The Labour Party’s new guidelines on antisemitism are to include the requirement that “evidence of antisemitic intent” must be demonstrated. A short thread before Shabbat on how that will work in practice, by someone who is dealing with incidents daily. <thread>
At CAA @antisemitism we have been evolving methodology to be able to carefully assess and quantify antisemitism. It soon becomes clear to those who do such work that-excepting in very extreme cases-proving antisemitic intent is not only problematic, but also misses the point.
Let me give you an example: Naz Shah admitted that her words and social media activity were antisemitic. She said “I wasn’t antisemitic, [but] what I put out was antisemitic”. bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan…
We are not going to gainsay Ms Shah when she says that she is not “in her heart of hearts” an antisemite. The problem is not what she privately felt but what she publicly expressed.
Ms Shah is clear, as we are, that her activity disseminated antisemitic ideas and may have emboldened antisemites. The end result is the same: more antisemitism.
Antisemitism spreads and grows whether it is disseminated by those who hate Jews in their heart, by those who are ignorant, or by the misguided. If you’re a political party, it doesn’t matter which. You can't wish it away, you must deal with it.
There is no microscope for examining people’s hearts; but there are reliable methods and hard criteria for evaluating what they write and say. Labour are fooling no-one: they need to adopt the IHRA as it is & stop trying to disingenuously dodge and disguise their own racism.
