Campaign Against Antisemitism’s analysis is that Dr Ali’s actions and statements amount to breaches of the International Definition of Antisemitism and qualify as antisemitic discourse according to our methodology.
In his Gaza rally speech [1], he addressed a former Israeli Prime Minister, “Olmert”, as well as former US President Bush, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and an undefined group of “Warmongers”. However, in the address he made reference to a “god who tells you to stand here”, which implies that he is referring to Jews: those who, in the Torah, were divinely promised the Land of Israel — a view espoused by some contemporary religious Zionists. While his meaning could, perhaps, be considered to include certain evangelical Christian beliefs, these are unlikely to extend to the Christian beliefs of the Presidents Bush and certainly not to the Anglican (now Catholic) Tony Blair. There can therefore be little doubt that, in spite of Dr Ali’s inclusion of American and British premiers in his apostrophising, his remarks were principally addressed to the Jewish people (both of Israel and elsewhere) and to the Israeli Prime Minister explicitly.
Dr Ali went on to imply that it was the responsibility of those he was addressing — apparently principally Jews — to learn the “lessons” of the Holocaust, accusing them of merely “observing the niceties of Holocaust Memorial Day”, the grossly offensive implication of which is that, rather than mourning their relatives and millions of other Jewish victims of genocide, they were in fact doing so in order to further an ulterior political agenda to attack Palestinians. In our analysis, this constitutes a rhetorical manifestation of antisemitism.
Regarding incident [2], by ‘liking’ the assertion that Israel has many active “agents” within British politics whose aim is to prevent criticism of Israel and solidarity with Palestinians, Dr Ali was endorsing the allegation of an Israeli conspiracy to subvert British politics, which is a common antisemitic conspiracy theory. In [3] he again alleged a conspiracy, this time claiming that the International (IHRA) definition of antisemitism is “politically engineered”. In doing so, he was ascribing an ulterior political motive to the many Jewish organisations that have backed it, and according to our analysis was thereby “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.”
In [4], Dr Ali referred to what he believes to be false charges of antisemitism levelled by Jews for hidden reasons; furthermore, in [5] he retweeted an article from a notorious website hosting extreme antisemitic material, which alleges that Jeremy Corbyn has been “vilified” and the Labour Party “bullied” in order to “stifle discussion of Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people”. By characterising those who allege antisemitism as being politically motivated, Dr Ali inevitably included those Jewish groups and individuals who have publicly and repeatedly done so. In doing so, he was deploying the so-called Livingstone Formulation, by accusing Jews who cite evidence of antisemitism of lying, conspiring or having deceitful motives in doing so when there is clear evidence that there have been breaches of the International Definition of Antisemitism.
