Peter Gregson, who is currently campaigning to get Edinburgh twinned with Gaza City, was recently the victim of a lie in the Jewish Telegraph. It is made more serious in light of Israel’s attack on Gaza on 5 August. The lies were originally promulgated in the Herald and the Guardian.

The Jewish Telegraph article (see above) states Gregson “was suspended from the Labour Party in 2019 for claiming that the holocaust was exaggerated”.

Gregson says this is untrue and that the publication knows this. What Gregson actually said was “Israel exaggerates the holocaust for political ends”. He made the statement to the GMB union’s Scottish secretary because he sought to intentionally the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, which declares that it is anti-Semitic to state that Israel is a racist endeavour or that Israel exaggerates the holocaust

Gregson believes both statements to be truisms. He observes:

Firstly, Israel’s racism: even Israel would not dispute that those professing to be of the Jewish race in Israel have many more rights than the others; indeed Israel’s Nation State Law makes this clear. There are over 60 laws that give these “Jews”* greater rights than the indigenous Palestinians. The claim that it is anti-Semitic to point this out is beginning to be understood as the “weaponisation of anti-Semitism”. The IHRA definition was invented purely to protect Israel from criticism, in its efforts to remove the Palestinians from their land.

In 2018 Gregson posted a petition on change.org calling upon Labourists to declare that “Israel is a racist endeavour” .Over 2,650 people signed it. Gregson points out that it was this action that saw him investigated by the Labour Party.

He notes;

The second aspect of the IHRA definition that aims trip up campaigners is the holocaust reference – it disguises a state’s political manipulation of an accepted mass slaughter.

Gregson has never disputed that six million Jews perished in World War II. When the Herald newspaper made the same claim of Gregson in July 2019, Gregson complained to the Independent Press Standards Office (IPSO). His complaint was dismissed.

Gregson had pointed out to both IPSO and the Herald that they were misunderstanding basic grammar. He said that saying “Israel exaggerates the holocaust for political ends” is very different from saying “the holocaust was exaggerated”. In the first, the subject is acting on the object in a manipulative way; the second is a generalised statement purporting to be a truism. Another example might be “Trump exaggerates racism in the US for political ends” which is not the same as saying “racism in the US is exaggerated”.

In an effort to explain his statement, Gregson had pointed out to the GMB and IPSO that of the 11 million killed in the holocaust, as far as Israel presents history, the slaughter was purely about six million Jews. He notes Israeli university courses on the holocaust ignore non-Jews; there is no mention of the millions of Russians, Poles, Roma and others murdered en masse by the Nazis. Norman Finkelstein documents in his book, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the exploitation of Jewish suffering, Israel’s use of the holocaust as its “indispensable ideological weapon”. (Finkelstein’s parents suffered in the Warsaw ghetto). Holocaust survivor Dr Hajo Meyer’s 2010 speech on Israel came to a similar conclusion (see The Misuse of the Holocaust for Political Purposes).

Even Israelis admit they exploit the Holocaust. Former Israeli Education Minister Shulamit Aloni said in a US interview that “anti-Semitism is a trick. We always use it“. The interviewer said: “Often, when there is dissent expressed in the United States against policies of the Israeli government, people here are called anti-Semitic. What is your response to that as an Israeli Jew?”. Aloni replied: “Well, it’s a trick, we always use it. When from Europe somebody is criticising Israel, then we bring up the holocaust…”

Gregson believes that the Guardian, another pro-Zionist publication, is no better than the Herald. He was criticised in this article by the Guardian and the Observer for giving this speech to the “Keep Talking” group. The newspapers declared that he had spoken at a meeting alongside holocaust deniers. When he pointed out to the Guardian copy editor that he was the only one on the platform that evening and a holocaust denier had simply asked a question from the audience, the Guardian argued that they were factually correct in that both had actually “spoken” at the meeting. It was this kind of ridiculous guilt by association that led to Gregson establishing the Campaign Against Bogus Antisemitism. (Gregson declares that if he had known in advance that holocaust deniers would be present in the audience, he would still have done his speech – and explained that chemistry proved those denying the gas chambers to be wrong [he has a degree in biochemistry])**

In making his observations on Israel, Gregson explains he was following Israeli historian Illan Pappe’s advice, as given in his “Lets Breach the IHRA”.

Gregson believes the Oxford English Dictionary definition of anti-Semitism, “hostility to or prejudice against Jewish people”, to be the only one that is correct. He calls upon UK citizens to visit the Campaign Against Bogus Antisemitism’s website to find out why the UK has, since the IHRA definition was introduced in 2014, seen a rise in “anti-Semitism” – he considers it’s because a different, pro-Israel definition, has been promulgated. Gregson declares:

This twisted definition purports to claim that pro-Palestine anti-racist campaigners are no better than Hitler. It is promoted by Zionists to justify their apartheid regime and Israel’s murderous attacks upon the Palestinian people. And so, as more and more UK citizens protest at Israel’s crimes, more and more “anti-Semites” are “exposed” in the press. Why do we allow this? Liberty refuses to act and any politician that mentions it as an issue is hounded out of their party.

Gregson had employed a lawyer to explore taking the Herald to court for slander; he was advised he would lose, as newspapers were “entitled to an opinion and anti-Semitism was a matter of opinion”. Because so many UK citizens have lost their freedom of speech on Israel, he and others have campaigned to get Liberty involved, but their director, Martha Spurrier, is unmoved, in spite of the fact that a motion was passed at its 2018 AGM calling upon it to act.

He is writing to the Jewish Telegraph calling upon it to correct the slur, but he doubts it will listen.

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For more information, contact Pete Gregson on 0758 472 2191. For an understanding of where the IHRA definition came from, go to www.bogusantisemitism.org/the-ihra-definition-of-antisemitism

The view that newspapers and Zionists could say whatever they like on anti-Semitism accusations was borne out when veteran Palestine campaigner Tony Greenstein, a law graduate, found the judge unsympathetic when he took the Campaign Against Antisemitism to court, for calling him a “notorious anti-Semite”. He lost and was told to pay over £20,000 costs. Read about the legal case here. The Jewish Chronicle noted that because Greenstein couldn’t pay this, having declared himself bankrupt, the former Labour councillor behind the Campaign Against Antisemitism, Josh Jones, had to meet the costs. The judge’s view? “Anti-Semitism is a matter of opinion.”

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One might wonder what Liberty, our very own civil rights body, is doing about the IHRA definition? Precisely nothing, in spite of being persuaded by Jewish Voices for Labour activist and Liberty Committee member Jonathan Rosenhead into adopting a 2018 AGM motion against it. See Tony Greenstein’s blog post of October 2018, Why are the Officers and Employees of Liberty Refusing to Implement its Policy of Opposition to the IHRA? In 2019 Pete Gregson repeatedly emailed, then struggled at the AGM, to get some action too, with no more success. (Sadly, luminaries such as Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby support the IHRA definition, so Liberty probably think it’s doing right by keeping out of it!).

The IHRA definition has been adopted by all major political parties except the Greens. It has been adopted by 40 per cent of local authorities, and all the major trade unions, except the public sector PCS union. It has been adopted by the police, by the UK government, by the Scottish Parliament and by many universities. As a result, many have suffered for declaring Israel to be racist, through being fired or suspended or expelled; any court action in their favour struggles to be implemented. See www.bogusantisemitism.org/legal-battles-lost-and-won and www.bogusantisemitism.org/rogues-gallery

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*Gregson disputes the claim that the Zionists are Jews, in his article, published in Redress Information & Analysis.

**Gregson believes we need to speak to holocaust deniers at every opportunity, to explain why they are wrong. Shouting and shunning them achieves little, he says, for it only pushes them into the shadows, where their lies fester and multiply. Sunlight, he believes, is the best disinfectant. He notes what Gitta Sereny and Noam Chomsky had to say about dealing with holocaust deniers. Sereny observed in the New Statesman “…we dare not ignore them. Their lies must be confronted and exposed as often as they appear..” Raul Hilberg, the greatest holocaust historian, said that we might even learn from them as they seek to poke holes in our narrative. 

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Read more about the attacks on Gregson for his campaigning work at www.bogusantisemitism.org/rogues-gallery/#pete-gregson. The Edinburgh-Gaza twinning campaign can be found at www.twingaza.com . Balfour, the man behind Israel’s creation, is from Lothian and was schooled in Edinburgh, so Zionists particularly hate what Gregson is trying to do.