NO: Anti-Zionism is not Antisemitism
JVL Introduction
When Professor David Miller was fired in 2021 JVL said “The sacking of David Miller by the University of Bristol opens up a grim prospect for British academia”.
In February this year his resolute fightback secured a triumph at his Employment Tribunal, a finding of unfair dismissal. The 120-page detailed judgement has now been published.
We have not agreed with David Miller’s take on a number of issues, but JVL has always asserted that Bristol’s actions were wrong, unjust, and a threat to all other academics.
The judgement in his case provides an invaluable precedent for anyone targeted for their anti-Zionist views. These have now been established as a protected philosophical belief under the Equality Act 2010. The right to hold anti-Zionist beliefs is protected in the workplace.
The full judgement also reveals in detail just how desperate Bristol was to respond to establishment pressure to be rid of their turbulent professor. The pressures on universities to silence voices for Palestine remain strong, but this judgement lessens the threat.
JR/MC
This article was originally published by The Guardian on Mon 14 Oct 2024. Read the original here.
Anti-Zionist beliefs ‘worthy of respect’, UK tribunal finds
Judges say unfairly dismissed academic David Miller’s views on Israel should be protected by anti-discrimination laws
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I heard David Miller speak along with Aaron Maté in Tower Hamlets recently – there was a packed and mixed audience and no pushback on the speakers.
Miller especially I feel takes some of the left out their comfort zone on Zionism. He may not be right about the extent of Zionism’s political power, and there is the issue of whether imperialism is or has been the primary driver, a question that was addressed at the meeting.
But we must listen and debate on the facts, and recognise that talk of a ‘Jewish billionaire class’ using their leverage to get heads of universities fired and pro-Israel politicians elected, as mentioned by Aaron, is political reality and not a trope.
See https://youtu.be/xo8pfyIEXlg?si=8wiIej99dtlTChNO
I am also struck by this on ‘birthright’ trips:
‘Birthright [Israel] Trippers Find Visiting Israel During War Is a Unique and Invigorating Experience’
https://birthrightisrael.foundation/blog/birthright-israel-trippers-find-visiting-israel-during-war-is-a-unique-and-invigorating-experience/
Craven Britol University was terrorised by Zionists. It worked for the Zionists because opposition to Israel’s dispossesion and genocide of indigenoous people has been so easily labelled as ‘antisemtism’, by Zionists, with our establishment politicians and establishment media being part of the big lie.
A landmark judgement. The Zionists don’t always win. We must never give in.
There’s nothing wrong with what Dr Miller believes and he has spoken and written much truth about Zionism and Israel. But personally, whilst I’ve sometimes responded in agreement to tweets he’s put on TwitterX, I can’t help a part of me, left over from childhood, recoiling with dismay at — what? the tone, manner, the sheer obsessiveness, of it and I can easily imagine there are others who react more negatively than I do, who then react, and act, in ways damaging to the potentialities of the message.
‘Beware fanaticism’, someone once said, whether in religion, politics, dietary habits … I don’t suppose serious campaigners through history who have achieved great things have often been otherwise than fanatical. ‘The style is the man’ may well be true, but so often we have to separate the truth of what someone says, be they artist, poet, philosopher, from the person and the way they say it.
It’s often hard to warm to prophets.
The importance of this judgement is obvious. It is equally obvious that the Union of Jewish Students is little more than a prong of the pro-Israel propaganda machine as well as a hot-house for pro-Israel political careerists. Equally the judgement demonstrates that the Community Security Trust, whatever its foundational intentions, has no right to be taken seriously as a reliable source of information on anti-semitism, soaked as it is not only in Zionist sympathies but legal subjectivism.
Of course, Bristol University, who wrongly sacked David Miller, has form. As reported on this website on 31st August last year, Rebecca Ruth Gould was smeared as an anti-semite for her pro-Palestine views, with Tory ex-minister Eric Pickles (head of the British delegation to the IHRA conference that signed off the miserable “working definition of anti-semitism”) demanding that she be sacked.
I have to say, that I do remember a highly awkward comment from the JVL board, when the story around Miller – and the complaints against him – broke some time ago.
More in specific : I do remember that I felt obliged at the time, to squarely speak out in favour of Miller. And my argument did not stop with a formal Appel for the Right of Free Speech, but I do remember of wholeheartedly agreeing with Miller on the very CONTENT of his “controversial” comments on the sociopathic (my words) Jewish Zionist ideology and the psychopathic (my words) state of mind of the blind followers of that ideology.
I guess 10/7 and the aftermath of 10/7 did help a lot of people to finally open their eyes for the real destructive (including genocide) colonial perpetrator in Palestine and I am not referring of course to the fully legitimately operating Liberation Movement of Hamas and their acts of completely understandable resistance against the crual Zionist occupier.
But I am referring to the actions of continuing land theft and displacement – with the self-evident objective of realising the final Nakba – with regard to the Palestinians by the Jewish Zionists, living inside and outside of occupied Palestine. And Including all those western countries of cooperating (collaborating) Christian Zionists, that are heavily bankrolling these horrific acts of Jewish-Zionist mass-destruction.
Furthermore I am of the opinion, that Zionism has to be completely abandoned – either voluntarily or by force (all-out BDS) – and that Palestine should be entirely handed back (from the river to the sea) to its right-full owners : The autochthonous Palestinians…
There is no place for settler colonial jewsupremacism in the Middle East, neither is there place for white-supremacist fellow-travellers of the Zionist settler colonial project…!
This is not the first time. In 2012 a Zionist activist went to court making harassment and antisemitism claims against a teachers union, the University and College Union. Despite a heavyweight team of Zionist lawyers (Mishcon de Reya) the case was thrown out on just about every aspect. Specifically the court said:
“150
It seems to us that a belief in the Zionist project or an attachment to Israel or any similar sentiment cannot amount to a protected characteristic. It is not intrinsically a part of Jewishness and, even if it was, it could not be substituted for the pleaded characteristics, which are race and religion or belief.”
The full judgement can be found here:
https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/JCO/Documents/Judgments/eemployment-trib-fraser-v-uni-college-union-judgment.pdf
Good. It would appear that members of a lowly employment tribunal have a better intellectual grasp of freedom of speech than our misguided rulers.
The pernicious effect of the adoption – in universities and elsewhere – of the IHRA definition of antisemitism is made clear in the court’s analysis of the Miller case.
Bristol University twice rejected the complainants’ case against Miller for antisemitism and misconduct when the definition of antisemitism was (seemingly) the Jerusalem Definition – hatred of Jews and Jewish institutions because they are Jewish.
Unsurprisingly, the complainants against Miller insisted on the IHRA definition being used (though the university hadn’t agreed whether to adopt it and didn’t do so for about a year). By delaying the case against Miller until the IHRA definition was eventually adopted the university was in breach of its disciplinary procedures.
As the court also noted, the university’s use of the subjective, imprecise IHRA definition to justify its quasi-legal actions against an employee is also unfair and misguided.
The court’s judgement is well worth reading in full to get a picture of the pressures faced by all parties and their responses to them.
Craven Bristol University was terrorised by Zionists. This worked easilys for the Zionists because any opposition to Israel’s dispossession and genocide of the indigenous people of the land has been so easily labelled as ‘antisemitism’ by the Zionists and because our establishment politicians and our establishment mass media support the big lie.
Personally, I think there is a more specific distinction that should be made. Most of the opinions described as ‘anti-Zionist’ are really opinions critical of the policies of the current Israeli government. If Zionism is a belief that a state should exist that guarantees the right of Jewish people to live there without fear of discrimination on the grounds of their ethic group, then I am a Zionist. But I do not think that such a state should draw distinctions between its citizens on the ground of their ethic origin. So, all Jews would be entitled to citizenship, but once established as citizens, all should be equal before the law.
Such states exist, indeed are not uncommon. Many countries have a ‘jus sanguinis’, which entitles those with ancestral links to obtain citizenship (eg Greece, Turkey, Ireland, Germany, to name just four). These countries do not, however, privilege citizens without ethnic ancestry.
“If Zionism is a belief that a state should exist that guarantees the right of Jewish people to live there without fear of discrimination on the grounds of their ethic group, then I am a Zionist”
Where do the national aspirations of the people already living there fit into that, and why should one groups claims (Jewish people) come at the cost of the others (Palestinians) ?
Can’t there be one democratic state where all are equal, regardless of ethnicity or religion ?
I am sorry about the unintentional duplication of my previous comments.
I add here that I think that David Miller or indeed anyone is entitled to state strong criticism of the Zionism-inspired dispossession and genocide of the long-term indigenous inhabitants of land which has been forcibly colonised by the externally heavily armed and externally massively funded and relatively new State of Israel.
“If Zionism is a belief that a state should exist that guarantees the right of Jewish people to live there without fear of discrimination on the grounds of their ethic group, then I am a Zionist” By that definition, then a Zionist is any Jew who lives in a country which guarantees the right etc etc. I live in United Kingdom, where for my entire life I have been guaranteed this right by custom and by statute. Does this make me a Zionist? Of course not. Zionism is very specifically an ideology which, however carefully it is worded, proposes a land where Jews predominate and all law is Jewish law, however that is defined. Do Jews actually need such a nation? Not if they’re content where they are they don’t. This doesn’t mean I think Israel should be dismantled and the Jews living there should be sent back to the nations they came from. It’s far too late for that. The issue of resettlement should be a dead issue by now, and if matters were being handled in a mature way they would be. The key issue now is establishing a modern society in which Jews and non-Jews live together according to a mutually-agreed legal and contitutional framework; in other words, to turn Israel into the genuinely democratic state which it has always falsely claimed to be. Which explains why I would never under any circumstances describe myself as a Zionist.I am a Jew: that’s sufficient for me.