Campaign Against Antisemitism’s analysis is that Mr Gardiner’s actions and statements qualify as antisemitic discourse according to our methodology.
By suggesting that claims of antisemitism against Jeremy Corbyn are simply made on the basis of his criticism of Israel, rather than Mr Corbyn’s clear history of antisemitism; likewise, by stating that the Labour Party “has not…been antisemitic”, thereby implying that the many experiences of discrimination within the Party documented in the dossier were fabricated [1], Mr Gardiner 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. This constitutes “making mendacious, dehumanising, demonising, or stereotypical allegations about Jews…”
The “antisemitic slogans” Mr Gardiner referred to, which were referred to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) by Campaign Against Antisemitism, were those made through a megaphone by the leader of the so-called ‘Al Quds Day’ march in 2018, who declared: “Some of the biggest corporations who are supporting the Conservative Party are Zionists. They are responsible for the murder of the people in Grenfell, in those towers in Grenfell. The Zionist supporters of the Tory Party.” The decision not to carry forward the prosecution was made by the High Court on the basis that those comments were not “threatening, either explicitly or implicitly” and were not a judgement on whether those comments were antisemitic or not. Indeed the Judges, in their conclusion, stated: “…nothing in this judgment should be taken as condoning anything Mr Ali, or others at the rally whose words are recorded in the transcript, said. Clearly some things that were said were intemperate and deeply offensive and distressing to others, and not simply to those in whose direction they were aimed.” The CPS’s decision to halt the CAA’s private prosecution in the first instance was similarly based on a legal argument regarding freedom of speech, irrespective of the offence caused. The comments, claiming a British Jewish charity was responsible for the Grenfell Tower fire, were clearly antisemitic, and notwithstanding Mr Gardiner’s claims regarding his private correspondence with the CPS, the contents of which were never made public, or the CPS’s claimed position, Mr Gardiner was being mendacious in misleading the BBC audience and the public just before a general election into believing that complaints of genuine antisemitism were being falsely levelled by British Jews in order to attack the Labour Party. In this comment, therefore, Mr Gardiner was also 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. This constitutes “making mendacious, dehumanising, demonising, or stereotypical allegations about Jews…”
