Thread by @daverich1

The second @BristolUni QC’s report into David Miller has been leaked. It exonerates Miller just like the first one did: nothing he said was antisemitic. How did they reach this conclusion? They used the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-wins… 🧵👇

The QC was “asked to take into account” the IHRA definition of antisemitism, but devotes several pages of the report to criticism of IHRA by Tomlinson, Sedley, Feldman & Stern. Only one opinion supporting IHRA is given, even though it is backed by most Jewish orgs in this country

Instead they clearly preferred the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism's definition of antisemitism as “hatred, discrimination, prejudice or hostility against Jews *as Jews*, or Jewish institutions *as Jewish institutions*” (their emphasis) - and this is the problem.

Antisemites rarely say that they hate Jews "as Jews" or because they are Jewish: even Oswald Mosley claimed “we do not attack Jews on racial or religious grounds.” That’s not how it works, and especially not for sociology professors who claim to be left wing and anti-racist

Instead antisemites use coded language to avoid being charged with antisemitism. There are countless well-known examples of this. Stalin’s rootless cosmopolitans. Orban’s faceless speculators. Hobson’s financiers of a single and peculiar race. Icke’s Rothschild Zionists

The Elders of Zion. The neo-cons. North London intellectuals who stick together. Zionazi child-killers and organ stealers. Triple brackets and happy merchant memes. There is a limitless lexicon of coded antisemitism that never uses the J-word.

This is why the formulation of antisemitism as “discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews” that is at the heart of the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, marketed as an alternative to the IHRA definition, is so weak and ineffective

The precise language may change but the patterns of thought in Miller's work and his caricatures of Jews & Jewish organisations are drawn from precisely the same reservoir of antisemitic thinking used by anti-Jewish agitators throughout much of the 19th & 20th centuries

Bristol Uni's QC seems oblivious to all of this. They do not declare any expert knowledge in antisemitism nor do they appear to have sought external expert advice. They repeatedly say “I am not in a position to judge the accuracy” of Miller’s claims but give an opinion anyway

Bear in mind what the QC was asked to assess: Miller's allegation that the Union of Jewish Students and Bristol Jewish Society are “directed by the State of Israel”, used as “political pawns by a violent, racist foreign regime” in a “campaign of manufactured hysteria”;

His claim of an “all-out onslaught by the Israeli government on the left globally” , an “attempt by the Israelis to impose their will all over the world” & “Britain is in the grip of an assault on its public sphere by the state of Israel and its advocates”;

His call to “defeat the ideology of Zionism in practice”, “It’s fundamental to Zionism to encourage Islamophobia & anti-Arab racism”, “Zionism is and always has been a racist, violent, imperialist ideology… endemically anti-Arab and Islamophobic… It has no place in any society”

And his his frankly bizarre description of Laura Marks and Emma Barnett as “two of the most energetic Zionist campaigners in British public life” who “set upon” the newly-elected head of the MCB. None of this is antisemitic? Do me a favour.

This is the damage done by the Jerusalem Declaration & the broader campaign against the IHRA definition. They have thrown up enough dust in the eyes of people trying to assess claims of antisemitism that egregious offenders like Miller get to stroll right through in the confusion

If antisemitism only counts if it is directed “against Jews as Jews”, then anyone who manages to avoid the J-word gets a free pass. Use coded language, dress it up as anti-Zionism, and you'll fool a lot of people

Miller lost his job anyway, but this QC's report shows just how much damage has been done to the struggle against antisemitism by opponents of IHRA and advocates of the JDA. They have carved out a space for antisemitic ways of thinking to be perpetuated via anti-Zionist politics

This is why the adoption of the IHRA definition, favoured by all mainstream Jewish organisations in this country, matters, and why the Jerusalem Declaration is not just a weaker alternative but is actively harmful. Don't fall for it.