CST’s Antisemitic Incidents Report 2011 (pdf) is published today. The report shows that the number of antisemitic incidents in the United Kingdom fell in 2011 for the second year running.
A total of 586 incidents were reported to CST in 2011, a 9% fall from the 645 antisemitic incidents recorded in 2010. Despite this second successive annual fall, the 2011 total is still the fourth-highest annual total since CST began recording antisemitic incidents in 1984. The last six years have seen the six highest annual totals so far recorded by CST: 598 antisemitic incidents in 2006, 561 in 2007, 546 in 2008, 929 in 2009, 645 in 2010 and now 586 in 2011. The 2009 peak reflected antisemitic reactions to that year’s conflict between Israel and Hamas, illustrating the impact external events can have on British antisemitism.
A further 437 reports of potential incidents were received by CST, but upon investigation were not deemed to be antisemitic and are not included in this total. Most incidents are reported directly to CST by incident victims or witnesses.
For the first time ever, CST recorded more antisemitic incidents in Greater Manchester than in Greater London. This is mainly the result of improved reporting of incidents by Manchester’s Jewish community to CST and to Greater Manchester Police, and a close working relationship between CST and GMP.
The breakdown of the incident types shows that there were 92 violent antisemitic assaults in 2011, including one classified as ‘Extreme Violence’; 63 incidents of Damage & Desecration of Jewish property; 394 incidents of Abusive Behaviour, including verbal abuse, antisemitic graffiti and one-off cases of hate mail; 29 direct antisemitic threats; and 8 cases of mass-mailed antisemitic leaflets or emails.
CST spokesman Mark Gardner said:
This fall in incident numbers for a second year is welcome news, but it follows an especially worrying high in 2009.
Antisemitism is not the most important feature in British Jewish life, but it remains a serious problem in some parts of society, and retains the potential to worsen significantly in reaction to external events.
CST will continue to work closely with the police and our partners inside and outside government, to support those whose lives are blighted by bigotry and hatred.
You can download a copy of the report here (pdf), or read the Executive Summary here (pdf).
Four men have pleaded guilty to a 2010 terrorist plot that included the potential targeting of two rabbis, amongst other targets:
Four men inspired by al-Qaeda have admitted planning to detonate a bomb at the London Stock Exchange.
Mohammed Chowdhury, Shah Rahman, Gurukanth Desai and Abdul Miah pleaded guilty to engaging in conduct in preparation for acts of terrorism.
The men, from London and Cardiff, were arrested in December 2010 and were set to stand trial at Woolwich Crown Court.
Five other men have pleaded guilty to other terrorism offences and all nine will be sentenced next week.
The men, who are all British nationals, had been inspired by the preachings of the recently-killed radical extremist Anwar Al-Awlaki.
It emerged that those who admitted planning to target the London Stock Exchange wanted to send five mail bombs to various targets during the run up to Christmas 2010 and discussed launching a “Mumbai-style” atrocity.
A hand-written target list discovered at the home of one of the radical Islamists listed the names and addresses of London Mayor Boris Johnson, two rabbis, the US embassy and the Stock Exchange.
The conspiracy was stopped by undercover anti-terror police before firm dates could be set for attacks.
The terrorists met because of their membership of various radical groups and stayed in touch over the internet, through mobile phones and at specially arranged meetings.
CST was informed by the police of the potential threat to the rabbis when the group was arrested in December 2010, and together with the police we briefed the rabbis and the security officers at their synagogues. This plot is a reminder of the enduring terrorist threat that is faced by the UK Jewish community.
The “radical groups” that the men were associated with were al-Muhajiroun and its various successor groups, including Islam4UK and Muslims Against Crusades, which have been proscribed (pdf) by the government. This is no surprise: one research report (pdf) found that 15% of UK nationals convicted of Islamist terrorist offences had links to al-Muhajiroun or its successor organisations. Some details of the defendants’ connections to these groups appeared in the media at the time of their arrests, and it is likely that more will emerge in the coming days.
Below is Mohammed Chowdhury, the leader of the terrorist plot, holding an Islam4UK placard.
CST is astonished that the Guardian has chosen to mark Holocaust Memorial Day by attacking the funding provided by the government to pay for security guarding at Jewish state schools in England and Wales.
This funding is provided to protect Jewish schools against terrorism. This is a real threat: just this week, as we reported on this blog, the authorities in Azerbaijan announced that they had foiled a terrorist plot relating to a Jewish school in Baku.
The Guardian story is misleading as it suggests that the money provided by the Department for Education pays for CST to provide security at Jewish schools. In fact the money is merely administered by CST and distributed in full to the Jewish schools who then use it to employ their own security guards (not from CST). Previously, these guards were paid for by parental contributions at the Jewish schools. CST does not keep any of the grant money and there is no allowance made for CST’s staff time in administering the funds to each school. In the end the project actually costs CST money, the exact opposite of the impression given by the Guardian.
We remain grateful to the Department for Education and the Secretary of State for providing this funding to alleviate the financial burden on Jewish parents, and we are proud of our role in helping this to take place.
CST’s only funding from government remains the grants given under the Ministry of Justice Victims Fund (previously run by the Home Office), which supports our work with victims of antisemitic hate crime. The overwhelming bulk of CST’s funding is provided by voluntary donations from the UK Jewish community.
If the Guardian had contacted CST for comment before running the story, we could have explained all of this to them.
UPDATE: After a complaint from CST, the Guardian have now added a paragraph near the end of their article which reads:
All the money is distributed by the trust to the schools which then employ the security guards. As the trust’s role is essentially adminstrative, none of the money is retained by the trust or pays for any of the trust’s work.
However, this acknowledgement that the grant does not pay for CST’s work is not reflected in the headline or opening paragraph of the article, which have not been amended.
Ben Cohen has an excellent, thought-provoking article in this month’s Commentary magazine, in which he asks whether it is Jews or antisemites who get to define the word “antisemitism”, and why this matters:
A blurb on a book jacket would seem an unlikely vehicle for the introduction of a new and sinister tactic in the promotion of an ancient prejudice. But in September 2011, a word of appreciation on the cover of The Wandering Who launched a fresh chapter in the modern history of anti-Semitism. And when the dust had settled—what little dust there was—on the events surrounding the blurb, it had become horrifyingly clear that the role of defining the meaning of the term anti-Semitism did not belong to the Jews. It may, in fact, belong to anti-Semites.
[...]
The truth is that the rising fixation with Jewish power in our time has unwittingly revealed Jewish emasculation instead. Jews do not control the discourse; rather, the discourse controls them.
Nonetheless, if we accept that anti-Semitism has, by exchanging violence for discourse, also been emasculated, does its persistence matter, particularly during a period of history that stands out through the presence of a Jewish state and the absence of anti-Semitic legislation in nearly all the countries where Jews live?
That question can be posed in another way: Do we need to sink to the depths of the 1930s in order for anti-Semitism to be taken seriously? Furthermore, we must ask, do Jews need to be subjected to acts of violence and discrimination in order to remind the wider world who the true victims of anti-Semitism are? And even then, can we be confident that the blame for physical manifestations of anti-Semitism will be placed upon the anti-Semites and not the Jews?
Haaretz reports that the authorities in Azerbaijan have foiled an Iranian terror plot to kill staff at a Jewish school in Baku:
Three men were detained last week after planning to attack two Israelis employed by a Jewish school in Baku, the Azerbaijan Ministry of National Security has revealed. Meanwhile, an Azeri commentator considered close to the republic’s president has launched a scathing indictment of Iran.
The Azeri ministry said it had arrested a cell that planned to “kill public activists,” before it became apparent that the intended victims were two Israeli Chabad emissaries, a rabbi and a teacher employed by the “Chabad Or Avner” Jewish school in Baku. The ministry said that the three men, named as Rasim Aliyev, Ali Huseynov and Balaqardash Dadashov, received smuggled arms and equipment from Iranian agents. The action was apparently planned as retaliation to the gunning down of Iranian nuclear scientists.
“The Azeri security forces acted covertly without alerting us,” said Rabbi Shneor Segal, one of the two targets. “It was published that they originally planned to attack ‘people who look Jewish and hold foreign passports,’ near the school, but when the school guards began suspecting them, they started monitoring the area where I live,” he told Haaretz.
Segal added that the second target was Rabbi Mati Lewis.
This is not the first example of terrorists targeting Jewish schools or their staff. CST’s report (pdf) on the history of anti-Jewish terrorism, Terrorist Incidents against Jewish Communities and Israeli Citizens Abroad 1968-2010, includes 16 examples of Jewish schools being targeted for terrorist attack.
Yesterday’s Guardian included a very good article by Tanya Gold regarding antisemitic discourse and the recent incident of a Nazi-themed drinking game on a London School of Economics ski trip, which resulted in a Jewish participant in the trip having his nose broken after objecting to the game.
Predictably, because the article argued that some attacks on Israel and its supporters have their roots in antisemitism or are themselves antisemitic, today’s Guardian carries a series of letters objecting.
One of the letters, from an LSE alumnus, condemns the ski trip incident but then states:
My own Jewish nostrils are very sensitive to any whiff of antisemitism and I never smelled even a hint of it during my LSE years.
To which I can only say, “lucky you!”. When I studied at LSE the Student Union anti-racism officer banned the Jewish Society from participating in ‘anti-racism week’, on the grounds that they were Zionists and therefore themselves racists. It didn’t take “Jewish nostrils” to detect the antisemitic stench in that act.
Another letter was from Karl Sabbagh, who wrote:
Once again a Jewish writer (Tanya Gold, 17 January) complaining about antisemitism deliberately ignores the distinction between false accusations against Jews over the centuries and justified criticism of the Jewish takeover of Palestine, a land that in living memory had a population that was 90% Arab, including my grandparents. Should the victim of a crime keep quiet because false accusations have been made against the criminal in the past? Let it be said loud and clear – it is entirely possible to criticise Israel without being antisemitic. To deny this is to argue against freedom of speech.
Sabbagh is right: it is entirely possible to criticise Israel without being antisemitic. The way to do this is to make a political argument criticising the policies of the Israeli government, as you would any other. The wrong approach would be to criticise those policies on the basis of Israel’s Jewishness – ‘they act that way because they are Jews’ – or to use criticisms of Israeli policy as the basis of a critique of Jews and Jewishness generally. Down that road lies, well, antisemitism.
Why am I not surprised to find that Sabbagh has in the past been guilty of doing both these things? He has even argued that the Israel-Palestine conflict will not end until “there is no such thing as a Jew”.
Funnily enough, the first example comes from a letter by Sabbagh published on the Guardian letters page during the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and southern Israel in January 2009. After condemning Israeli actions and the way they were reported in the media, Sabbagh then asked:
What has happened to the much-vaunted “civilised values” Jews and their religion are supposed to have brought to the world? Why are so many Jews, and particularly Israelis, not more ashamed of what is being done in their name?
The Wandering Who? is as witty and thought provoking as its title. But it is also an important book, presenting conclusions about Jews, Jewishness and Judaism which some will find shocking but which are essential to an understanding of Jewish identity politics and the role they play on the world stage.
We have written about Atzmon’s book previously, here and here. We described it as “quite probably the most antisemitic book published in this country in recent years”, a judgement we stand by. Atzmon attacks “Jewishness”; praises what he calls “Jewish self-haters”; claims the credit crunch was a Jewish conspiracy; and argues that in the future people might think Hitler was right about the Jews. He even cracks Jewish jokes which are not that witty, whatever Sabbagh thinks.
In a public meeting to promote the book, Sabbagh explained why he contributed this approbation:
When people write words which are put on the back of books and then are attacked for defending the books, the usual response is to say “Well I don’t agree with everything in the book but I defend this man’s right to write it.” I’ve written something on the back of this book and it’s not so much I don’t agree with everything in it; I agree with everything in it that I can understand, but there’s an awful lot that I can’t because I’m not a philosopher, but I’m very impressed by the depth of scholarship in this book”.
On the particular question of Jewish identity and its relation to the Israel-Palestine dispute, Sabbagh endorsed Atzmon’s critique of Jewish identity as a negative force and made the astonishing claim that there will not be peace until “there is no such thing as a Jew”:
I think the question of Jewish identity is related to the question of how people understand the Israel-Palestine situation, and if the inconsistencies can be exposed by writing like Gilad’s to the point where actually there is no such thing as a Jew other than somebody who’s not defined as anything else, then it might help to break the solid wall of pro-Israeli feeling that there is in the world and help some kind of solution to come about that is not happening at the moment.”
Antisemitic discourse is now mainstream and to say it all comes from the crimes of the Jewish state feels disingenuous and a denial of the past. Antisemitism is too old to sprout anew from nothing.
The London School of Economics student newspaper, The Beaver, today reports on an appalling antisemitic assault that took place on an LSE Athletics Union ski trip over the Christmas holidays:
LSE students are facing disciplinary action after participating in a Nazi-themed drinking game during the Athletics Union’s ski trip, held at a French mountain-side resort in December 2011. Tensions escalated, resulting in two students engaging in an altercation, one of whom sustained a broken nose from the incident.
‘Nazi Ring of Fire’ involved arranging cards on the table in the shape of a Swastika, and required players to “Salute the Fuhrer.”
A video featuring students making antisemitic comments was uploaded to Facebook, but has since been removed.
It is bad enough that some LSE students thought a ‘Nazi-themed’ drinking game was appropriate behaviour; it is even worse that a Jewish student was himself abused and assaulted when he objected to the game.
To their credit, LSE, the Students Union and the LSE Athletics Union have all condemned these events and disciplinary measures have been promised. CST utterly condemns what occurred and will support LSE Jewish Society and the Union of Jewish Students throughout this process.
We are also heartened by the editorial in The Beaver, which sets out the need to address this outrageous antisemitic behaviour with appropriate moral clarity:
It has come to light this week that, on the LSE Athletics Union’s ski trip to Val d’Isere, a small group of LSE students were involved in the deplorable activity of playing a Nazi-themed drinking game. A Jewish member of the group objected to this behaviour and was the victim of a tirade of antisemitic abuse which led to an altercation in which his nose was broken.
The Beaver condemns this behaviour in the strongest possible terms. Behaviour of this variety is unacceptable, backwards and saddening. In a community as international, multicultural and diverse as that which we have at LSE, it is all the more shocking that behaviour of this level of insensitivity, arrogance and stupidity can occur. Antisemitism, like all forms of discrimination, is absolutely inadmissible, and something that should be confined to the past. However, in a deeply regrettable trend, this variety of casual antisemitism is apparently undergoing a worrying resurgence and appears, in recent years, to have become widespread within university communities and on a wider stage. Similarly egregious events have taken place in recent years; in 2010, at the University of Huddersfield a comparable ‘Hitler drinking game’ was initiated; in November 2011, within the Oxford University Conservative Association there were allegations of students singing antisemitic songs; and more recently, sacked MP Aidan Burley was present at a Nazi-themed stag party (though he denies being involved in the activities).
Perhaps the most saddening element of the event, in addition to the hugely offensive nature of the behaviour of those involved, is the inactivity of those on the fringes, who allowed the events to unfold; not only did they fail to intervene, but turned it into a spectator sport, videoing it on a camera phone.
The idea that casual antisemitism is acceptable as a joke and can be used in a way that will not cause offense is utterly wrong. Whether they realised this or not, these members of the LSE student body offended an entire community through their actions. ‘Casual’ discrimination in any form perpetuates prejudices and enforces negative and false perceptions of races, religions and social communities. The widespread nature of remarks and actions like these mean that the views of many within student communities – and our society as a whole – have been inevitably changed for the worse. If such actions go unchecked, our university will not be the safe place that it can, and should, be for everyone. Our student community is admirably diverse and accepting of others. To protect this tradition, this type of behaviour must be stamped out. Now.
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