Campaign Against Anti-Semitism - Questions

Once again, an intervention by the so-called Campaign Against Anti-Semitism has generated the expected feedback from the usual sources, while an increasing number of observers are expressing reservations about what has been presented to media and politicians. This time, it is the regular marches in solidarity with the Palestinian people that are being targeted.

What has been claimed can be put directly: CAA head man Gideon Falter was out walking in central London on the Saturday before last, and in the vicinity of the Aldwych came across a Palestinian solidarity march. This happened by coincidence, you understand. Also purely coincidental was the presence of someone to video Falter’s encounter with the Police.

He was then given a platform by the Murdoch Sunday Times to claim “I was treated like a criminal for being Jewish. The Met chief must go”. Do go on. “Being Jewish in pubic feels like a brave act. Last weekend I went to Synagogue, as I do most Saturdays. After the service I went for a walk, as I do most Saturdays. It was early afternoon … and I was with five others”.

And? “At Aldwych, we came across the pro-Palestinian protest and we started to cross the road as the front of the march got to us. Suddenly I felt hands on me. I looked around to see a Police officer, who was shoving me on to the pavement. He said: ‘You are quite openly Jewish, this is a pro-Palestinian march. I’m not accusing you of anything but I’m worried about the reaction to your presence’”. Some seriously clumsy language from the Met’s finest.

However, and here we encounter a significantly-sized however, the BBC’s account, while it stresses “Mr Falter … says he was not there to counter-protest”, also notes that the cops told him “You will be escorted out of this area so you can go about your business, go where you want freely, or if you choose to remain here because you are causing a breach of peace with all these other people, you will be arrested”. “With all these other people”.

Falter has, meanwhile, sounded off at length about his experience, and “said Sir Mark [Rowley, Met Commissioner] should resign or be sacked and he claimed ‘racists, extremists and terrorist-sympathisers’ had been ‘emboldened’ by the Met's ‘failure to curtail the marches’”. So who backs him?

Suella Braverman. R-i-i-i-ght. That’s the same Suella Braverman who, in a routine act of provocation, smeared peaceful protests as “hate marches”. Moreover, if this is to be investigated properly, the authorities need to see the uncut footage from the CAA, plus any other footage and photos. Why so?

It should be remembered that the CAA has significant previous form, from its list of Honorary Patrons including at least six individuals who have either exhibited racist behaviour, used racism for their own ends, or been singularly unwise in their choice of language in areas concerning race, through one of those Patrons hosting a hate preacher at the Commons, to appearing as if it wanted to professionally ruin one of its targets. Enough wasn’t enough.

But recently, Falter and the CAA overreached themselves, putting the boot into Labour leader Keir Starmer when the latter visited the Holocaust Memorial during a visit to Berlin. “It is a matter of decency and long-established convention in Germany that you never stoop to using the Berlin Holocaust Memorial as some kind of a prop” told the CAA. There was more.

“But to incorporate the Memorial as the backdrop for a political clip that does not even mention the Holocaust is an insult”. The blowback came from … Margaret Hodge, Ruth Smeeth, and Lee Harpin. Ms Hodge told “I’m fed up of CAA using antisemitism as a front to attack Labour. Time to call them out for what and who they really are. More concerned with undermining Labour than rooting out antisemitism”. OH WHAT A GIVEAWAY.

So the CAA was out of favour, and out of time, when its head man just happened to be in the same place as a march in solidarity with the Palestinians. Now, a moment of verbal idiocy from the Met has given his organisation a new credibility which it may not totally deserve.

Let’s see all the footage, from the CAA and elsewhere. No pressure, now.

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