamford Hill Shomrim on 0300 999 0123, quoting reference number: CAD397 18/11/2021.

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s analysis of Home Office statistics shows that an average of over three hate crimes are directed at Jews every single day in England and Wales, with Jews more than four times likelier to be targets of hate crimes than any other faith group.

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Hope Not Hate rescinds award to artist after he appeared to downplay Labour antisemitism and was pictured with disgraced former MP Chris Williamson

The advocacy group Hope Not Hate has rescinded an award to an artist after he appeared to downplay antisemitism in the Labour Party and was pictured with the disgraced former MP Chris Williamson.

Singer Joe Solo was one of three nominees selected by a public vote to win a Hope Hero award for his anti-poverty project. The award was a joint project of Hope Not Hate and the trade union Community.

However, it since emerged that in September 2018 and February 2019 Mr Solo posted messages of solidarity with Mr Williamson on social media.

He also tweeted: “I don’t join in with the Corbyn/antisemitism row because I believe it is being used a political tool to enable much darker forces. So I believe Mr Corbyn is antisemitic? No, of course not. And nor do they…” The tweet ended with a link.

In a joint statement, Hope Not Hate and Community said: “Since the announcement of the award it has been brought to our attention that in 2018 and 2019 Joe Solo published several social media posts that we deem unacceptable.

“Hope Not Hate have long been clear that antisemitism in the Labour Party has been a major problem and vocal in our condemnation of Chris Williamson. One of the major mistakes made by the Labour Party was making excuses instead of acting when faced with antisemitism. We will not make that same mistake.

“As such we have decided to withdraw the award from Joe Solo and we have reached out to him to offer training on the issue of antisemitism and explain why we found the tweet unacceptable.”

The statement also praised Mr Solo’s work, and ended with an apology: “We also apologise unreservedly to our friends and comrades who have been hurt by this situation. We will continue to do more to be allies in the fight against antisemitism.”

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Anti-vaccination protesters in New York wear yellow stars and brandish swastika signs outside Jewish Assemblyman’s office 

Anti-vaccination protesters in New York were spotted wearing the yellow stars that were forced upon Jews during the Holocaust and brandishing swastika signs during a demonstration that was held outside a Jewish Assemblyman’s office on Sunday.

The demonstration was organised by Rob Astorino, a Republican candidate for governor, in order to protest the bill sponsored by Democrat Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, whose office in the Bronx the rally was held outside, which called for children to be immunised against COVID-19 in order to attend school. 

Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz condemned the invocation of the Holocaust as “repugnant and offensive” on Twitter, before adding: “People are perfectly free to express their opinion on vaccines or any issue, but to openly display Nazi symbols outside the office of a Jewish legislator is despicable.”

Assemblyman Dinowitz also stated that he was “disgusted and offended by the antisemitic imagery that was brought to my office by apparent supporters of Rob Astorino’s failing gubernatorial campaign…People are free to express their opinions on vaccine policy and on any issue, but I draw the line at swastikas.”

He went on to say that standing next to swastikas and yellow Stars of David outside of a Jewish legislator’s office “shows a lack of integrity at best and an embrace of right-wing extremism at worst.” Assemblyman Dinowitz also called on Mr Astorino to “condemn in the strongest terms” the Holocaust-related symbols that were present at his demonstration. “I refuse to be cowed by antisemites or anti-science extremists,” the assemblyman said. 

Mr Astorino took to Twitter to speak out against one of the signs bearing a swastika, claiming that he did not see the sign at the time and that, according to him, the woman holding the sign had a different one when he met her before the event. He added: “Regardless of who the woman was or why she was there, if I saw the sign I would have stopped and had it removed. Absolutely inappropriate.”

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio also denounced the symbols as “an insult to our Jewish community, especially our Holocaust survivors who have endured real pain” and stated that “This is what antisemitism looks like”, before adding: “We stand with @JeffreyDinowitz & our Jewish community.”

The inflammatory and misleading comparison has been used among other international anti-vaccination and anti-lockdown circles.

Earlier this year, Joseph Szwarc, a Holocaust survivor, spoke out against wearing the yellow star in protests, saying: “You can’t imagine how much that upset me. This comparison is hateful. We must all rise up against this ignominy.” With tears in his eyes, Mr Szwarc added: “I wore the star, I know what that is, I still have it in my flesh. It is everyone’s duty to not allow this outrageous, antisemitic, racist wave to pass over us.”

The comparison has been made across the world, including in the United Kingdom, Canada, Ukraine and elsewhere.

Anti-lockdown and anti-vaccination networks have become known as hotbeds of antisemitic conspiracy theories and tropes.

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project.

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Austin, Texas acts to curb hate after synagogue arson attack is latest in series of incidents

An arson attack on a synagogue in Austin, Texas has prompted a resolution by the City Council to condemn antisemitism and seek ways to combat hate. 

The attack on Austin’s Congregation Beth Israel on the night of 31st October was the latest in a series of incidents in the Texas city. In its response to the incidents, the Austin City Council passed a resolution condemning “all hateful speech and violent action that…promotes racism or discrimination, or harms the Jewish community.”

Speaking at the council session, Council Member Alison Alter said recent events were “simply further evidence of the challenges” the city faced. “The reality is that the hate is here, and we need to up our game, to lead our community, and to devote focus and attention so hate does not take root in our community.”

The resolution directs the Austin City Manager to work with local groups, including the ADL, “to review and then identify and implement improvements to the City’s response to hate.”

These improvements should include training for city staff to educate “participants in how hate manifests; how to effectively respond to incidents of hate; and how social media is used to propagate hate.”

Damage to the synagogue was so severe that its rabbi, Steve Folberg, and President, Lori Adelman, said in a message to congregants that it would take “weeks rather than days” to get their “sanctuary fit for occupancy” leading them to seek temporary accommodation for services.

A few days after the incident, some 500 people, including clergy and political leaders, gathered at the oldest synagogue in Texas – the B’nai Abraham – to condemn antisemitism. Rabbi Folberg and Ms Adelman said the rally and “expressions of solidarity” had been a source of strength for all  those “facing the practical and emotional demands of beginning to heal our community from this attack.”

In a media release, the Austin Fire Department issued stills from a security video of the arson suspect and his vehicle. The release said that the suspect had driven into the synagogue car park in a black SUV and approached the building carrying a five-gallon gasoline can. He then returned to his vehicle. The FBI is also now investigating the incident.

A series of antisemitic incidents in Austin have included the vandalising of a local high school with Nazi symbols, a banner hung from an overpass reading “Vax the Jews,” and the display of antisemitic posters on a local street.

Two of the incidents were allegedly committed by a local hate group calling itself the “Goyim Defence League”, a group whose membership reportedly contains several neo-Nazis and is understood to be led by Jon Minadeo II. The group is responsible for stunts such as visiting a Chabad centre to claim that “these Jewish terrorists” were behind 9/11, and hanging a banner on a Los Angeles overpass reading “Honk if you know the Jews want a race war.” Earlier this year, Mr Minadeo II created t-shirts carrying antisemitic slogans such as the Holocaust was “a hoax”.

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project. 

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West Ham confirms it has so far banned two supporters for life over antisemitic chanting on flight to match

West Ham has confirmed that it has so far banned two supporters for life over antisemitic chanting on a flight to a Europa League match.

Two men have also been arrested after a video surfaced last week of West Ham fans chanting “I’ve got a foreskin haven’t you, f***ing Jew” at a Hasidic fellow on a Ryanair flight to Belgium where their club was playing KRC Genk.

Essex Police have arrested two men so far in connection with the incident. It is not currently clear whether the two banned supporters are also the two suspects.

West Ham’s Manager, David Moyes, said on Friday: “I don’t see our football club being like that. We are a diverse football club. There’s no room for discrimination anywhere.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism has written to Ryanair asking what was done to protect the Jewish victim of the antisemitic chanting by the West Ham fans and how the airline will help the club identify and ban these supporters for life.

West Ham and the Premier League have adopted the International Definition of Antisemitism.

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Chelsea fan sent to prison for eight weeks over antisemitic tweets aimed at Tottenham supporters

A man who pleaded guilty to sending a series of antisemitic, hateful and racist tweets has been sentenced to eight weeks in prison at Westminster Magistrates’ Court today.

After an investigation by the Metropolitan Police, Nathan Blagg, 21, of Retford in Nottinghamshire, was charged in September with seven counts of sending by public communication network an offensive/indecent/obscene/menacing message/matter which violates the Malicious Communications Act. The charges refer to seven tweets sent between 29th September 2020 and 5th February 2021. 

Mr Blagg pleaded guilty to all charges. The court heard that Mr Blagg was initially reported by a West Brom fan before his posts were investigated by Chelsea Football Club’s security team and finally passed on to the police. The posts included images as well as tweets and retweets of offensive messages. 

Prosecutor David Roberts said that there was a “racially aggravated” element because of the “antisemitic nature” of many of the tweets. 

Maeve Thornton, defending, reportedly said that Mr Blagg had been suffering at the time from “low moods” due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Ms Thornton said: “He has got drawn into this in terms of a lack of awareness and understanding of the impact this was going to have. With hindsight, he now understands how wrong this is. He is indeed very remorseful and very apologetic and has taken steps to address his offending by removing himself from Twitter. There is not going to be a repeat of this behaviour moving forward.”

However, today Westminster Magistrates’ Court sentenced Mr Blagg to eight weeks in prison.

A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “We welcome this sentence, which sends a message to fans that there is no place for antisemitism in football. We commend Chelsea FC and the police for investigating and seeing the case through. Kicking racism out of football will only succeed when all interested parties cooperate, as they have done in this case.”

In April, Chelsea Football Club announced that it had banned an abusive online troll from its matches for ten years after he hounded a Jewish journalist who came forward and received support from Campaign Against Antisemitism.

Chelsea and the Premier League have adopted the International Definition of Antisemitism.

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UEFA punish German football club after fans perform Nazi salutes and shout antisemitic abuse during match with Israeli team

The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) have punished Union Berlin football club after some of its fans performed Nazi salutes and shouted antisemitic abuse towards opposing supporters during its match with Israeli team Maccabi Haifa.

A youth group promoting German and Israeli interests who attended the match on 30th September said that they were “threatened by Union fans, pelted with beer and insulted, among other things, as ‘s****y Jews’”. Images of fans performing Nazi salutes, which is illegal in Germany, also surfaced on Twitter. 

Members of the group also stated that several Union Berlin fans tried to stop the abuse, to whom they were grateful. 

Shortly after the news of the antisemitic acts were reported, club president Dirk Zinglers stated: “This behaviour is shameful and we won’t tolerate it. We apologise to those affected. Antisemitism is unfortunately still present in our society, which is why it also shows itself in the stadium. However, we will never tolerate discrimination in our ranks. It is important to remain vigilant and to work tirelessly against it.”

UEFA said that it had punished Union Berlin due to “the racist behavior of its supporters” during the match, ordering the club to shut down sections thirteen and fourteen “where the home supporters are seated” in its game against Dutch team Feyenoord on Thursday. In addition, Union Berlin must also use those sections to display a banner bearing the phrase “#NoToRacism” alongside the UEFA logo.

A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “Recent days have seen multiple high-profile antisemitic incidents in football, both domestic and international. UEFA is right to sanction the club and force it to publicise that the penalty is due to racism. But the club itself must also now act, by identifying the perpetrators and giving them life bans. Like those decent Union Berlin fans who tried to stop the abuse, the club itself, and German clubs more generally, should be particularly sensitive to antisemitism among any of their supporters and step in to stamp it out.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project.

Image credit: Farenet

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Alleged co-founder of neo-Nazi terrorist group National Action denies membership of proscribed group

The alleged co-founder of the neo-Nazi terrorist group, National Action, has denied being a member of the proscribed group.

Alex Davies, 27, pleaded not guilty to a single charge of membership of a proscribed organisation between 17th December 17 2016 and 27th September 2017.

Mr Davies, of Uplands in Swansea, appeared at the Old Bailey via video link, and the trial is anticipated in April next year.

National Action was proscribed by the British Government following repeated calls by Campaign Against Antisemitism and others. Mr Davies and Ben Raymond are alleged to have founded the group in 2013 as university students.

Campaign Against Antisemitism has been monitoring and acting against the threat from the far-right for years and continues to support the authorities following suit.

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Trial of two men accused of stabbing Holocaust survivor to death begins in France

The trial over the 2018 murder of a Holocaust survivor began yesterday in Paris’ Court of Assizes.

Mireille Knoll, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor, fled Paris in 1942 at nine years old with her mother, escaping to Portugal. They narrowly avoided the Vélodrome d’Hiver, or “Vél d’Hiv”, the largest roundup of French Jews during the Holocaust where over 13,000 men, women, and children were arrested with the majority being deported to Auschwitz. Less than 100 people returned. 

On 23rd March, 2018, Ms Knoll was killed after being stabbed eleven times in her Paris apartment. Her body was found partially burned after those responsible for her murder then attempted to set her apartment on fire. The murder was deemed an antisemitic incident with President Emanuel Macron stating that her killer “assassinated an innocent and vulnerable woman because she was Jewish.”

The two accused of her murder are 32-year-old Yacine Mihoub and 25-year-old Alex Carrimbacus. It has been reported that Ms Knoll lived in the same building as Mr Mihoub and his family and knew the defendant since he was a child. Mr Mihoub, who reportedly made unannounced visits regularly to Ms Knoll, was said to have arrived with Mr Carrimbacus at Ms Knoll’s apartment where the two accused began drinking her port wine. It was during this visit that Ms Knoll was stabbed eleven times. The pair, who reportedly met in prison, have contrasting accounts of what occurred, though neither deny that they were both present at the scene of the murder. 

Mr Carrimbacus told investigators that Mr Mihoub approached him about a “money scheme” and “talked about Jews’ money” and “their wealth”, prompting magistrates to treat the killing as an antisemitic hate crime. Mr Carrimbacus alleges that Mr Mihoub angrily accused Ms Knoll of providing information to the police which resulted in his last prison sentence before slitting her throat and yelling “Allahu Akhbar,” the Islamic cry for “God is great.” However, Mr Mihoub claims that it was Mr Carrimbacus who killed Ms Knoll before robbing the apartment. Both men claim that the other started the fire after the killing. Investigators told media outlets on Tuesday that the men had a propensity “to lie” and “to manipulate”, rendering neither account particularly credible. 

In November 2020, an appeal made by the accused to the Paris Court of Appeal to drop the charge of antisemitism was rejected after the court believed that Mr Carrimbacus’s claim that he overheard Mr Mihoub lecturing Ms Knoll about “the financial means of the Jews, their good situation,” with Ms Knoll answering that “not all Jews have a good situation,” to be “plausible”. Court documents described the incident as the culpable homicide of someone “they knew to be vulnerable owing to her physical condition, and which in addition was carried out because of her Jewish faith.”

The court also acknowledged Mr Mihoub’s “ambivalence vis-à-vis Islamist terrorism which notably advocates antisemitism.” Following the murder, a police investigation found that Mr Mihoub regularly visited websites featuring content that promoted Islamism and antisemitism, and was already known to authorities for praising Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, the brothers behind the 2015 Charlie Hebdo shooting.

Mr Mihoub’s mother, Zoulikha Khellaf, is also on trial after she was charged with cleaning the knife used to murder Ms Knoll. 

Mr Carrimbacus’ lawyer, Karim Laouafi, argued that the charge of antisemitism should only be brought against Mr Mihoub, stating that “these elements are not present in Alex Carrimbacus. If the crime is antisemitic, that cannot be blamed on him.”

Charles Consigny, Mr Mihoub’s defence, responded by asserting that Mr Carrimbacus’ accusations of antisemitism against Mr Mihoub were lies. “It only exists because Carrimbacus invented a motive, and the prosecutors weren’t brave enough to drop it in the face of public pressure,” Mr Consigny said yesterday.

The Knoll family’s lawyer, Gilles-William Goldnadel, said yesterday that both of the accused should face “severe punishment for this horrible crime.” Speaking to reports as he entered the court, Mr Goldnadel said “We will need a miracle for the truth to come out of their mouths,” adding that Ms Knoll’s murder was a clear case of “antisemitism motivated by financial gain.”

In an interview, Ms Knoll’s son Alain said “I haven’t cried since my mother died, and I hope that when the murderers have been convicted, I will finally be able to cry…I want to know who stabbed my mother’s body eleven times. You must really hate in order to be able to do that, and this hatred can only be antisemitism.”

His brother Daniel added: “These people are not part of the community of humankind. They are monsters, they must be considered as monsters. Can we talk to monsters? I think it’s going to be next to impossible to talk to them.”

The killing of Ms Knoll took place only one year after the murder of Sarah Halimi, also occuring in Paris. Ms Halimi was a 65-year-old Jewish woman who was murdered by her 27-year-old Muslim neighbour, Kobili Traoré, after he tortured her before pushing her out of a window to her death. The Jewish community in France is said to be carefully watching the trial of Ms Knoll’s murder after France’s Court of Cassation ruled earlier this year that Sarah Halimi’s killer could not be held to stand trial due to being high on cannabis whilst committing the murder. 

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project. 

Image credit: Facebook

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Gab’s Twitter account deactivated after CEO reportedly uses Nazi term and dismisses antisemitism accusations as “Biblical truth” 

Gab’s Twitter account has been deactivated after its CEO reportedly tweeted about “Judeo-Bolshevik” societies and dismissed accusations of antisemitism levelled against him as “Biblical truth”. 

Gab is a social-media platform that was founded in 2016 with a claim to “champion free speech,” and has become a haven for supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory and other far-right groups and individuals banned from mainstream platforms.

Gab’s founder, Andrew Torba, was accused of antisemitism yesterday after he reportedly posted a string of tweets containing inflammatory remarks about Jewish people, including one which said that Gab was building a “parallel Christian society” after being “fed up and done with the Judeo-Bolshevik one”. 

The term “Judeo-Bolshevism” is an antisemitic trope that was used in Nazi propaganda and states that communism is a Jewish plot. 

Responding to the backlash to his tweet, Mr Torba appeared to double-down and continued tweeting. “Sadly many Christians today are so afraid of being called a silly meaningless name by the world (bigot, antisemite, homophobe) that they refuse to even remotely share or discuss the Gospel in their daily lives, let alone live it,” one post read.

Another tweet said: “Can’t even post basic Christian orthodoxy held for 2,000 years on Twitter dot com without being called ‘antisemitic’ by both the left and right.”

“You reveal your anti-Christian hatred when you refer to Biblical truth as ‘antisemitism’,” another post said in response to an accusation of antisemitism.

Mr Torba reportedly also posted two graphics. One, which was reported to have originated from an antisemitic cartoonist, depicts the nail in the hand of Christ, with the nail being labelled “Judeo” and the hand being labelled “Christian”. Another showed a man slaying a serpent with many heads, with one of those heads being labelled “Judaism”.

Responding to a tweet in which a user stated that Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ was “one of the most antisemitic films in history”, portrayed Jews as “grotesque and eternally cursed with bloodlust for money”, and refused to consult any Jewish scholars, the Gab account wrote: “What a king”

There has been some speculation as to whether Mr Torba’s account was deleted or whether he deactivated it himself in order to avoid a suspension, which he has reportedly done before. When one user allegedly notified Twitter of the posts, he was reportedly told by the social media platform that they were not in violation of the Twitter rules. 

This is not the first time that Gab has tweeted incendiary remarks about Jewish people. In July, Gab’s Twitter account was suspended after tweeting that antisemitism is “anything Jews don’t like.”

While Gab proclaims to be “pro-free speech,” others have described the network as racist and alleges that it promotes several conspiracy theories. Earlier this year, Andrew Torba was accused of wooing far-right figures to his platform with promises of greater visibility.

Far-right figures have turned to sites such as Gab to avoid restrictions on hate-content on more mainstream platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Mr Torba has tried to distance Gab from the far-right groups that have made it their home. In 2018, on a podcast, he said: “Do we have alt-right users? Certainly. Alt-right users also exist on Facebook, on Twitter, on Reddit, and everywhere else on the Internet.” He went on to insist that Gab had “good people” who “believe in individual liberty…and free expression.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism has long called for tougher regulations on social media sites and that social networks proactively search for and remove hate speech from their platforms.

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Piers Corbyn says antisemitism allegations against him and his brother are a “pack of lies”  

A video has emerged of Piers Corbyn claiming that allegations of antisemitism against him and his brother Jeremy Corbyn, the antisemitic former Labour Party Leader, are a “pack of lies”.

Speaking outside of the Conservative Party Conference, Mr Corbyn was asked if anyone at the conference had raised concerns of antisemitism to him, to which the controversial lockdown-sceptic replied that “nobody has said anything about that at all”, before adding: “It’s all a pack of lies and people know that.”

When asked what he meant by the phrase “pack of lies”, Mr Corbyn said: “The idea that me and my brother are antisemitic…he’s not antisemitic and neither am I.”

In August, Mr Corbyn suggested that “troublemakers” in Jewish areas posted leaflets created and distributed by Mr Corbyn, which compared the COVID-19 vaccines to the Auschwitz death camp, through their own doors in a “plot” to portray him as antisemitic.

When asked “Why was it leafleted in Jewish areas?”, Mr Corbyn replied: “It wasn’t specifically leafleted in any particular areas. That is a lie made up by the media. Or, some troublemakers leafleted it through their own doors, I suspect, and then came forward.”

“To try and portray you as antisemitic?”, Mr Riach asked, to which Mr Corbyn responded “Yes, yes.” When Mr Riach asked whether it was a conspiracy or not, Mr Corbyn replied: “Well, certainly a plot.”

Recent footage showed Mr Corbyn comparing vaccinations to Nazi policy outside the Houses of Parliament. The video showed Mr Corbyn and another man standing in front of a sign which reads “No Nazi forced jab” and yelling “arrest Matt Hancock” through a megaphone. 

On 20th July, Mr Corbyn, alongside other anti-vaccination protesters, showed their support at a far-left demonstration that was held outside of Labour Party headquarters. Speaking about the COVID-19 vaccination and the lockdown, Mr Corbyn said: “You know what happened in Germany. The left there, they were begging Hitler to support them. They believed in Hitler. You know what happened. The rest is history…the Jews were labelled as a danger and were locked up.” Mr Corbyn also gave an interview at the demonstration in which he denied that he, or his brother Jeremy Corbyn, were antisemites.

Anti-lockdown and anti-vaccination networks have become known as hotbeds of antisemitic conspiracy theories and tropes.

Mr Corbyn has a history of controversy in relation to antisemitic conspiracy theories. He has previously retweeted @whiteknight0011, a notorious neo-Nazi who declared that “They will force Trump in to war What do you think happened to Hitler? Bilderberg CIA IMF Banker Gangsters They are the problem” along with four images. The @whiteknight0011 account has since been suspended. One image showed Lord Jacob Rothschild, the Jewish banker and philanthropist, against the background of a Nazi flag, claiming that he controls the world. A second showed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a puppeteer controlling ISIS through Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, orchestrating the war in Syria and Paris attacks as Lord Rothschild and the Queen look on approvingly. A third image showed the faces of supposed Jewish conspirators who run the world to society’s detriment, proclaiming: “Know your enemy”. The last image showed a family photo of the Royal Family, claiming that they are in cahoots with these Jewish conspirators in committing “the worst genocides, invasions and theft in all history.”

Mr Corbyn has also claimed that “Zionists” were conspiring against his brother: when Jewish then-MP Louise Ellman complained of antisemitic attacks against her, Piers accused her of using it as a cover for political attack, tweeting: “ABSURD! JC+ All #Corbyns are committed #AntiNazi. #Zionists can’t cope with anyone supporting rights for #Palestine”.

Holocaust survivor accuses Joe Rogan of promoting antisemitism over Instagram video comparing vaccines to the Holocaust

A Holocaust survivor has accused podcaster Joe Rogan of promoting antisemitism after he uploaded a video to his Instagram where comparisons were made between COVID-19 vaccines and the Holocaust.

The video in question featured an audio excerpt from one of Mr Rogan’s podcasts in which he reportedly professes the importance of freedom in response to the idea of having to show proof of a COVID-19 vaccination whilst various images are featured on screen, including footage from the Holocaust that shows Nazi officers, Adolf Hitler, white Star of David armbands and the Jewish ghettos in Europe.

Mr Rogan can be heard saying: “As soon as you give politicians power, any kind of power that didn’t exist previously, if they can figure out a way to force you into carrying something that lets you enter businesses or lets you do this or lets businesses open, historically, they are not gonna give that power up. They find new reasons to use it. We have to protect those freedoms at all cost, whether you agree with people’s choices or not, because it is the foundation that this country was founded on: freedom.”

“It is the literal structure that allows this country to be so f**king amazing…anything that comes along that can inhibit your freedom is, by definition, anti-American,” he adds.

The video is understood not to have been created by Mr Rogan but was uploaded to his Instagram account, and was posted with the caption: “FREEDOM. It’s the most important thing we have. It’s what makes this place special. It’s rare, and it’s fragile. Protect it at all costs.”

In response to this, 86-year-old Holocaust survivor Gideon Lev created two TikTok videos in which he criticised Mr Rogan for uploading and seemingly endorsing the video. In one of his videos, Mr Lev said: “I am an 86-year-old-survivor of the Holocaust and saw your video on American freedom and the COVID-19 vaccine. It included images of the Holocaust and of Adolf Hitler, the monster who murdered my father, 26 members of my family, and six million Jews and others in gas chambers, in ditches, in firing squads, and even in gas trucks.”

Mr Lev continues: “You are absolutely not promoting freedom, but promoting hate, antisemitism, and possibly even more violence and constant hate. You should apologise to us all, remove the video immediately. It is disgusting and thoughtless and careless and I am shocked by your lack of sensitivity. You want to speak about freedom? Come and speak to me.”

Anti-lockdown and anti-vaccination networks have become known as hotbeds of antisemitic conspiracy theories and tropes.

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project.

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Far-right organisation Britain First becomes a political party once again

The far-right organisation Britain First has registered as a political party, it was revealed this week.

The Electoral Commission approved the group’s registration despite its reputation as a far-right organisation whose leaders have been convicted of, and imprisoned for, hate crimes. Britain First was previously registered as a political party but was deregistered in 2017 after failing to renew its registration on time.

In an email to its supporters, Britain First wrote: “This is a stupendous victory for the Britain First movement. Although our street activities will continue, this day marks the birth of Britain First as a traditional political party that will take the fight to the establishment through the ballot box.”

An Electoral Commission spokesperson said: “The application to register Britain First as a political party has been approved. We assessed this application against the criteria set out in law, including consideration of public comments submitted to us. The party’s application met the legal criteria and the party has therefore been registered.”

In 2019, Facebook reportedly banned a number of far-right groups and individuals, including Britain First leaders Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen.

Campaign Against Antisemitism has been monitoring and acting against the threat from the far-right for years and continues to support the authorities following suit.

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JVL co-Chair expelled from Labour Party as antisemitism-denial group and sham Jewish representative organisation hosts yet another outrageous event at Labour conference

The co-Chair of Jewish Voice for Labour, an antisemitism-denial group and sham Jewish representative organisation, has been expelled from the Labour Party and thrown out of its annual conference, where JVL was hosting yet another outrageous event.

JVL claimed that Leah Levane was expelled “because she rightly said the Party has been cynically abusing antisemitism issues not to protect Jews but to make Labour a socialist free zone”.

In reality, Ms Levane was more likely expelled for her association with Labour Against the Witchhunt, an antisemitism-denial group that has been proscribed by the Labour Party. Ms Levane is a councillor at Hastings Borough Council, where she was reportedly the only councillor present at a vote to adopt the International Definition of Antisemitism to abstain. In 2017, Ms Levane reportedly commented on Facebook on an item titled “Austria’s neo-Nazis find friends in Israel”, writing that it was “not surprising”. She also claimed online: “Jews are often agents rather than instigators of exploitation.”

JVL hosted a fringe event over the weekend at Labour’s annual conference. In the past, its events have attracted controversy. This year’s event – titled “Labour in Crisis – Tackling Racism in the Party” – came after numerous JVL members have found themselves threatened with expulsion from the Party.

The event welcomed numerous former Labour members who have been expelled from the Party, including the antisemites Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein. The Party has claimed that it cannot prevent expelled members from attending fringe events, which, as one journalist rightly put it, “makes a mockery of claims in the Party’s own guide.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism recently bankrupted Mr Greenstein after his defamation lawsuit against us humiliatingly backfired.

Although the Party supposedly cannot prevent expelled members from attending fringe events, it does not mean that the Party cannot sanction those who shared a platform with such individuals, as per Sir Keir Starmer’s (poorly fulfilled) leadership election pledge. For example, the former Shadow Chancellor and current backbench MP John McDonnell attended the event.

Meanwhile, journalist Theo Usherwood was ejected from the event (before apparently being permitted re-entry), as was the Jewish activist David Collier.

Elsewhere, the pro-Corbyn MP and controversial former Shadow Minister, Dawn Butler, was also apparently seen wearing a JVL badge, while Andy McDonald, the Shadow Employment Rights Secretary, is reportedly due to host an event with the suspended Labour MP and antisemite Jeremy Corbyn in support of a Unite campaign.

Labour’s annual conference continues in Brighton until Wednesday.

The Labour Party was found by the EHRC to have engaged in unlawful discrimination and harassment of Jews. The report followed the EHRC’s investigation of the Labour Party in which Campaign Against Antisemitism was the complainant, submitting hundreds of pages of evidence and legal argument. Sir Keir Starmer called the publication of the report a “day of shame” for the Labour Party.

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019 showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has surpassed that of the far-right.

Campaign Against Antisemitism advocates for zero tolerance of antisemitism in public life. To that end we monitor all political parties and strive to ensure that any cases of concern are properly addressed.

UPDATE: JVL has reportedly apologised “unreservedly” after LBC’s political editor Theo Usherwood was allegedly assaulted. Mr Usherwood accused Mr Greenstein of assaulting him and that the crowd had applauded when he was forcibly ejected from the room, before later being permitted re-entry.

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Israeli tourist assaulted and hospitalised in Pisa, Italy after being told Jews “were killers”

Italian Police are investigating an incident in which an Israeli tourist visiting Pisa was assaulted, suffering head injuries.

On 31st August, Elad Forgash was shopping for souvenirs in the Tuscan city and was chatting to the sales assistant. Mr Forgash said that after telling the man that he was from Israel, the man allegedly said that he “hated Israel and the Jews because they were killers.”

Mr Forgash said that he remained calm, merely handing back the sculptures and saying he would “rather not buy from him.” Mr Forgash said the man then hit over the head with the sculptures.

“Luckily, there were tourists who filmed him,” said Mr Forgash. Police arrived and an ambulance took him to hospital. He reported suffering a fractured eye socket and a broken nose, which he said would need surgery in Israel.

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project. 

Rabbi criticises EU court ban on wearing religious clothing or symbols at work

A leading European rabbi has criticised a European Court of Justice ruling that allows employers to ban employees from wearing religious clothing or symbols whilst at work.

Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, President of the Conference of European Rabbis, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that last month’s ruling by the Luxembourg-based European court was “a step backwards” for religious freedoms.

The EU decision expands on a 2017 ruling by the same tribunal. That decision was made after two Muslim women in Germany sued their employers for banning them from wearing headscarves to work. A German court referred the case to the EU court.

Rabbi Goldschmidt said that the ruling had broader implications that extended to “Jewish men wearing a kippah.” He added that he was not aware of current work disputes of this kind involving Jews.

In its ruling, the court cited the need to preserve an atmosphere of “neutrality” in the workplace, adding that any workplace ban must correspond to a genuine “need” by employers.

Muslim groups have also protested against the ruling. IGMG, an group in Germany for people of Turkish descent, described the ruling as “unconstitutional.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project. 

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Jewish graves in Blackpool toppled, smashed, and filled with litter

It was reported yesterday that multiple Jewish graves have been toppled over in Layton, Blackpool.

Photographs posted on Twitter showed the graves lying on their sides and smashed. The graves are believed to belong in the Jewish section of Layton cemetery. The Twitter user wrote that one of the graves was “destroyed and filled with litter”.

It is not yet known whether this was an intentional act or not.

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s analysis of Home Office statistics shows that an average of over three hate crimes are directed at Jews every single day in England and Wales, with Jews almost four times more likely to be targets of hate crimes than any other faith group.

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CAA deeply concerned after Met Police confirm that second ‘Free Palestine’ convoy can go ahead this weekend despite horrendous antisemitism of last convoy

The Metropolitan Police Service has confirmed to Campaign Against Antisemitism that, notwithstanding our representations, another ‘Free Palestine’ convoy will be permitted to drive across the country and through the capital tomorrow.

Campaign Against Antisemitism took legal advice which we provided to the police and Home Office setting out the legal basis for prohibiting the returning convoy on the basis that it constitutes a “public procession” likely to cause “serious public disorder”, engaging section 13 of the Public Order Act 1986.

The fact that the Metropolitan Police Service has not chosen to avail itself of legislation specifically designed to prevent this kind of intimidation is deeply concerning, particularly after the previous ‘Free Palestine’ convoy drove through a Jewish neighbourhood shouting “F*** the Jews…rape their daughters” through megaphones, and a vehicle, believed to be from the convoy, chased a Jewish mother down a London street and rammed her car whilst she was driving her four-year-old child. Four men were arrested and bailed over the former incident and an alleged antisemitic incident committed in Manchester before the convoy arrived in London. 

Instead of banning the convoy under section 13 of the Public Order Act, police instead appear to have opted for imposing conditions on it under section 12, but as we noted in our representations, we can conceive of no conditions that will be both sufficient to protect the Jewish community and enforceable against a convoy potentially consisting of hundreds of vehicles.

The returning convoy is due to leave Bradford on Saturday morning and arrive outside Number 10 Downing Street at 13:00, joining a ‘Free Palestine’ protect that will be underway in Whitehall. The convoy’s passage through London will coincide with Jewish families leaving synagogue and walking home. Due to Jewish religious practices outlawing the use of mobile telephones during the Sabbath, they will have neither the means to call the police or take recordings in the event that they are targeted in antisemitic hate crimes.

Despite our request and legal representations, the Metropolitan Police Service has confirmed to Campaign Against Antisemitism that it will permit this convoy to proceed. In a letter, the police force insisted that it is “taking this incident very seriously” and understands “how alarming it is to feel threatened within your home community”. The letter promised that the force has “put in place a central command team to monitor any convoy and accompany it if it travels into London” and “will try to ensure any convoy takes a central route into London avoiding any residential areas”.

The letter also sought to assure the Jewish community that it will have high levels of policing, including outside synagogues. It is remarkable that the police can recognise that the threat to the Jewish community and its religious institutions is real enough to warrant enhanced policing, but at the same time permit a convoy from which it recognises that that threat may emanate.

The Metropolitan Police Service‘s insistence that it will be monitoring the convoy provides limited reassurance, given the events of the previous convoy and the numerous recent incidents of police officers standing by while alleged antisemitic hate crimes were being committed before their eyes.

Yesterday, the London Assembly unanimously passed a motion calling on the Mayor and the Metropolitan Police Service to commission and publish a strategy to tackle antisemitism in the capital.

Gideon Falter, Chief Executive of Campaign Against Antisemitism, said: “This week we have been at pains to explain to the authorities why we do not believe that imposing conditions on this convoy offers sufficient protection and that instead they must prohibit it. They have specific authority to ban any ‘public procession’ that poses a risk of ‘serious public disorder’ but they have chosen not to use their powers.

“The Jewish community is already traumatised by the recent convoy and will be even more severely impacted if cars are once again permitted to drive across the country terrorising Jews. Vehicles from the last convoy are suspected of involvement in antisemitic crimes, including incitement to rape Jewish girls, violence and the ramming of a car containing a Jewish woman driving her 4-year-old child. The convoy organisers have of course condemned this, but once in motion we have seen that they have no control over their members.

“The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service has permitted this convoy to proceed and all eyes are now upon her and her officers to prove that they can ensure that British Jews are able to go about their lives without incident this weekend.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s analysis of Home Office statistics shows that an average of over three hate crimes are directed at Jews every single day in England and Wales, with Jews almost four times more likely to be targets of hate crimes than any other faith group.

Swastikas in Windsor, Ontario condemned as hate crime

Police in Windsor, Ontario are investigating “hate-motivated crimes” after Canadian flags carrying a scarlet swastika in place of a maple leaf were found at prominent locations around the city.

Police condemned the criminal acts “that promote hatred”, while the Windsor Jewish Federation and Community Centre (WJFCC) denounced the swastika as an “egregious symbol” of an “evil regime.”

The intent behind the signs remains unclear, though the WJFCC is aware that the signs may be meant to compare COVID-19 measures to Nazism in criticism of Canadian Government policy.

In a statement, the WJFCC said that “perpetuating false equivalencies” was “dangerous”, as “comparisons minimise the intentional and industrialised mass murder of millions.” Its statement added: “These analogies have no place in civil discourse and should be condemned by all.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project.

Antisemitism expected to rise globally in 2021, according to new Israeli report

According to Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs’ annual antisemitism report, anti-Jewish racism is expected to increase significantly around the world as a direct result of conspiracy theories against Jews and the State of Israel connected to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The report maintained that the most prominent forum for the expression of antisemitism in 2020 shifted from the physical realm to a hostile online environment.

The previous year saw a sharp rise in the dissemination of antisemitism online, including an alleged Iranian campaign to compare the Jewish state to a viral pandemic by launching “#COVID48”, in a reference to the year in which the Jewish state was established. The recent report stated that there was also an increase in antisemitism in the United States caused by the pandemic, various conspiracy theories and the presidential election.

The 140-page document noted, however, that there was a reduction in the number of antisemitic posts on mainstream social media sites, as a result of new measures taken by social media companies to regulate potential hate speech. Data from the Ministry’s monitoring systems highlighted that there was a 50% decrease in antisemitic content on Twitter, for example, between 2018 and 2020. Antisemitic users have apparently migrated to alternative platforms with less regulation and stringent terms of use to spread antisemitic propaganda, hate and conspiracy theories.

The Diaspora Affairs Minister has stated, as a result of recent findings, that “if antisemitism is a global phenomenon, then the war against it must also be global”, and that an “uncompromising struggle” should therefore be adopted to defeat “this plague”.

Campaign Against Antisemitism has expanded our coverage of antisemitism worldwide. Please contact us if you would like to share feedback or volunteer to assist with this project.

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Steve Reed apologises for “puppet-master” tweet hours after Sir Keir Starmer said he would speak to him

Steve Reed MP has apologised for tweeting that a Jewish millionaire was a “puppet-master” hours after Sir Keir Starmer announced this morning that he would speak to his Shadow Communities Secretary about the matter.

On 4th July, Mr Reed tweeted “Is millionaire former porn-baron Desmond the puppet-master for the entire Tory cabinet? @Robert Jenrick @PritiPatel”.

The tweet was a reference to a planning controversy relating to Richard Desmond, the Jewish businessman, and the Communities Secretary, Robert Jenrick. However, the notion of Jews as all-powerful puppet-masters is a classic antisemitic trope, and Mr Reed came under fire and deleted the tweet. The tweet was also retweeted (and also deleted) by another Labour MP, Mike Amesbury.

Now, after Sir Keir Starmer announced that he would review the matter and speak to Mr Reed about the tweet, Mr Reed has tweeted: “I want to apologise unreservedly for the language in the tweet I posted on Saturday. It was inappropriate and as soon as I realised my error I deleted it.”

Previously, Andrew Percy MP, The Conservative co-Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Antisemitism, reportedly said: “Alluding to Jews as puppet-masters is an age old antisemitic trope and for a Shadow Cabinet member to use this trope is totally unacceptable. If Keir Starmer was serious about tackling antisemitism he would sack Steve Reed on the spot. Otherwise the British people will rightly conclude the action taken against Rebecca Long-Bailey last week was done out of political convenience rather than principle.”

A source close to Mr Reed had previously said: “Steve did not know Richard Desmond was Jewish. He deleted the tweet and did not mean to cause any offence.”

Ms Long-Bailey was recently dismissed by Sir Keir after sharing an article in The Independent that contained an antisemitic trope.

On 28th May 2019, the Equality and Human Rights Commission launched a full statutory investigation into antisemitism in the Labour Party following a formal referral and detailed legal representations from Campaign Against Antisemitism, which is the complainant.

In the first release of its Antisemitism in Political Parties research, Campaign Against Antisemitism showed that Labour Party candidates for Parliament in the 2019 general election accounted for 82 percent of all incidents of antisemitic discourse by parliamentary candidates.

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019 showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has surpassed that of the far-right.

Campaign Against Antisemitism advocates for zero tolerance of antisemitism in public life. To that end we monitor all political parties and strive to ensure that any cases of concern are properly addressed.

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Waterstones to remove all books by antisemitic hate preacher David Icke

Waterstones has announced that it will remove from sale all books by the conspiracy theorist and antisemitic hate preacher David Icke.

The bookseller reportedly made the announcement after one of Mr Icke’s books, titled ‘Everything You Wanted to Know But Have Never Been Told’, was found at a branch in Southport in a section marked “alternative histories and conspiracies”.

A spokesperson for Waterstones told the Jewish News newspaper: “Most of the selection is done at a local, shop-floor level. We will look into this immediately to ensure any stock is removed from sale.”

Mr Icke uses social media, his books and his stage performances to incite hatred. His preaching is so absurd that since the 1990s he has been dismissed as a crank, but because he is dismissed, there has been no major opposition to him and he has built up a following of thousands upon thousands of disciples whom he has persuaded to adamantly believe that the world is in the grip of a conspiracy run by the “Rothschild Zionists”. His repertoire includes conspiracy myths and tropes classified as antisemitic according to the International Definition of Antisemitism. Campaign Against Antisemitism has successfully persuaded some venues to pull out of hosting his events.

Recently, Ofcom sanctioned the television channel London Live for airing an interview with Mr Icke on COVID-19 and Facebook and YouTube resolved to remove Mr Icke from their platforms, albeit because of his conspiracies regarding the pandemic rather than because he is a Jew-hater.

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Antisemite Gilad Atzmon condemns Google for deleting Youtube channel of convicted French antisemite Dieudonné M’bala M’bala

The antisemite Gilad Atzmon has condemned Google for deleting the Youtube channel of the convicted French antisemite Dieudonné M’bala M’bala.

Mr M’bala M’bala, generally known simply as Dieudonné, is a French comedian and political activist who has been convicted for hate speech and advocating terrorism, among other offences, in France and Belgium.

His Youtube channel was apparently reduced to a black screen reportedly as part of a crackdown on hate speech by Google, which owns Youtube.

Mr Aztmon, linking to the story, wrote: “This morning we learn that Black Voices do not matter at all,,, @MbalaDieudo’s YouTube channel is deleted by Google… We know who is behind it yet, the only question that bothers me is where is #BLM?”

Mr Atzmon is an antisemite who has reportedly blamed the Grenfell Tower tragedy on “Jerusalemites” as well as reportedly telling university students that “the Jews were expelled from Germany for misbehaving.” He is not shy about his antisemitism, telling a Jewish Twitter user in 2014: “I am not a Jew any more. I indeed despise the Jew in me (whatever is left). I absolutely detest the Jew in you.”

At one stage, Mr Atzmon was forced to make a humiliating apology to Campaign Against Antisemitism following defamation proceedings, and Campaign Against Antisemitism has successfully pressured venues not to feature Mr Atzmon due to his record of antisemitism.

Most recently, Mr Atzmon has disgracefully tweeted that “The #Left should decide whether it is ‘pro #Jewish’ or ‘pro #Black’ cos the two contradict each other…” Nevertheless, The Guardian newspaper thought it fitting to wish him a happy birthday.

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Nigel Farage condemned over repeated use of conspiratorial language popular on the far-right

Nigel Farage has been condemned over his repeated use of conspiratorial language popular in far-right circles.

Mr Farage, the leader of the Brexit Party, has recently made reference to “unelected globalists shaping the public’s lives based on secret recommendations from the big banks” and, commenting on the Black Lives Matter movement, has said that it is funded by “globalists”. Mr Farage has made use of these phrases repeatedly in the past.

He has also made continual reference to the Jewish financier, philanthropist and political activist George Soros, Goldman Sachs and “cultural Marxism”.

While these tropes are not necessarily antisemitic in isolation, Mr Farage’s repeated use of these tropes, which are very popular in far-right circles, has led to wide condemnation.

Mr Farage has previously courted controversy with comments about a “Jewish lobby” in the United States, and participated in a series of interviews on the far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ radio show.

Andrew Percy MP, The Conservative co-Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism, reportedly said: “These conspiracy theories have real world and dangerous consequences and are without question antisemitic. So now he is being put on notice. Farage needs to cut it out before he causes further harm by providing further fuel to racist antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories.”

Catherine McKinnell, Mr Percy’s Labour co-Chair, said: “Talk of shadow cabals, Soros conspiracies and other nonsense has repeatedly been proven to find its roots in anti-Jewish racism. His choice of language, which echoes some of that circulating amongst the far-right online, is worrying and getting worse.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism advocates for zero tolerance of antisemitism in public life. To that end we monitor all political parties and strive to ensure that any cases of concern are properly addressed.

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All eyes on Sir Keir Starmer after Steve Reed tweets and deletes reference to Jewish millionaire as “puppet-master” amid calls for his resignation by leading Tory backbencher

Steve Reed MP tweeted a reference to a Jewish billionaire as a “puppet-master” before deleting the tweet, and now all eyes are on Sir Keir Starmer in anticipation of his response.

Mr Reed, the Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, tweeted on 4th July: “Is millionaire former porn-baron Desmond the puppet-master for the entire Tory cabinet? @Robert Jenrick @PritiPatel”.

The tweet was a reference to a planning controversy relating to Richard Desmond, the Jewish businessman, and the Communities Secretary, Robert Jenrick.

Andrew Percy MP, The Conservative co-Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Antisemitism, reportedly said: “Alluding to Jews as puppet-masters is an age old antisemitic trope and for a Shadow Cabinet member to use this trope is totally unacceptable. If Keir Starmer was serious about tackling antisemitism he would sack Steve Reed on the spot. Otherwise the British people will rightly conclude the action taken against Rebecca Long-Bailey last week was done out of political convenience rather than principle.”

Ms Long-Bailey was recently dismissed by Sir Keir after sharing an article in The Independent that contained an antisemitic trope.

It is understood that a source close to Mr Reed said: “Steve did not know Richard Desmond was Jewish. He deleted the tweet and did not mean to cause any offence.”

However, the tweet was retweeted (and also deleted) by another Labour MP, Mike Amesbury.

Sir Keir, appearing on LBC this morning, said that he “hasn’t seen” the tweet “but will take a look at it”. All eyes will be on Sir Keir to see what action, if any, he chooses to take.

On 28th May 2019, the Equality and Human Rights Commission launched a full statutory investigation into antisemitism in the Labour Party following a formal referral and detailed legal representations from Campaign Against Antisemitism, which is the complainant.

In the first release of its Antisemitism in Political Parties research, Campaign Against Antisemitism showed that Labour Party candidates for Parliament in the 2019 general election accounted for 82 percent of all incidents of antisemitic discourse by parliamentary candidates.

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019 showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has surpassed that of the far-right.

Campaign Against Antisemitism advocates for zero tolerance of antisemitism in public life. To that end we monitor all political parties and strive to ensure that any cases of concern are properly addressed.

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CAA video shows antisemitism in Black Lives Matter movement is betrayal of the legacy of real Civil Rights heroes

Campaign Against Antisemitism has produced a video showing how antisemitism in the Black Lives Matter movement is a betrayal of the legacy of real Civil Rights heroes.

The short video can be watched below. Please share it widely.

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CAA calls on Sandwell Council and Dudley Council to take action against current and former council leaders after Labour opens antisemitism investigations

Campaign Against Antisemitism has called for “strong and decisive action” against the Leader of Sandwell Council and the former leader of Dudley Council after it emerged that the Labour Party is investigating them over antisemitism.

Cllr Yvonne Davies, the current Council leader at Sandwell, is being investigated over tweets she sent in 2018, one of which promoted a petition calling for a parliamentary debate over whether Israel has an “improper influence” over British politics, a notion reminiscent of historically popular claims of excessive Jewish power in national politics. In another tweet, Cllr Davies linked to a story titled “Is Israel’s hand behind the attacks on Jeremy Corbyn?”, alongside which she commented: “This makes interesting reading if anyone is wanting to understand where all this emphasis on Labour and antisematism (sic) comes from…”

According to the International Definition of Antisemitism, “Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g. claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterise Israel or Israelis” is an example of antisemitism.

A complaint regarding Cllr Davies submitted to Labour reportedly accuses her of “breaching Labour’s social media policy”.

Cllr Davies reportedly commented: “I do retweet stuff that I probably shouldn’t, but I do not have an antisemitic bone in my body. I have a career of tackling discrimination and unfairness and I would certainly not consider that people who are Jewish have any influence at all over matters that we deal with in society. Whether countries do, and clearly Russia, China, Israel…a lot of countries get involved in stuff for political purposes…but I don’t relate that to anybody’s religion and I think anybody that does is making a big mistake. This is about politics, it’s not about religion at all. Certainly I will be careful in future about what I retweet, because clearly I’m aware that there is a lot of sensitivity around this issue and that things can be taken out of context.”

In Dudley, Cllr Pete Lowe, a former leader of the council, former parliamentary candidate and former Labour candidate for West Midlands Metro Mayor, posted a tweet purporting to shop historical maps of Israel, which he shared in order to criticise the dismissal of Rebecca Long-Bailey from the Shadow Cabinet for sharing an article that contained the antisemitic conspiracy theory. The picture was accompanied in the tweet by a caption from Cllr Lowe reading: “No words of explanation….just in case! #RebeccaLongBailey #LabourParty”. The tweet was subsequently deleted.

Ian Austin, the former Labour MP for Dudley North who quit over antisemitism in the Party, described the tweets as “completely unacceptable”. Mr Austin is an honorary patron of Campaign Against Antisemitism.

A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism, said: “The suggestion that Israel has an ‘improper influence’ in British politics and is ‘behind attacks’ on Jeremy Corbyn is totally unacceptable. The idea that the Jews – or the Jewish state – have outsized influence in national affairs is an infamous antisemitic trope that has no place in political parties or on a local council, let alone coming from the Leader of the council. Both the Labour Party and the council must take strong and decisive action. Those defending Rebecca Long-Bailey’s promotion of an antisemitic conspiracy theory, be they MPs or local councillors, must also be brought to book. At a time when so many are showing solidarity against racism, it is appalling that some individuals in Labour continue to defend or indulge in antisemitism.”

Meanwhile, in Greenwich in London, the Leader of the Council has reportedly referred a fellow Labour councillor to the Party over a series of tweets promoting the controversial group Labour Against Witchhunt” and defending Ms Long-Bailey. Cllr David Stanley reportedly promoted a petition in the form of an open letter to Mr Corbyn, who was then Leader of the Labour Party, worrying that “any criticism of the actions of the state of Israel is now immediately conflated with antisemitism” and “a cynical alliance between those who wish to deflect criticism of Israel and Zionism, and the right-wing in the Labour Party and the news media, who oppose your wider politics.” Cllr Stanley also apparently retweeted posts with the hashtag #IStandWithChrisWilliamson, in reference to the disgraced former Labour MP, Chris Williamson.

Cllr Stanley said: “I have always condemned antisemitism in the strongest possible terms, and fully supported Greenwich council signing up to the full [International Definition of Antisemitism]. I have no time for antisemitic conspiracy theories, but recognise that criticism of the state of Israel can sometimes be wrongly conflated with antisemitism. I support a fair and rigorous procedure for those Labour members who are subject to disciplinary measures due to alleged antisemitic comments.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism calls for action against these three councillors both by the Labour Party and by their own local authorities.

On 28th May 2019, the Equality and Human Rights Commission launched a full statutory investigation into antisemitism in the Labour Party following a formal referral and detailed legal representations from Campaign Against Antisemitism, which is the complainant.

In the first release of its Antisemitism in Political Parties research, Campaign Against Antisemitism showed that Labour Party candidates for Parliament in the 2019 general election accounted for 82 percent of all incidents of antisemitic discourse by parliamentary candidates.

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019 showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has surpassed that of the far-right.

Campaign Against Antisemitism advocates for zero tolerance of antisemitism in public life. To that end we monitor all political parties and strive to ensure that any cases of concern are properly addressed.

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Roger Waters apologises for saying a Jewish billionaire controls America because he had “no idea” saying that rich Jews control countries was an antisemitic trope

Roger Waters, a former musician with a long record of baiting Jews, has apologised for saying that American leaders are puppets of a Jewish billionaire and that Israel teaches America how to “murder the blacks”.

Mr Waters made the outrageous remarks in a friendly interview with an Arab channel, but has now apologised for the antisemitic outburst.

The former Pink Floyd star said of the “puppet” remark that “I had no idea that I was evoking an antisemitic trope. I regret any harm or hurt my use of words caused Jewish people, and also any ways it may have reinforced damaging lies about Jews. Nothing could have been further from my intentions.”

Regarding the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Israel was to blame for the racist killing of George Floyd, Mr Waters said: “A friend I called for guidance on this… told me that Israel does not train US police in tactics like those used to kill George Floyd. They don’t have to.”

Mr Waters has apparently not offered any apology for saying that Zionism needs to be “removed” or his similar past calls for Israel’s destruction.

In a past concert, Mr Waters unveiled a balloon pig with a Star of David emblazoned on its side.

A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “The fact that Mr Waters did not realise that saying that rich Jews control countries was an antisemitic trope speaks to the breathtaking ignorance of a man who holds very certain opinions on the Jews and other controversial topics. Perhaps Mr Waters will humbly reflect on his record and become less outspoken in future.”

Image credit: MEMRI

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BBC orders presenters not to wear Black Lives Matter badges on air after CAA confronts antisemitism in the movement and other extreme views emerge

The BBC has reportedly ordered its television presenters not to wear Black Lives Matter (BLM) badges on air after Campaign Against Antisemitism exposed worrying antisemitism in the movement and its other extreme views emerged.

Executives at the public broadcaster declared that “visual symbols of support” for BLM should not be worn on screen after leaders within BLM hijacked the killing of George Floyd to spread antisemitism and to promote an extreme agenda. “The BBC cannot be seen to support any kind of cause over another, and Black Lives Matter is certainly a campaign,” the BBC ruled.

The decision was part of a wider backlash against the BLM movement after Campaign Against Antisemitism called out antisemitic tweets over the weekend. Police forces and several celebrities have distanced themselves from the movement, as has the Premier League.

Among the first football clubs to break with BLM were Tottenham Hotspur, which said that “it is unacceptable that a value-based action is being hijacked by those with their own political agenda,” and Crystal Palace, which announced: “We would like to make clear that we do not endorse any pressure group or body that carries the same term in its name, and we strongly believe that organisations should not use this important force for change and positivity to push their own political agendas. We want to be part of a world that is fair, inclusive and open to all.”

A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “We are not surprised that the antisemitic outbursts and revelations of other extremist views from within the BLM movement are causing those who had lent their support to distance themselves. All decent people oppose racism, which is why seeing anti-Jewish racism emerging from within the movement against anti-black racism has been an ugly sight. Prejudice cannot be beaten with more prejudice.”

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Tory MP Chris Green retweets then deletes poem referencing “New World Order” and the Rothschilds

The Conservative MP Chris Green retweeted and then deleted a video in which the controversial comedian Chris McGlade reads a poem called “The Right to Hate”.

The poem is dedicated to “all those globalists out there” and criticises the “global New World Order”. The poem’s narrator also complains of being called an antisemite but insists that “the Rothschilds are the richest banking family in this world and that’s got nothing to do with them being Jewish and everything to do with them being multi-billionaires who really do influence the dollar, pound and yen.”

Mr Green retweeted the poem with the caption “If you love poetry, this is worth a listen.” The Bolton West MP has recently come under fire for his activity on social media.

The poem was also retweeted by the leader of the Social Democratic Party.

Campaign Against Antisemitism advocates for zero tolerance of antisemitism in public life. To that end we monitor all political parties and strive to ensure that any cases of concern are properly addressed.

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Swastikas appear by River Lea in Stamford Hill while a man is charged by police over spate of antisemitic graffiti in Barnet

Swastikas have appeared by the River Lea in the North London neighbourhood of Stamford Hill.

The graffiti was observed this morning by Stamford Hill Shomrim, the Jewish volunteer neighbourhood watch patrol. If you have any more information, please contact the Stamford Hill Shomrim on 0300 999 0123.

Meanwhile, in Barnet, a man has been charged with 18 counts of racially or religiously aggravated criminal damage in connection with multiple incidents of antisemitic graffiti on bus stops in the borough between February and July 2019.

Nicholas Lalchan, 47, is due to appear at Willesden Magistrates’ Court on 21st July.

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s analysis of Home Office statistics shows that an average of over three hate crimes are directed at Jews every single day in England and Wales, with Jews almost four times more likely to be targets of hate crimes than any other faith group.

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Premier League and footballers peel away from support of Black Lives Matter after CAA confronts activists over antisemitic and violent statements

The Premier League and various footballers and commentators have begun withdrawing support from Black Lives Matter (BLM) after Campaign Against Antisemitism exposed antisemitism within the movement.

The Premier League reportedly said in a statement it was “aware of the risk posed by groups that seek to hijack popular causes to promote their own political views” and that “these actions are entirely unwelcome and are rejected,” it added. The statement came after the ‘official’ Black Lives Matter movement Twitter account published an antisemitic tweet accusing Zionism of having “gagged” Britain, among other extreme views espoused by organs of the movement.

On Sky Sports, pundits and commentators Patrice Evra, Jamie Redknapp, Gary Neville and Kelly Cates all opted to stop wearing BLM badges in coverage this week. Matt Le Tissier had already revealed that he had worn the badge because studio executives had required him to do so and that he is reviewing the matter.

The developments came after Gary Lineker distanced himself from the Black Lives Matter movement. The footballer-turned-celebrity was asked by actor Laurence Fox on Twitter as to his views on the Black Lives Matter movement following the controversy this weekend, and he responded: “Why do you ask? I didn’t retweet it and wouldn’t dream of doing so, therefore I can’t really understand what your issue is.”

Other sportsmen are also understood to be reconsidering their support for the movement following numerous controversies, distinguishing between their strongly-felt opposition to racism against the black community and their disenchantment with the Black Lives Matter movement itself.

A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “We are not surprised that the antisemitic outbursts and revelations of other extremist views from within the BLM movement are causing those who had lent their support to distance themselves. All decent people oppose racism, which is why seeing anti-Jewish racism emerging from within the movement against anti-black racism has been an ugly sight. Prejudice cannot be beaten with more prejudice.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism called out the verified ‘@UKBLM’ Twitter account for its antisemitic tweets over the weekend.

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Man drives past Jews outside prominent synagogue in Jewish area and shouts “Hitler”

A man driving past a prominent synagogue in a Jewish area was heard shouting “Hitler” at the Jews gathered outside.

The incident took place on 29th June outside Hagers synagogue just off Golders Green Road in North London, and was reported by Shomrim North West London, the Jewish volunteer neighbourhood watch patrol.

Witnesses should contact Campaign Against Antisemitism.

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s analysis of Home Office statistics shows that an average of over three hate crimes are directed at Jews every single day in England and Wales, with Jews almost four times more likely to be targets of hate crimes than any other faith group.

Image credit: Google

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Black Lives Matter Movement condemns “antisemitism slurs” against the separate entity, BLM UK, which claimed that Zionism “gagged” Britain

The Black Lives Matter Movement has condemned “antisemitism slurs” directed at BLM UK, a separate entity which claimed that Zionism “gagged” Britain.

Campaign Against Antisemitism criticised BLM UK, an entity of unknown provenance that exists only on Twitter and GoFundMe, after it claimed that “British politics is gagged of the right to critique Zionism” following the dismissal of Rebecca Long-Bailey from the Shadow Cabinet for sharing an article that contained the antisemitic trope that Israel is somehow to blame for the racist killing of George Floyd.

Now the Black Lives Matter Movement, which describes itself as having been “formed in London in 2016 and is not affiliated to BLMUK,” published an article on its website titled “BLMUK, Palestine and media antisemitism slurs”, which insisted that the Black Lives Matter Movement “support[s] the struggle against racism in all its forms” including antisemitism, called for action against racism against black women MPs in the Labour Party (with reference to a controversial internal leaked report), and called the criticism of BLM UK a “witch hunt” which “weakens the fight against all forms of racism” and that this is “the aim of much of the media and the right in this country”.

It was not clear why standing up to antisemitism by BLM UK could “weaken the fight against all forms of racism”.

Following the exposure of antisemitism in the Black Lives Matter movement by Campaign Against Antisemitism, there has been a considerable withdrawal of support from the movement by mainstream society and celebrities who nonetheless rightly maintain an abhorrence of racism toward the black community.

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Divisive Corbyn aide Seumas Milne and Labour’s controversial complaints chief Thomas Gardiner reportedly both leave after years at centre of antisemitism crisis

Seumas Milne, Jeremy Corbyn’s divisive senior aide, and Thomas Gardiner, Labour’s Director of Governance and Legal Affairs, have both quit their employment with the Party.

Mr Milne, who has a record of espousing extreme political views, served as Executive Director of Strategy and Communications under Jeremy Corbyn. As a political appointee, his departure following the election of Sir Keir Starmer as Leader of the Party was widely considered inevitable.

Thomas Gardiner’s role in Labour Headquarters involved overseeing the catastrophic complaints process, and became known for his decision that a meme showing an alien crustacean with a Star of David emblazoned on its back sucking the life out of the Statue of Liberty was somehow not antisemitic.

Mr Gardiner’s departure represents the next stage of the clearout of controversial Labour staff by the new General-Secretary, David Evans, who replaced Corbyn ally Jennie Formby.

Mr Gardiner is being replaced by Alex Barros-Curtis, an aide of Sir Keir, on a temporary basis.

While the removal of tainted staff is a welcome development, the promised independent disciplinary process has yet to materialise.

On 28th May 2019, the Equality and Human Rights Commission launched a full statutory investigation into antisemitism in the Labour Party following a formal referral and detailed legal representations from Campaign Against Antisemitism, which is the complainant.

In the first release of its Antisemitism in Political Parties research, Campaign Against Antisemitism showed that Labour Party candidates for Parliament in the 2019 general election accounted for 82 percent of all incidents of antisemitic discourse by parliamentary candidates.

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019 showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has surpassed that of the far-right.

Campaign Against Antisemitism advocates for zero tolerance of antisemitism in public life. To that end we monitor all political parties and strive to ensure that any cases of concern are properly addressed.

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Piers Morgan does not respond to request for comment over historic photograph of him wearing Nazi uniform at costume party

The television personality and journalist Piers Morgan has not responded to comment regarding a historic photograph of him wearing a Nazi uniform at a costume party.

The photograph has been made exclusively available to Campaign Against Antisemitism by Guido Fawkes.

We have been told that the photograph was taken at a costume party about 30 years ago, at which Mr Morgan was heard saying “Heil Hitler!” and seen goose-stepping.

We wrote to Mr Morgan to advise that, while we do not imagine that he is an admirer of the Nazis and we recognise that he was very young at the time, nevertheless it did not appear to be an appropriate way to behave.

However, Mr Morgan has not responded. He has in the past demanded explanations and apologies from celebrities and politicians for their past conduct, however he seems not to apply the same rules to himself.

Image credit: Guido Fawkes

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After CAA exposes journalist’s record of inflammatory social media posts he is no longer featured as writer at online magazine for teenagers

Just days after Campaign Against Antisemitism exposed a journalist’s record of inflammatory social media posts, he is no longer featured as a writer at the online magazine for teenagers.

Toby Maxtone-Smith, who worked at The Day, responded to a report about antisemitic Chelsea fans performing Nazi salutes, singing about ‘Yids’ and imitating a gas chamber by complaining on Twitter about “snide journos [journalists] desperate to make a quick buck ruining someone’s life for behaving like a d***head while pissed”.

He also made jokes about foreskins and claimed that the reason the Labour Party’s antisemitism scandal was covered by the media supposedly to an extent greater than Jeremy Corbyn’s vote against the Falklands War was because “Jews are over-represented among the kind of people journalists know. The media is very bad at checking its own biases.”

Mr Maxtone-Smith has made further worrying comments on a different Twitter account, and he has also made derogatory comments about Chinese people and Roma, as well as women.

After Campaign Against Antisemitism exposed his record, he no longer features on the masthead of the online magazine.

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Gary Lineker distances himself from BLM after it publishes antisemitic tweet

Gary Lineker has distanced himself from the Black Lives Matter movement after it published an antisemitic tweet accusing Zionism of having “gagged” Britain.

The footballer-turned-celebrity was asked by actor Laurence Fox on Twitter as to his views on the Black Lives Matter movement following the controversy this weekend, and he responded: “Why do you ask? I didn’t retweet it and wouldn’t dream of doing so, therefore I can’t really understand what your issue is.”

Meanwhile on Sky Sports, pundit Matt Le Tissier revealed that studio executives had required him to wear a badge supporting the Black Lives Matter movement and that he is reviewing doing so, while other sportsmen are also reconsidering their support for the movement following numerous controversies, distinguishing between their strongly-felt opposition to racism against the black community and their disenchantment with the Black Lives Matter movement itself.

Campaign Against Antisemitism called out the verified ‘@UKBLM’ Twitter account for its antisemitic tweets over the weekend.

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Facebook under pressure from advertisers to act against hate speech online

Facebook is under pressure from advertisers to act against hate speech on its platform, as part of a “Stop Hate for Profit” campaign.

Major brands are suspending their advertisements on Facebook in an effort to force the tech behemoth to address proliferating hate speech.

Among the brands who have joined the campaign are Coca Cola, Unilever, Verizon and Honda US.

However, concerns have been raised as to double standards regarding which hate speech is rightly banned from social media platforms and which hate speech, wrongly, is not banned. For example, the broadcaster Maajid Nawaz has observed that antisemitism – particularly when it emanates from the far-left, Islamist terrorist groups and minority users like Louis Farrakhan – is given a free ride.

Stephen Silverman, Director of Investigations and Enforcement at Campaign Against Antisemitism, said: “Withdrawing advertising revenue from online platforms works. It forces them to stop finding excuses and change their behaviour — we have been doing this for years; for example we just forced Urban Dictionary to remove an abhorrent antisemitic term of abuse. Tech platforms already successfully prevent the posting of certain types of content such as copyright works and child pornography. The failure to address the proliferating antisemitic and racist content on Facebook is therefore a failure of willpower. Vile antisemitic content on these platforms is not hard to find and it is a reason that the far-left, Islamist groups and the far-right, are so able not only to intimidate Jewish users but also incite the kind of violence that has left a trail of bodies in the real world, from Pittsburgh to Poway.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism continues its robust engagement with social media companies over the content that they enable to be published, and we continue to make representations to the Government in this connection.

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CAA calls out bigoted claim by Black Lives Matter UK that “Zionism” has “gagged” Britain

Campaign Against Antisemitism has called out the UK chapter of Black Lives Matter (BLM) today after it claimed that “Zionism” has “gagged” Britain.

BLM’s official UK account tweeted this morning: “As Israel moves forward with the annexation of the West Bank, and mainstream British politics is gagged of the right to critique Zionism, and Israel’s settler colonial pursuits, we loudly and clearly stand beside our Palestinian comrades. Free Palestine.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism responded: “The Black Lives Matter movement should embrace solidarity from Jews. There have been calls for violence against us from prominent BLM supporters with no official condemnation. Now from the official UK BLM account, we hear the lie that fighting antisemitism has ‘gagged’ legitimate debate.

“Zionism is the movement for the self-determination of Jews. The right to the ‘self-determination of peoples’ is universal and enshrined in Article 1 of the UN charter. So-called ‘anti-Zionism’ exclusively denies Jews that universal right and is therefore antisemitic.

“BLM should aspire to be a movement against racism that unifies people and achieves lasting change, not a movement that spreads hatred and achieves lasting division.

“Educate yourselves. You cannot fight prejudice with prejudice.”

As social media swiftly divided amongst those who firmly backed BLM and those who were appalled by their bigotry, BLM chose to entrench its position, issuing further tweets that ‘gaslight’ Jews and seek to redefine what antisemitism is.

Campaign Against Antisemitism has continued throughout the day to expose and explain their bigotry.

The far-right attacks the Jews for not being white enough and the far-left attacks the Jews for being too white.

BLM is treading a well-worn path walked by many extremists and abhorred by real civil rights leaders like Dr Martin Luther King Jr, who once told a student in Boston who had made a comment attacking ‘Zionists’: “When people criticise ‘Zionists’, they mean ‘Jews’. You’re talking antisemitism!”

This is not the first time that Campaign Against Antisemitism has had to contend with prejudice from supposed anti-racists, and no matter where the hatred comes from, we will always do whatever it takes to defend British Jews. It is why we are here.

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Even as Coronavirus keeps most people at home, antisemitism persists on the streets, as man shouts “all Jews look the same” at Jewish passersby

A man shouted antisemitic abuse at Jewish passersby, yelling “all Jews look the same!”

The man also mocked the wig worn by an observant Jewish woman passing by, saying “bird like you with a wig”, and told passing Jewish men, “go to the hairdresser to cut your curls,” in reference to their religious Jewish side curls.

The incident took place yesterday at 17:30 on Oldhill Street in Stamford Hill and was reported by Stamford Hill Shomrim, the Jewish volunteer neighbourhood watch patrol.

If you have any more information, please contact the police on 101 or Stamford Hill Shomrim on 0300 999 0123, quoting reference number: CAD1504 19/03/2020.

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s analysis of Home Office statistics shows that an average of over three hate crimes are directed at Jews every single day in England and Wales, with Jews almost four times more likely to be targets of hate crimes than any other faith group.

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MPs say UK Government shares responsibility for antisemitism in Palestinian Authority school textbooks and society

The British Government shares responsibility for antisemitism in Palestinian Authority school textbooks and society, MPs have said.

Speaking in a Westminster Hall debate in Parliament, new Conservative MP Jonathan Gullis, a former teacher, bemoaned the “environment of institutionalised radicalisation” that prevails under the Palestinian Authority and observed that school textbooks there teach children to count “martyrs” (a reference to genocidal terrorists killed attempting to murder Jews), that “Jews control the world”, and that Israel must and will be destroyed.

“As a former secondary school teacher myself,” he explained, “I know just how impressionable young minds are and the impact that such messaging can have on pupils’ development, values and worldview.”

Reacting to the educational material in use, Mr Gullis said: “Make no mistake: this is antisemitism, and we must condemn it as strongly as we fight antisemitism at home.”

Another new Conservative MP, Nicola Richards, observed the prevalence of Holocaust denial in Gaza and under the Palestinian Authority and that the curriculum “push[es] prejudice and division”, concluding that this “proves that something is going seriously wrong”.

Labour’s Steve McCabe MP said in the debate that the UK government bore “some of the responsibility” because aid from Britain “fund[s] the salaries of some 30,000 teachers and officials” in the Palestinian Authority’s school system. “Let us be clear,” he said: “we are paying the salaries of those who designed and administer the curriculum and those who teach it.”

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Antisemite who called Jewish parents “dirty Jews” and attacked their baby in pram found guilty of racially aggravated assault

A man who called Jewish parents “dirty Jews” three times and attacked their baby in its pram has been found guilty of racially aggravated assault.

The incident took place in broad daylight in August 2019 when Adam Cassidy confronted the family outside a Costa coffee shop on a busy high street in St Alban’s, north of London. One of the Jews was wearing a kippah (skullcap). The altercation was filmed and the footage went viral.

Mr Cassidy, a twenty-year-old who according to media reports was raised in Egypt, apparently claimed in court that the victims had called him a “dirty Arab” first, but this suggestion was rejected. Mr Cassidy also kicked hoarding at the family.

The judge said to Mr Cassidy: “I don’t accept your evidence. I don’t accept that anybody called you anything. Whether it was an accident when you bumped into the buggy I don’t know. That doesn’t excuse what you did and doesn’t excuse your response. There are plenty of words you could have used if you just wanted to be rude; this was motivated by a racial motive. It was obvious that they were Jewish because of their skullcaps and for that reason you said ‘dirty Jew’ three times.”

He was found guilty of racially aggravated assault and of using an antisemitic slur.

A spokesman for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “We see more and more of this sort of casual antisemitism on our streets and it must be punished and deterred. This is a welcome ruling, but now the court must send a message of zero tolerance for antisemitism through an adequate and severe sentence.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s analysis of Home Office statistics shows that an average of over three hate crimes are directed at Jews every single day in England and Wales, with Jews almost four times more likely to be targets of hate crimes than any other faith group.

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Frontrunner for BAME representative on Labour’s ruling NEC reportedly suspended for antisemitic social media post

The frontrunner for the position of BAME (Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic) representative on the Labour Party’s ruling body has reportedly been suspended for posting an allegedly antisemitic cartoon on social media.

Mehmood Mirza, the vice chair of the West Ham branch of the Labour Party, was considered the favourite for election to the post on the National Executive Committee, but following a complaint back in October 2019 about a cartoon he posted on Facebook, he has now been suspended.

The cartoon apparently depicted a man wearing a headband with the words “free Palestine” who had a sticker with the word “antisemitism” placed over his mouth. The cartoon was drawn by the controversial cartoonist Carlos Latuff, an artist who placed second in Iran’s Holocaust Denial Cartoon Contest.

Some activists expressed disappointment that Mr Mirza was allowed to run at all, given the complaint had been lodged some time ago. Nevertheless, he received 75 local party nominations – more than any other candidate – and was backed by the TSSA union and the Labour Left Alliance group.

At least five candidates have been suspended over the course of the campaign thus far, namely Jo Bird, Mohammed Azam, Graham Durham, Mehmood Mirza and Keith Hussein, albeit Jo Bird had her suspension lifted.

On 28th May 2019, the Equality and Human Rights Commission launched a full statutory investigation into antisemitism in the Labour Party following a formal referral and detailed legal representations from Campaign Against Antisemitism, which is the complainant.

In the first release of its Antisemitism in Political Parties research, Campaign Against Antisemitism showed that Labour Party candidates for Parliament in the 2019 general election accounted for 82 percent of all incidents of antisemitic discourse by parliamentary candidates.

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019 showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has surpassed that of the far-right.

Campaign Against Antisemitism advocates for zero tolerance of antisemitism in public life. To that end we monitor all political parties and strive to ensure that any cases of concern are properly addressed.

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Police promptly remove Nazi graffiti from Kilburn McDonald’s

Police have promptly removed Nazi graffiti from a McDonald’s in Kilburn.

A swastika was spotted at 18:00 on Saturday 29th February at the fast food eatery on the corner of Kilburn High Road and Victoria Road in London.

A passerby reported it to the Met Police and applauded the authorities for their quick response.

Anyone with information should contact the police on 101, quoting reference number: CAD/6699/29/02/2020.

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s analysis of Home Office statistics shows that an average of over three hate crimes are directed at Jews every single day in England and Wales, with Jews almost four times more likely to be targets of hate crimes than any other faith group.

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Labour asked Facebook to ban left-wing antisemitic social media groups that support the Party

The Labour Party has asked Facebook to ban left-wing antisemitic groups on its platform that support the Party.

It is understood that staff at the Party’s governance and legal unit contacted the social media giant last year to ask that eleven groups be moderated or removed because they contained antisemitic material.

The material is believed to include conspiracy theories about Jews, Holocaust denial and explicit expressions of anti-Jewish hatred.

In a meeting last October, Party staff handed over four reports containing hundreds of pieces of evidence to Facebook, and one of the groups, “Truthers Against Zionist Lobbies”, was shut down in December after an intervention by the celebrity antisemitism campaigner Rachel Riley. In a February meeting, the staff reiterated their request to Facebook and provided supplementary evidence.

The administrators are not believed to be current Labour members, although some may have been suspended or expelled by the Party.

In a statement, Facebook said that its standards “make very clear that there is absolutely no place for hate speech” on its platform.

The revelation comes as it also emerged that the largest Facebook group supporting the Labour leadership candidate Rebecca Long-Bailey is reportedly replete with antisemitic material.

On 28th May 2019, the Equality and Human Rights Commission launched a full statutory investigation into antisemitism in the Labour Party following a formal referral and detailed legal representations from Campaign Against Antisemitism, which is the complainant.

In the first release of its Antisemitism in Political Parties research, Campaign Against Antisemitism showed that Labour Party candidates for Parliament in the 2019 general election accounted for 82 percent of all incidents of antisemitic discourse by parliamentary candidates.

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019 showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has surpassed that of the far-right.

Campaign Against Antisemitism advocates for zero tolerance of antisemitism in public life. To that end we monitor all political parties and strive to ensure that any cases of concern are properly addressed.

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Talent agency ‘Money Management’ defends then removes antisemitic Fagin image from website

The talent agency Money Management, which represents numerous celebrity clients, defended the use of an antisemitic caricature on its website, before apparently removing it.

The caricature, based on the Jewish character Fagin from the Charles Dickens novel, Oliver Twist, featured on the company’s website and apparently was also recently offered as part of an auction lot called “Antisemitism and Nazi propaganda”. It was also not lost on visitors to the website that the company’s name incorporates the word ‘money’ as well.

The company’s director defended the image, saying that he is a third generation Holocaust survivor and that he loved the Oliver! musical songs, including “You’ve got to pick-a-pocket or two”, which he noted was composed by a Jewish musician. He accused critics of having rushed to judgment.

However, the website now no longer appears to feature the image.

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Plaid Cymru reinstates an activist suspended over reported antisemitic social media posts with no sanction and will stand her as candidate for Welsh Assembly

A Plaid Cymru activist who was suspended over antisemitism has been reinstated with no sanction and will even stand as a candidate for the Party in elections for the Welsh Assembly.

Sahar Al-Faifi was reported to have made antisemitic comments on social media some years ago, which Plaid Cymru intended to investigate during her suspension. Ms Al-Faifi deleted and apologised for the posts, but a Jewish organisation involved in the case considered her response to be unsatisfactory, as other social media posts that she was asked to amend apparently went unedited for some time, reportedly including one that linked the London Bridge attacks to “pro-Zionists”. After pressure she has now deleted them.

Following her reinstatement, in a statement Ms Al-Faifi disclosed that a Plaid Cymru panel found on 8th January that “there was no need for sanctions”.

She apparently also shared an article on her reinstatement from a highly controversial organisation which read: “While antisemitism must never be tolerated and should be challenged wherever it is found, the use of the term as a political tool for shutting down criticism of the Israeli government devalues the experiences of those who face antisemitic abuse on a daily basis.”

Ms Al-Faifi has even been enlisted as a candidate for the Party in next year’s Welsh Assembly elections in South Wales Central. At her launch this week, she was joined by former Party leader Leanne Wood.

A spokesman for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “It would appear that Plaid Cymru suspended Ms Al-Faifi during the general election in order to deflect attention and pressure when antisemitism was in the public life, but after the spotlight shifted has taken zero disciplinary action against her and has even rewarded her with a candidacy position.

“Clearly Plaid Cymru believes some forms of racism are welcome in its Party and that antisemitism has a prominent place in its vision for Wales.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism advocates for zero tolerance of antisemitism in public life. To that end we monitor all political parties and strive to ensure that any cases of concern are properly addressed.

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Conspiracy theorist group showcases convergence of far-left, including former Labour members, with far-right to promote antisemitism

Infiltration of a conspiracy theorist group has revealed a convergence of the far-left, including former Labour members, with the far-right, which come together to promote antisemitism.

Among those who have reportedly attended meetings of the Keep Talking group are:

  • notorious antisemite and Holocaust denier Alison Chabloz, who became a Labour Party supporter in 2015 and against whom Campaign Against Antisemitism brought a private prosecution subsequently taken over by the Crown Prosecution Service, resulting in a conviction and landmark legal precedent;
  • antisemitic conspiracy theorist, James Thring, who has apparently been linked to the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke and who spoke unchallenged about Holocaust denial at a Keep Talking event, claiming that no deaths were recorded at the Auschwitz concentration camp;
  • obsessive poster of conspiracy theories and founder of the secret Facebook group, Palestine Live, Elleanne Green, who is a friend of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn (who was also a member of Palestine Live, which indulged in Holocaust denial and conspiracy theories that Israel was responsible for 9/11), who accompanied the disgraced former MP Chris Williamson to court when he brought proceedings against the Labour Party over his suspension in connection with belittling antisemitism, and who was suspended by Labour in July 2018;
  • suspended Labour member Pete Gregson, who was expelled from the pro-Corbyn pressure group Momentum and from the GMB trade union and suspended from the Party after suggesting that the Holocaust was exaggerated and for abusive behaviour towards a female Jewish Labour member, who went on to found Labour Against Zionism and Islamophobic Racism (Lazir), and who was a guest speaker at a Keep Talking event;
  • American-Israeli activist Miko Peled, who has said that people should be free to ask “Holocaust, yes or no” because “there should be no limits on the discussion,” and has compared Israel to the Nazis, in breach of the International Definition of Antisemitism;
  • co-founder of Keep Talking, Ian Fantom, a 9/11 conspiracy theorist who has appeared at a Keep Talking event with Piers Corbyn, the Labour leader’s older brother;
  • notorious Holocaust denier, Nick Kollerstrom, who has reportedly described Auschwitz as “storybook gas chambers”; and
  • alleged Holocaust revisionist and former Labour councillor, Gill Kaffash, who was a former secretary of the Camden branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

The exposé was a years-long project by the Community Security Trust and Hope Not Hate.

Campaign Against Antisemitism has long warned of the nexus between the far-right and the far-left. Our Antisemitism Barometer 2019 showed that Mr Corbyn was the candidate of choice for those holding antisemitic views and that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has surpassed that of the far-right.

On 28th May 2019, the Equality and Human Rights Commission launched a full statutory investigation into antisemitism in the Labour Party following a formal referral and detailed legal representations from Campaign Against Antisemitism, which is the complainant.

In the first release of its Antisemitism in Political Parties research, Campaign Against Antisemitism showed that Labour Party candidates for Parliament in the 2019 general election accounted for 82 percent of all incidents of antisemitic discourse by parliamentary candidates.

Campaign Against Antisemitism advocates for zero tolerance of antisemitism in public life, To that end we monitor all political parties and strive to ensure that any cases of concern are properly addressed.

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Fifth of Europeans think “Jews exploit Holocaust victimhood for their own needs” and that a Jewish cabal rules the world

A new survey has found that a fifth of Europeans think that “Jews exploit Holocaust victimhood for their own needs” and that a Jewish cabal rules the world.

The survey was conducted by the European Jewish Association in December 2019 and presented at the organisation’s conference in Paris this week, at which Campaign Against Antisemitism participated. The survey polled a representative sample of 1,000 adults who were presented with 45 questions in face-to-face interviews in sixteen countries, including Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, the UK and Poland.

It is understood that the organisers found it difficult to find pollsters prepared to enter certain neighbourhoods, for example in Paris and Brussels, which was necessary to garner a representative sample.

According to the survey, a quarter of respondents believe that Israel’s policies make them understand why some people hate Jews; and more than a third believe that “during World War II, people from our nation suffered as much as Jews”.

The survey reportedly showed that Judeophobic antisemitic stereotypes and Holocaust revisionism were more common in Eastern Europe, whereas anti-Zionist antisemitic beliefs were more prevalent in Western Europe.

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Former Labour activist to be prosecuted over alleged “rid the Jews” comments is named, but prosecutors reduced charges on other offenders so that it is now too late to prosecute

The former Labour activist who has been charged by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) after Campaign Against Antisemitism reported a leaked secret Labour dossier to the Metropolitan Police live on LBC has been named.

According to a source, Mohson Rasool, a 60-year-old from Hollybank Road, Birmingham, commented on Facebook that “We shall rid the Jews who are a cancer on us all [sic]”. He is also alleged to have suggested that the Jews should be sent into the Red Sea rather than expending expensive gas on them in what appeared to be an allusion to the use of gas chambers by the Nazis to murder Jews. Among other alleged remarks, he claimed that “hatred of Jews and Hindus is in my DNA”.

Mr Rasool is being charged with sending a grossly offensive message or other matter on a public electronic communications network on 10th February, 2018, in breach of section 127 of the Communications Act, and will appear at Birmingham Magistrates’ Court on 25th March.

It is understood that Mr Rasool had been expelled by the Labour Party prior to his arrest.

Of the ten cases so far referred to the CPS considered, five apparently remain under consideration, four will be dropped and Mr Rasool will be prosecuted.

However, it is understood that the four cases being dropped may have passed the threshold for lesser offences, but because the CPS took so long reviewing the cases, it is now too late to bring charges.

This is despite Lord MacDonald, a former Director of Public Prosecutions, saying last month that he believed that the CPS had had sufficient time to review the cases and should announce its conclusions, and that charges should be brought.

In a statement released yesterday, Gideon Falter, the chief executive of Campaign Against Antisemitism, addressed this point, saying: “This sad tale exemplifies why two thirds of British Jews have lost faith in the CPS, which simply cannot be relied upon to bring anti-Jewish racists to justice. When the CPS has failed to prosecute antisemites in the past we have successfully instigated private prosecutions and brought judicial review proceedings against the CPS. We had hoped that these measures would not be necessary every time antisemitic hate crimes come before the CPS, but yet again we find ourselves having to consider our options with our lawyers in order to deliver justice for the Jewish community, because the CPS has failed us.”

On 28th May 2019, the Equality and Human Rights Commission launched a full statutory investigation into antisemitism in the Labour Party following a formal referral and detailed legal representations from Campaign Against Antisemitism, which is the complainant.

In the first release of its Antisemitism in Political Parties research, Campaign Against Antisemitism showed that Labour Party candidates for Parliament in the 2019 general election accounted for 82 percent of all incidents of antisemitic discourse by parliamentary candidates.

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019 showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has surpassed that of the far-right. The research also showed that 42% of British Jews have considered leaving the UK, of which 85% cited antisemitism in politics, and close to two thirds of British Jews believe that the authorities, in general, are not doing enough to address and punish antisemitism.

Campaign Against Antisemitism advocates for zero tolerance of antisemitism in public life, To that end we monitor all political parties and strive to ensure that any cases of concern are properly addressed.

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Watch Baroness Tonge make yet another antisemitic statement in the House of Lords, calling the Israel “America’s puppetmaster”

The disgraced peer, Jenny Tonge, has made yet another antisemitic statement, describing Israel as “America’s puppetmaster” in a remark in the House of Lords.

According to the International Definition of Antisemitism, “Making mendacious, dehumanising, demonising, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions” is an example of antisemitism, as is: “Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism to characterise Israel or Israelis.”

Baroness Tonge, who was suspended from the Liberal Democrats before eventually resigning, has a long history of Jew-baiting, denouncing Campaign Against Antisemitism, suggesting that the antisemitic attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue might be Israel’s fault, blaming Israel for a rise in antisemitism, and sharing a cartoon comparing Israel’s policies to those of the Nazis, which is a breach of the International Definition.

In December 2019, Campaign Against Antisemitism joined 88 members of the House of Lords in condemning remarks on Facebook by Baroness Tonge following the general election, in which she commented: “The Chief RabbI must be dancing in the street. The pro-Israel lobby won our General Election by lying about Jeremy Corbyn.”

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CAA considering private prosecution and judicial review after CPS refuses to charge four Labour activists over incitement to racial hatred and says it will now only prosecute one

The Metropolitan Police Service has informed Campaign Against Antisemitism that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will only charge one of the Labour Party activists reported by Campaign Against Antisemitism over antisemitism.

The decision comes well over a year after Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Chief Executive, Gideon Falter, referred an 86-page secret internal Labour Party dossier of evidence to Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick live during a radio phone-in on LBC.

Mak Chishty, a former Commander in charge of hate crime at the Metropolitan Police Service, reviewed the dossier on air and found 45 cases of antisemitism in it, classifying seventeen cases as “race-hate incidents” which should have been reported to the police. According to Mr Chishty and Charlie Sherrard QC, a criminal barrister who works with Campaign Against Antisemitism, at least four further cases warranted criminal investigation. Mr Chishty said the incidents were “abhorrent” and described the language used as “absolutely horrible.”

The cases included:

  1. an activist who attacked a Jewish Labour MP as a “Zionist Extremist” who “hates civilized people” and was “about to get a good kicking” for spreading “Zionists propaganda”;
  2. an activist who posted an article containing Holocaust denial and antisemitic cartoons of Jews from a blog claiming to provide “intelligent antisemitism for the thinking gentile”;
  3. a Party member posting that “we shall rid the Jews who are a cancer on us all” and that “these Jewish f***ers are the devils”; and
  4. a party member accused of physically and verbally abusing a seven-year-old boy using racist epitaphs including “Paki” and “Jew-boy”.

Following the analysis of the dossier by Mr Chishty and Mr Sherrard, Dame Cressida Dick, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, joined LBC’s Nick Ferrari for a phone-in. Mr Falter called in and officially reported the dossier live on air to the Commissioner.

Officers at New Scotland Yard then visited Mr Falter and opened a criminal investigation.

On 8th January 2020, Commissioner Dick reappeared on LBC and disclosed that six arrests had been made in the case in early 2019 and five files were passed to the CPS in September 2019.

The Commissioner explained that these cases represent a “very complex crime type” and therefore it was difficult to anticipate when the CPS would make a decision on whether to charge the individuals, based on whether there is sufficient evidence and if charging the offenders would be in the public interest.

The CPS has commented at the time: “We’ve received a file of evidence [from the Metropolitan Police Service] in relation to antisemitic hate crimes. We are reviewing this material to consider further charging decisions.”

Later that day, Lord MacDonald QC, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, intervened to say that he believed the CPS had had sufficient time to review the cases and should announce its conclusions, and that the evidence suggests that crimes have indeed been committed. He opined that “these are allegations about the conduct of members of a major political party and so there is obviously a strong public interest in this being resolved, and resolved as quickly as possible.” Moreover, he noted that a long delay fuels “rumours” and “unease” and therefore that “safe conclusions are needed sooner rather than later.”

Lord MacDonald went on to say that “the sensitivity in these cases is that prosecutors have to balance two things: one is the suggestion that these messages, these posts may comprise incitement to racial hatred, or other hate crimes, on the one hand, and then on the other hand, free expression rights,” adding that this “can sometimes be a tricky analysis but I should have thought that three months is plenty of time to come to conclusions in this case.” He observed that “there is some very extreme material here,” concluding: “This is very extreme stuff, which I’d have thought is well capable of comprising a criminal offence. Speech has to be pretty extreme to amount to incitement to racial or religious hatred but some of this speech does look to be very extreme indeed.”

The Justice Secretary, Robert Buckland, also commented, saying: “the very fact we are talking about it on national radio, and the importance of this issue — antisemitism as you know is a serious issue not just because of itself but because it is a gateway to other types of prejudice in my view — I very much hope that everybody involved in the investigation will do it thoroughly. Obviously, it has to be looked at properly, but that it can be expedited.”

However the CPS has now confirmed that of the ten cases currently under consideration, five remain under consideration, one will be prosecuted, and four will be dropped.

Gideon Falter, Chief Executive of Campaign Against Antisemitism, said: “This case has received national media attention as part of one of the most explosive political issues of our time — anti-Jewish racism at the forefront of British politics. This is not complex. Labour activists posted extreme Jew-hatred on social media. The evidence is there in black and white. The evidence has been reviewed by the Commander formerly in charge of hate crimes at the Met and a former Director of Public Prosecutions. Yet the CPS dragged its feet for over a year, only now to conclude that it has charged just one solitary offender.

“This sad tale exemplifies why two thirds of British Jews have lost faith in the CPS, which simply cannot be relied upon to bring anti-Jewish racists to justice. When the CPS has failed to prosecute antisemites in the past we have successfully instigated private prosecutions and brought judicial review proceedings against the CPS. We had hoped that these measures would not be necessary every time antisemitic hate crimes come before the CPS, but yet again we find ourselves having to consider our options with our lawyers in order to deliver justice for the Jewish community, because the CPS has failed us.

“This unacceptable outcome shows that the CPS is not fit for purpose when it comes to prosecuting antisemitism. We therefore call for the CPS to treat antisemitic hate crime prosecutions as Special Crime, submitting junior prosecutors’ decisions to the scrutiny of more senior colleagues, and we urge the CPS to agree that its senior prosecutors receive training from Campaign Against Antisemitism and work with us to draft clear guidelines for prosecutors which link antisemitic acts to the corresponding offences, with worked examples for different kinds of antisemitic acts and evidential requirements. We have also sought a meeting with the Attorney General.”

On 28th May 2019, the Equality and Human Rights Commission launched a full statutory investigation into antisemitism in the Labour Party following a formal referral and detailed legal representations from Campaign Against Antisemitism, which is the complainant.

In the first release of its Antisemitism in Political Parties research, Campaign Against Antisemitism showed that Labour Party candidates for Parliament in the 2019 general election accounted for 82 percent of all incidents of antisemitic discourse by parliamentary candidates.

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019 showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has surpassed that of the far-right. The research also showed that 42% of British Jews have considered leaving the UK, of which 85% cited antisemitism in politics, and close to two thirds of British Jews believe that the authorities, in general, are not doing enough to address and punish antisemitism.

Campaign Against Antisemitism advocates for zero tolerance of antisemitism in public life, To that end we monitor all political parties and strive to ensure that any cases of concern are properly addressed.

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CAA secures criminal record for owner of Tribestan UK who cancelled order to Israel “because the Jews rob us” and “scam the world”

Dyfed-Powys Police in Wales have given a formal caution to the owner of Tribestan UK for sending antisemitic e-mails to a Jewish man after Campaign Against Antisemitism intervened in the case.

Daniel Davies sent e-mails to an Israeli man who attempted to order items from his company, saying: “Unfortunately Jews have negativity on our businesses. Do you know why? Because Jews rip us off! Jews f*** us up!” A second e-mail sent a short while later stated: “We don’t ship to Israel because the Jews rob us! Sorry but that’s a fact. They scam the world.”

In an e-mail to the victim, the police have now reported that Mr Davies was interviewed under caution in the presence of his solicitor, admitted to sending the abusive e-mails, claimed that he was under the influence of alcohol when he did so and that he sent an apologetic email the next day when sober, and has now been issued with a formal police caution that will remain on his police record.

We are unsurprised to learn that Mr Davies has had to retract his claim that “our e-mail got hacked via wifi over a business phone”, which is a common excuse offered by companies and individuals whose antisemitic messages have been publicly exposed.

Regrettably, the police originally claimed that Mr Davies’s emails were simply “stating an opinion” and refused to log it as a hate crime. They then closed the case, having accepted Mr Davies’ original defence at face value. It was only following a series of interventions by Campaign Against Antisemitism that the police upheld our complaint, reopened the case and recorded the incident as a hate crime under the Malicious Communications Act. They formally apologised saying that they “completely share the concerns you raised.”

Stephen Silverman, CAA’s Director of Investigations and Enforcement said: “Daniel Davies meted out vile racist abuse to a Jewish customer. He tried to lie his way out of facing the consequences of his actions and the initial investigating officer tried to dismiss the case against him. Now the investigating officer has been overruled as a result of our intervention and Mr Davies has a criminal record. Mr Davies is just the latest person to find out the hard way that we are unrelenting in bringing antisemites to justice.”

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CAA praises Hindu Forum of Britain for letter of solidarity with Jewish community and against antisemitism

The Hindu Forum of Britain has today published a letter of solidarity with the Jewish community and against antisemitism.

The Forum, which is the largest umbrella body of British Hindus and represents over 320 Hindu groups throughout the UK, rightly noted in its letter that the Hindu and Jewish communities have for decades “existed in harmony together” and “shared similar journeys upon arrival in this country”.

The letter goes on to say: “We have watched antisemitism seep into British politics with horror, and have worked closely with Campaign Against Antisemitism to oppose it. Bigotry within any political party is to be condemned and we take inspiration from the courage shown by the Chief Rabbi in denouncing antisemitism within the Labour Party.

“Just as our communities have shared so many succeses over the years, we now sadly feel that we share your distress and disgust at some of the current divisive rhetoric that has been used in these elections, which has led us to conclude that not only is there antisemitism in some parties, but also a strong anti-Hindu agenda.”

The President of the Hindu Forum of Britain, Trupti Patel, also spoke to the crowd of thousands at the #TogetherAgainstAntisemitism national rally in Parliament Square on Sunday.

Gideon Falter, Chief Executive of Campaign Against Antisemitism, said: “We praise the Hindu Forum of Britain for its steadfast support for the Jewish community and opposition to antisemitism, and join it in condemning anti-Hindu prejudice. The Jewish and Hindu communities are natural allies and we stand together in good times and bad.”

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Labour candidate, Dan Greef, wrote “had a great day out at a concentration camp” and says he voted BNP

Dan Greef, the Labour Party candidate for South Cambridgeshire, reportedly posted on Facebook in 2010: “Had a great day out at a concentration camp,” and claimed that he had voted for the British National Party (BNP).

In 2013 Mr Greef also reportedly commended disgraced former Liberal Democrat MP for Bradford East, David Ward, for publishing a blog post ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day that attempted to draw equivalence between Israel and the Nazis. He wrote: “Good man David Ward. Remembering only part of History condemns us to repeat it, however Israeli policy is not the same as Judaism!”

Mr Greef also apparently wrote, “Is it right that many of our MPs are also members of different ‘Friends of Israel’ pressure groups? Discuss,” as well as, “Bloody Israel, I sometimes want to rip it all up!”

According to the International Definition of Antisemitism, “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” is an example of antisemitism, as is “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination”, which is the implication of wishing to “rip up Israel”.

On 28th May, the Equality and Human Rights Commission launched a full statutory investigation following a formal referral and detailed legal representations from Campaign Against Antisemitism, which is the complainant.

In recent months, thirteen MPs and three peers have resigned from the Labour Party over antisemitism, along with a large number of MEPs, councillors and members.

Over 57,000 people have now signed our petition denouncing Jeremy Corbyn as an antisemite and declaring him “unfit to hold any public office.”

On 8th December, regardless of religion, race or politics, Jews and non-Jews alike will gather in Parliament Square to declare that they stand together against antisemitism in the face of Jew-hatred in politics and mounting anti-Jewish hate crime.

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Home Secretary Sajid Javid to formally consider proscribing Hizballah after 10,000 people from Orkney to St Ives sign CAA’s Parliamentary Petition

As hundreds of supporters of Hizballah, the genocidal antisemitic terrorist organisation, prepare to parade through central London with Hizballah flags, over 10,000 people from 646 of the UK’s 650 Parliamentary constituencies have signed a Parliamentary Petition calling for Hizballah to be fully proscribed. The Parliamentary Petition, started by Campaign Against Antisemitism, rapidly gained 10,000 signatures after a number of days as the most popular petition on Parliament’s website.

The petition was snubbed by some Jewish community organisations, but fiercely backed by figures such as the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, who tweeted that every British citizen should sign the petition in support of British soldiers, describing Hizballah terrorists as “animals” who “murdered and maimed British soldiers”.

Now, as one of his first acts as Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, will be required to formally and publicly respond to the Parliamentary Petition, as the Government is required to respond to any Parliamentary Petition gaining more than 10,000 signatures. If the number of signatures on the Parliamentary Petition now climbs to 100,000, a debate in the House of Commons will be triggered. The petition can be signed at https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/219020.

The dangerous pro-Hizballah parade is currently permitted due to a legal loophole. Whilst the British government has proscribed the “military wing” of Hizballah under the Terrorism Act 2000, the “political wing” is not proscribed, something that even Hizballah finds ridiculous. Indeed, its Deputy Secretary-General, Naim Qassem, mocked the distinction, saying in 2012: “We don’t have a military wing and a political one; we don’t have Hizballah on one hand and the resistance party on the other…Every element of Hizballah, from commanders to members as well as our various capabilities, are in the service of the resistance, and we have nothing but the resistance as a priority.”

The Home Secretary is the only person whose signature can instantly proscribe the whole of Hizballah. We have already written an open letter to him along with a prominent Muslim anti-extremism organisation. In our letter we noted: “Hizballah seeks the extermination of Jews. Its Secretary-General could not have been plainer when he said: ‘If Jews all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.’ Hizballah has acted on its murderous mantra, bombing Jewish civilians from Buenas Aires to Burgas, and it has even been blamed for two bombings targeting Jews in London in 1994. That this brazen annual parade can take place makes a mockery of counter-extremism initiatives, emboldens those who seek to incite hatred and shames our nation.

We have also met with the Metropolitan Police Service along with other Jewish organisations to voice our grave security concerns. The danger posed by this parade to British Muslims and Jews is clear and present. It is a rallying point for anti-Muslim bigots who wish to portray all British Muslims as terrorist sympathisers, and for antisemites, who admire Hizballah’s stated mission to seek out and murder Jews around the world. Last year, the terrorist Darren Osborne decided to ram the march with his car but he was unsuccessful and instead rammed his car into a mosque, killing one and injuring twelve. Simultaneously, the march itself is a font of antisemitic invective, last year even featuring claims bellowed by its leader that ‘Zionists’ paid the Government to burn down Grenfell Tower.

Last year’s pro-Hizballah parade resulted in Campaign Against Antisemitism having to make complaints to the Charity Commission about the charity which organises the pro-Hizballah parade, and privately prosecuting the parade’s leader.

The parade will be closely monitored by a substantial evidence gathering team from our Demonstration and Event Monitoring Unit and then analysed by our Crime Unit and Regulatory Enforcement Unit. It is our intention to take legal action if possible.

Gideon Falter, Chairman of Campaign Against Antisemitism, said: “10,000 decent people from every part of the UK, from Orkney to St Ives, have stood together to say that enough is enough. We want these pro-terrorist parades off our streets. They make a mockery of counter-extremism efforts, are a rallying point for supporters of Islamist terrorism and fuel the far-right, already resulting in a terrorist attack which has killed one British Muslim and injured twelve others. Under Parliamentary rules, the Home Secretary is now required to respond to the petition, and as a decent man who has long stood firm against Islamist extremism, we ask him to respond by fully proscribing Hizballah under the Terrorism Act and thereby closing the legal loophole which allows these revolting and dangerous pro-Hizballah parades to take place.”

We would like to thank all those who have put in so much effort to help achieve this.

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CAA launches Parliamentary Petition for full proscription of Hizballah, urgently seeks 10,000 signatures to force Home Office to respond

Campaign Against Antisemitism has launched a Parliamentary Petition calling for the full proscription of Hizballah. We urgently need at least 10,000 signatures to force the Government to respond.

Supporters of Hizballah annually parade through London and are permitted to do so on the grounds that only Hizballah’s “military wing” is proscribed. Even Hizballah admits there is no “military wing”. We must stop these parades on our streets.

The next pro-Hizballah parade is planned for 10th June.

Britain proscribes Hizballah’s “military wing” but, at the behest of the Foreign Office, not its “political wing”. Hizballah mocks the distinction. For example in 2012 its Deputy Secretary-General said: “We don’t have a military wing and a political one”.

Hizballah seeks the extermination of Jews. For example in 2004 its Secretary-General said: “If Jews all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide. It has been responsible for terrorist attacks murdering Jews from Buenas Aires to Burgas, and has even been blamed for two bombings targeting Jews in London in 1994.

The Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, is the only person whose signature can instantly proscribe the whole of Hizballah. We have already written an open letter to him along with a prominent Muslim anti-extremism organisation.

We need at least 10,000 signatures as fast as possible in order to ensure that the Government responds formally. Please sign the petition and share the link with your friends and family: https://antisemitism.org/petition/.

Add your name to the petition

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After reading online reviews, Campaign Against Antisemitism will improve inclusivity by rebranding as Campaign About Antisemitism

Campaign Against Antisemitism is proud to be a grassroots organisation that listens to its supporters, many of whom volunteer or donate to support our work. That is why each year we pay careful attention to the reviews left for us on Facebook, especially those that are critical.

Upon reflecting on this year’s reviews, we saw how excluded antisemites feel from our campaign. We have therefore decided that it is time for Campaign Against Antisemitism to become more inclusive, making space for antisemites in our campaign.

“Not enough respect for Hizballah”

Reading online reviews of our work has opened our eyes. For example, Facebook user Nathan Hull was scathing of our one-sidedness when it comes to antisemitism, leaving a one-star review with the comment: “Not enough respect for Hizballah. Too much anti-Corbyn propaganda.” Mr Hull made us stop to think. We will be changing our editorial policy to refer to Hizballah not merely as a “genocidal antisemitic terrorist organisation”, instead referring to it as “one of the world’s most hardworking and renowned genocidal antisemitic terrorist organisations”. Subtle changes like this can go a long way to making Hizballah supporters feel more welcome in our campaign.

Hizballah was not on everyone’s minds though. A common theme was that we have been quite beastly to antisemites. Facebook user Ryan Carr, had plenty to say in his one-star review, denouncing us as “Just a ‘victim playing’ group who claim to be the ‘victim’ of ‘persecution’ when in reality they are the ‘persecutors’.” Mr Carr made us realise that we have indeed been persecuting antisemites relentlessly in a way that might be considered a bit much. Stephen Bartrup, was even blunter in his one-star review with a simple demand that we: “Respect our British culture and laws” which we understood as a clear call to stop misusing British anti-racism laws to persecute racists who have traditionally been permitted to practise their craft unmolested. We have therefore decided to find ways to encourage and support antisemites who feel unfairly hounded. Suggestions from our supporters would be welcomed.

“Not a charity but a Zionist front”

Others worried about our branding. Author, Labour Party activist, locksmith and Facebook reviewer Daniel Waterman had such a strong point that he repeated it five times in his review: “Not a charity but a Zionist front. Not a charity but a Zionist front. Not a charity but a Zionist front. Not a charity but a Zionist front. Not a charity but a Zionist front.” Alfonso Capazoli also felt we misrepresented ourselves, suggesting in his review that we rename ourselves “Campaign Against Africans”. We are investigating rebranding options, however we are concerned that they might not meet with the approval of traditionalists at the Charity Commission.

Some reviewers did not feel excluded but had valuable feedback. Expert Facebook reviewer Roger Christian left us a cryptic review demanding: “Ask me why you have missed the mark.” We could not resist, and we were glad that we contacted Mr Christian who told us that we would be considered dismal failures until we succeeded in convincing Eton College to close for Yom Kippur.

“Let’s be an inclusive Campaign About Antisemitism, not against it!”

It is time for Campaign Against Antisemitism to be honest about this feedback and take it to heart. Antisemites are usually deeply devoted to their cause, and rather than excluding and persecuting them, we should be making them feel welcome within our campaign.

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s newly-appointed Director of Inclusivity, said: “Antisemites and Jews should not have separate organisations working against each other: let’s listen and be an inclusive Campaign About Antisemitism, not against it! There is too much strife in the world already.”

The announcement appropriately comes during the Jewish festival of Purim, a celebration of the thwarting of a genocidal antisemitic plot, when it is also traditional to write serious, non-satirical, introspective treatises called “Purim spiels”.

We know we have a way to go before we earn five-star reviews from antisemites, but from everyone else, your feedback has been generously five-star and we urge you to continue by leaving a review of your own.

And to all of our Jewish supporters, Purim Sameach!

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CAA complains to Channel 4 over failure to remove stream of abusive comments on its Facebook videos for Holocaust Memorial Day

The Labour MP for Leeds North West, Alex Sobel, has recieved a string of antisemitic abuse online following an impassioned speech last week in the House of Commons to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

In a candid and emotional speech to the House, Mr Sobel described how the events of the Holocaust had impacted his family and expressed concern that genocide and intolerance was still taking place around the world.

Shockingly, a Channel 4 Facebook video of Mr Sobel’s speech, which has been viewed over 130,000 times, attracted a stream of antisemitic abuse directed at the MP.

Mr Sobel’s heartfelt speech mentioned family members murdered and sterilised by the Nazi regime. He expressed his sorrow for family members that never even had a chance to live, and shared memories of his great aunt in Tel Aviv having numbers tattooed onto her arm and the confusion that caused him as a child.

However, Channel 4’s video of the speech was strewn with abuse such as: “Meanwhile, let’s forget the current Holocaust” and “…not one mention of the genocidal tyranny being inflicted upon the Palestinian people by the people ‘who suffered so much’. It must be due to his personally deep felt shame that he swept this ongoing tragic event under the carpet.” Another user posted “God in heaven. I’m bloody sick of hearing this. Politicians use the Holocaust like a royal flush in poker.”

In response to the shameful comments, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn tweeted: “Appalling that Alex Sobel has received a stream of antisemitic abuse online after Channel 4 posted a video of his speech to mark Holocaust Memorial Day. We must root out this disgusting prejudice from our society.” Twitter users responded by asking Mr Corbyn whether he would start with antisemites in his own Party.

Sadly, since the Alex Sobel video, another post on Channel 4’s Facebook page has also attracted a number of unsavoury antisemitic comments.

In a post commemorating the 73rd liberation of Auschwitz, Channel 4 posted a video showing the horrors found inside the camp. Some of the comments found alongside this include “Yet they are still doing it to the Palestinen’s [sic]”, “The Russians lost more millions and they never ever mention about it”. Another user added “So sad to see how the oppressed have become the oppressors. Free Palestine.”

Many of the comments breach the International Definition of Antisemitism which explicitly states that “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” is antisemitic, but Channel 4 has failed to remove these hateful comments on their posts.

Campaign Against Antisemitism is making a complaint to Channel 4.

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Polish football fans daub antisemitic graffiti on buildings in Woking in football feud

An antisemitic graffiti battle between rival Polish football fans appears to have played out on buildings in Woking. An RTS Widzew Łódź appears to have declared the greatness of the team on a garage door, which a rival has attempted to call the other’s team Jewish, which is intended as an insult. RTS Widzew Łódź had Jewish players before the Holocaust, and even today rival fans burn effigies of Jews as a means of showing their dislike for the club’s Jewish history, even though any Jewish history in the club’s past was annihilated in the Holocaust.

The Woking News and Mail brought the story to light, publishing photographs of the graffiti on two buildings and a garage door. The red graffiti on the garage door states that RTS Widzew Łódź “will never die”. It then appears that someone has added the black graffiti of a star of David. It is very common for Polish football fans to use “Jew” as a term of abuse against RTS Widzew Łódź fans, and this is confirmed by the graffiti on the walls of the buildings: “Zydzew” is a combination of the name of RTS Widzew Łódź with the Polish word for Jew. The name of the club has been scribbled out on the garage door, and it then seems likely that the blue graffiti was added, repeating the letters “RTS” over the star of David.

It seems that for whoever painted this graffiti, the murder of ninety percent of Poland’s three million Jews during the Holocaust was not enough.

Nobody should have to live with the distress caused by threats and intimidation, whether they are expressed in-person or through acts of vandalism and destruction. Anybody with information should contact the police by calling 101.

Image credit: Woking News and Mail

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Find out how students can get involved in fighting antisemitism on campus

Universities are incredibly diverse places, with a wide array of cultures and nations represented on campus. This diversity has led to a new-found level of respect and tolerance in which students of all backgrounds can flourish. This has not been the case for Jewish students.

While ‘safe spaces’ have been instituted to protect minority students, Jewish students have found that their rights are not respected; they have found themselves subject to hostility and aggression with examples of rising antisemitism across the country from Oxford University Labour Club to Birmingham to York to Edinburgh and many more, antisemitic incidents are becoming increasingly concerning. This is epitomised by NUS and the problems surrounding their leadership.

Antisemitism, it seems, is given free reign on campus with little intervention by campus authorities or student representatives.

It is time for students to stand up and do the job that those in positions of responsibility are failing to do: to push antisemitism off campus. Through the Campaign Against Antisemitism’s three-pronged approach of monitoring, exposing and educating we aim to fight back against hate within universities.

If you are a student and are concerned by the tolerance and prevalence of antisemitism on campus, you can join our Monitoring team to track antisemitic incidents on your campus, become a contributor to our online news source Everyday Antisemitism which publicises antisemitic incidents, or join our Outreach and Education team and fight the ignorance and hate that lies at the root of antisemitism.

To join up, visit antisemitism.org/campus.

We are seeking to recruit an Education and Outreach Officer to join our London office

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Campaign Against Antisemitism is a volunteer-led charity dedicated to exposing and countering antisemitism through education and zero-tolerance enforcement of the law. Everything that we do is done by people who volunteer their time, using donations contributed by members of the public. Join the fight against antisemitism by subscribing to our updates, volunteering, or donating.