Pro Israel lobby groups in the UK are furious at the Labour Party after it published a new code of conduct on anti-semitism which does not adopt their preferred definition which outlaws much criticism of Israel.
The new Labour code of conduct strips out several of the clauses of the Israel lobby-approved “working definition” on anti-semitism published by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
The IHRA document claimed as examples of anti-Semitism, “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” and “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming that the State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”
The latter clause was particularly criticised by Palestine solidarity campaigners and groups like Jewish Voice for Labour, as it risked legally defining support for a unitary democratic state for Palestinians and Israelis alike as “anti-Semitic.”
In March, a delegation of pro-Israel groups and lawmakers (including Labour Friends of Israel’s Joan Ryan) lobbied the British prime minister, calling on her to ban the annual Israeli Apartheid Week from UK campuses. To back up their demands, they cited the IHRA definition, saying it provides “examples of behaviour that qualifies as anti-Semitic, one of which is to claim that the existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavour.”
The pro Palestine Jewish Voice for Labour stated that the new Labour code of conduct encouraged “free speech on issues to do with Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians, and with Zionism.”
But the pro Israel Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council criticised Labour. In a joint statement, the two groups alleged that the new rules “only dilute the definition and further erode the existing lack of confidence that British Jews have in their sincerity to tackle anti-Semitism within the Labour movement.”
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Both groups have been at the forefront of a campaign to portray the Labour movement as riven with anti-semitism.
