By Stuart Littlewood

We are used to political parties weaponising the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism in their efforts to eliminate members who sympathise with the Palestinian cause or voice criticism of the Israeli regime. Now the practice plumbs new depths with a former Conservative leader using it to bash his political opponents in another party.

Jackson Carlaw, a former leader of the Scottish Conservatives, has launched an attack on Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater, Green Party leaders drafted into the Scottish National Party (SNP) government to serve as ministers following a coalition deal, claiming “they’re not fit to serve in the Scottish government” for refusing to sign up to the IHRA definition.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon admitted she hadn’t raised the issue with her new junior ministers. Carlaw had written to Sturgeon after Jewish groups expressed their concerns that the Scottish Green Party refuses to endorse the IHRA definition and had voted in favour of a motion describing Israel as a “racist state“ based on “Jewish supremacy” and calling Zionism a “racist endeavour”.

“If the Green Party won’t sign up to a globally recognised position on anti-Semitism, backed by every other party in Scotland,” said Carlaw, “they’re not fit to serve in the Scottish government. The Greens, especially their government ministers, must endorse this mainstream position or be removed from office. Their views are beyond radical. They are downright dangerous. Nicola Sturgeon cannot turn a blind eye to this extreme view held by her new coalition partners.

“Scotland’s Jewish communities will be aghast if Nicola Sturgeon is willing to tolerate such extreme views in her government. She must act immediately.”

Sammy Stein, the chair of Glasgow Friends of Israel, said it was “very concerning” that there were now ministers with “such extremist views toward the state of Israel and Zionism. It would be important to know how long the FM [First Minister] will give the two Greens to adopt and agree to the Scottish government’s position on the definition of anti-Semitism.”

Jackson Carlaw is founder of the Building Bridges with Israel group,which lobbies for closer ties between Scotland and Israel.

The IHRA definition, however well intentioned originally, is now used as a political weapon to conflate anti-Israel or anti-Zionist views with anti-Jewishness in order to silence informed debate and perpetuate the fantastic claim by immigrants from Eastern Europe that the Holy Land from the river (Jordan) to the sea is theirs, all theirs.

But everyone and his dog knows that the IHRA document is non-legally binding. It has been adopted by only 36 (out of 195) countries and is far from “globally recognised” as Carlaw claims.  

“Truth hurts, but silence kills” (Mark Twain)

Gone are the days when intelligent people automatically believed Israeli flag-waving propaganda. The truth is readily available and staring them in the face. Anyone still doubting the racist nature of the Israeli regime only needs to read the Nation-State Law passed by the Knesset in 2018 — “Zionism’s flagship bill,” as Israeli minister Yariv Levin, a former Speaker of the Knesset, called it.

Anyone can read Arthur Balfour’s infamous “Declaration pledging the government’s “best endeavours” to facilitate the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people without even consulting the wishes of the people who lived there.

Anyone can read about the 1947 UN Partition Plan which allocated the Jews territory within defined borders, and how they declared statehood without borders, seizing strategic Arab lands by armed terror and ethnic cleansing, their militia – the Irgun, Haganah, Palmach and Lehi – raiding towns and villages, forcing the Arab inhabitants to flee and committing numerous atrocities, including the massacres at Deir Yassin and Lydda.

Anyone can read how the Security Council admitted Israel to UN membership in 1949 on condition it honoured the terms of the UN Charter and implemented UN General Assembly Resolutions 181 (the Partition Plan) and 194 (concerning, among other things, the status of Jerusalem, which had been designated a corpus separatum, and the return of Palestinian refugees), and how Israel never had any intention of honouring those obligations.

Anyone can read how, to this day, Israel repeatedly violates provisions and principles of the UN Charter and continues to terrorise Palestinians in their homeland, steal their property, lands and resources, keeping them bottled up under permanent blockade and slaughtering them every now and then.

Anyone can read about the three-class system Israel has imposed on the Holy Land: Jews, who enjoy all the rights; Type A Arabs who have some rights; and Type B Arabs who have practically no rights at all. It is plainly apartheid, and the International Criminal Court defines apartheid as a crime against humanity.

And anyone can read recent reports by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem concluding that Israel is an apartheid state denying basic human rights to millions of Palestinians, and  by Human Rights Watch, which also concludes that Israel is an apartheid state.

“Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having”

The Israel lobby and its supporters are fond of accusing anyone who criticises the regime’s misconduct as “delegitimising Israel” and they use the IHRA definition to smear critics as anti-Semites. Actually, Israel has done a splendid job of de-legitimising itself, and in the process has been de-legitimising the Palestinians for decades by denying them their right to self-determination and freedom of movement – and there’s no sign that this mindset will change.

Carlaw, an important figure in the Scottish parliament, surely knows that the European Convention on Human Rights provides for freedom of expression. He surely knows that Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights says that everyone has that right “without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers”, and Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says much the same thing, subject of course to limitations required by law and respect for the rights of others.

He surely knows that over 150 Jewish faculty members at universities and colleges in Canada published a statement rejecting the IHRA Working Definition of Anti-Semitism because “freedom to criticise the policies and practices of any state without exception, including the State of Israel, is central to accountable scholarship, learning and education”.

He surely knows that more than 600 scholars, artists, and intellectuals from over 45 countries across the world recently lambasted Israeli practices and called for an immediate end to “Israel’s apartheid regime” in the occupied territories. “Israel has established an apartheid regime over the entire territory of historic Palestine, directed against the entire Palestinian people, which it has deliberately fragmented,” says their petition. They rightly take a swipe at the Western powers who “have facilitated and even subsidised for more than seven decades this Israeli system of colonisation, ethnic cleansing and apartheid, and continue to do so diplomatically, economically and even militarily”.

And he surely knows that several legal experts have strongly criticised the IHRA definition, not least Geoffrey Robertson QC, an expert on freedom of speech and human rights, who said that it was not intended to be binding and adopting it “has no legal effect”. He concluded that “it is imprecise, confusing and open to misinterpretation and even manipulation…” and political action against Israel is not properly characterised as anti-Semitic unless the action is intended to promote hatred or hostility against Jews in general.

Sir Stephen Sedley, a former judge in the Court of Appeal, said the examples accompanying the definition “point to the underlying purpose of the text: to neutralise serious criticism of Israel by stigmatising it as a form of anti-Semitism”. He famously remarked: “Free speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative provided it does not tend to provoke violence. Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.”

And that’s only a small sample of expert objections.

What it boils down to is that Carlaw’s insistence that others adopt a flawed document like the IHRA definition, especially in a forum like Parliament, is wildly inappropriate and he should withdraw his remarks about Harvie andSlater.

And what all this means is that there’s NO EXCUSE FOR IGNORANCE about the appalling injustice that has stained the Holy Land for 70-plus years. If people like Carlaw know the truth and still support those responsible maybe it is THEY who are not fit to serve in government.