American Christian Zionist evangelist John Hagee’s organisation, Christians United for Israel (CUFI), was quick to applaud We Believe in Israel’s call to all general election candidates asking them to support Israel and oppose antisemitism. In the event, the call attracted little support from among the 3000 plus candidates.
There are many problems with this initiative which seeks to anathematise defence of Palestinian rights. Many are obvious but the support it has gained from CUFI and not renounced by the pledge organisers is the most egregious. Hagee has a well documented history as an antisemite. His willingness to condemn all Jews to eternal damnation has not prevented Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders warmly welcoming him; nor, it seems, extreme enough for Luke Akehurst to want to distance himself from them. Luke Akehurst, the prime mover behind We Believe in Israel, is not a lone wolf: he is well connected to the Zionist establishment and was appointed by BICOM, which is close to the Israeli Embassy, to lead this project.
Free Speech on Israel has written to Labour candidates who were misled into signing the pledge asking them to reconsider their endorsement. You can see a list of all signatories to the pledge on the CUFI website We encourage you to write to any of your local candidates who signed
Dear candidate
We understand from a list published by Christians United for Israel that you have signed a “pledge for Israel” including endorsement of a deeply controversial document, the “International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition” which attempts to redefine the term “antisemitism” in order to include criticism of the State of Israel.
The IHRA document is the subject of a legal opinion by an eminent human rights lawyer, Hugh Tomlinson QC, showing it to be a threat to freedom of speech and not – as its supporters claim – a necessary tool in the fight against antisemitism.
As an organisation founded by Jewish members of the Labour Party, we urge you to reject attempts to widen the definition of antisemitism from its essential meaning – hatred of Jews because they are Jews – by introducing references to Israel. Those campaigning for adoption of the IHRA document actively conflate criticism of Israel with hatred of Jews, although there is no such necessary link.
Sir Stephen Sedley, a Jewish former appeal court judge, argues strongly against such conflation in a recent article in the London Review of Books.
Proponents of the IHRA document claim that it poses no threat to free speech because it permits criticism of the current government of Israel and allows opposition to settlement building in the Palestinian West Bank. It is perfectly acceptable, they say, to subject Israel to criticism similar to that which is made of other states.
They fail to take into account the many ways in which Israel is entirely different from other states. The IHRA document explicitly rules out, as potentially antisemitic, types of criticism that Palestinians and their supporters are entitled to make in order to highlight their specific history of dispossession and racist discrimination. The document is already being used in the UK to censor campaigns for an end to injustices Palestinians have faced since Zionist settlement of their land began a century ago.
The recent European Parliament debate on this subject starkly demonstrated the point. Social Democrats argued that the IHRA document was nothing more than a harmless contribution to opposing racism against Jews. But they found themselves in the same camp as far-right Islamophobes who saw it as a weapon to be used in Israel’s defence and against its critics, Muslim and otherwise.
We urge you to dissociate yourself from the dishonest campaign by pro-Israel lobbyists to impose the IHRA version of antisemitism on public bodies in the UK.
Sincerely,
Mike Cushman
Richard Kuper
Naomi-Wimborne-Idrissi
For Free Speech on Israel
