Karl Sabbagh - The Antisemitism Wars: How the British Media Failed Their Public

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How the British media failed their public

Karl Sabbagh

SKYSCRAPER PUBLICATIONS

The Antisemitism Wars

Published by Skyscraper Publications Limited 20 Crab Tree Close, Bloxham, 0X15 4SE www.skyscraperpublications.com

First published 2018

Copyright information:

The Summer of Antisemitism,Viscious (sic) propaganda, and Conclusion: Karl Sabbagh

The Story So Far.Tony Greenstein

Giving the Truth a Voice: Cyril Chilson

Smoke and Mirrors: Thomas Suarez

The IHRA definition: The Palestine Return Centre, Geoffrey Robertson QC, and Stephen Sedley.

Exposing the Vigilantes: Redress Information and Contact

Who Will Edit the Editors?: Kathy-Anne Mendoza, and the Canary website

Enough Tropes to Hang Themselves: Al Jazeera television, transcripts ofThe Lobby

The Conduct of Baroness Tonge: The House of Lords Privileges Committee report on the conduct of Baroness Jenny Tonge contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0.

Labour, Antisemitism and the News: Dr Justin Schlosberg and Dr Laura Laker of the Media Reform Coalition.

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be resold, lent, hired out or otherwise circulated without the express prior consent of the publisher.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN-13:978-1-911072-36-2

Cover concept Thomas Suarez

Typesetting by chandlerbookdesign.com

Printed in the United Kingdom by CPI

It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Tony Greenstein

Karl Sabbagh

Cyril Chilson

Thomas Suarez

• Anti-Semitism: The IHRA definition and its consequences 90

for freedom of expression

operate

Kerry-Anne Mendoza

Note on terminology:

I have used the spelling antisemitism throughout. This is the spelling recommended by the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) and although I do not agree with all recommendations of the IHRA, I accept this one. But since some of the documents I quote use other spellings, principally anti-Semitism - perhaps because this is Microsoft Words default spelling when the writers spellcheck is used - I have not always changed the spelling in quoted documents.

Footnotes and endnotes

Notes by Karl Sabbagh are printed as footnotes, using symbols. Notes in material by other writers are printed as Endnotes, from page 243.

All notes in Karl Sabbagh's pieces are identified by symbols and printed at the foot of the page

PART 1

THE ANTISEMITISM WARS

O n the day I started writing this chapter, the British newspapers were reporting in detail a speech by a former Prime Minister of the U.K., Gordon Brown, in which he urged the Labour Party to adopt in full something called the IHRA definition of antisemitism*. I always thought that the job of newspapers was to publish news, and Gordon Browns speech was as newsworthy as a speech by the Pope praising the Roman Catholic Church. Brown is a passionate supporter of Israel, a member of Labour Friends of Israel and a man who, when prime minister, said I was incredibly proud to be the first British Prime Minister to address the Knesset and as long as I am Prime Minister Israel will always have the firmest of friends in the British Government.

And a few days before I finished compiling the material for the book, the Labour Party National Executive Committee accepted

The best way to understand the IHRA definition is to read the opinion of Geoffrey Robertson QC, in the Documents section of this book, p. 90 But so as not to disrupt the flow you may take it as read for now that, in the words of the American lawyer who drafted it, The definition was not drafted, and was never intended, as a tool to target or chill speech.

the entire IHRA definition along with its eleven examples, and rejected a qualifying statement from Jeremy Corbyn designed to defuse some of the worst anti-free-speech effects of the definition if put into action.

The summer of 2018 has seen an extraordinary outpouring of invective against the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn, by high-profile people, all of whom have long been supporters of Israel and critics of anyone who supports the Palestinians. This reached its zenith (or nadir) when a former chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, said I know of no other occasion in these 362 years where Jews, the majority of our community, are asking is this country safe to bring up our children?.

Just pause to think about this. What sort of event could instil fears for their own safety in perhaps a quarter of a million British Jews? (The majority of our community) To ask Is this country safe to bring up our children? suggests that antisemites, perhaps many of them, are on the march in anti-Jewish demonstrations, harassing Jewish children as they leave their schools, agitating for laws to discriminate against Jews, and controlling the media to produce a torrent of antisemitic coverage. Consider the Battle of Cable Street in 1936, when Oswald Moselys antisemitic British Union of Fascists paraded in Jewish areas of the East End. It seems to me highly likely that more Jews asked is this country safe to bring up our children? at that time - and with better reason -than in August, 2018.

In fact, the remark that Sacks claimed has made the majority of [the Jewish] community fear for their safety, was made by Jeremy Corbyn about a couple of British Zionists, in a meeting five years ago in 2013, when he said that their hostile reactions to a rather witty speech by the Palestinian Ambassador to the UK suggested that they didnt understand English irony, in spite of living in the UK probably all their lives.

Sacks comment on this remark raises many questions. Were a quarter of a million Jews really so terrified by the remark, made five years ago, that they got in touch with Sacks to tell him of their fears? And if so, did they explain why an accusation of not understanding English irony was so hurtful that they were thinking of giving up their British citizenship, uprooting themselves and leaving the country they have lived in all their lives? In any case, what on earth is antisemitic about Corbyns remark? We can be pretty sure that no Jew said in 1936 at least they are not accusing us of not understanding British irony - that would really make me want to leave the country.

But of course, widespread and flagrant expressions of antisemitism have not occurred. What then is it that British Jews are really complaining about?

This book tries to answer that question, by showing how a determined phalanx of supporters of Israel, ranging from Israeli diplomats and official Jewish organisations to individual freelance agitators recording meetings and roaming social media, distort and misrepresent what anti-Zionists and supporters of Palestine say, and sometimes fabricate reports of antisemitism where none exists. Indeed it is reaching the stage where Zionist as a noun or adjective has actually been given two meanings. It means Jewish if used by a non-Jew, allowing anti-Zionists to be accused of antisemitism, (this was the basis of the attack on Corbyns irony remark), but a Jew can still call himself a Zionist in the original sense of a supporter, Jew or non-Jew, of the right of Israel to take over Palestine when self-applied by people who hold that particular political view.

Sacks was one of a number of leading British Jews who seized an opportunity presented by the British media to use whatever weapons they could manufacture to attack a Labour Party which, at times over the last year or two, in the light of the disarray among the Conservatives, looked as if it had a chance of forming a government. And a government with Corbyn at its head would destroy the cosy relationship that has endured between British governments and Israel since Israel was established, and usher in