Lessons in Bias – the CAA’s guides for schools

 JVL Introduction

The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) has produced a series of guides intended for teachers to produce lessons about antisemitism for primary and secondary schools. Members of JVL’s education group, Tony Booth, Miriam David and Glyn Secker, have analysed these materials carefully. They found that they lack impartiality, pay insufficient attention to evidence and rely, at times, on bizarre sources of support. They reinforce JVL’s concern voiced to the Charities Commission, that the CAA is a political organisation, with a political programme.

The guides are designed to promote a concern about antisemitism, which the authors of this article share, and they provide some shocking and important examples. Yet they undermine attempts to reduce antisemitism by their approach and the inaccurate claims they make. They promote the idea that all antisemitic remarks are always voiced by antisemites who should be shown zero tolerance. This rules out the engagement, dialogue and education which, we believe, provides the best route to reducing discrimination. The CAA claims that their materials have been endorsed by BBC Teach as they appear in a list of resources recommended for teaching about Holocaust Memorial Day. We doubt whether they have been fact-checked by the BBC and are writing to ask them.

Lessons in Bias

The Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Guides for Schools

Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people but love your neighbour as yourself.

Leviticus Chapter 19 verse 18

In this article we point out some of the difficulties with the guides on antisemitism produced for teachers by the Campaign against Antisemitism (CAA), called ‘Love Your Neighbour’. They can be accessed from the CAA website and also through a BBC Teach list of resources for Holocaust Memorial Day. Because they appear on a BBC list, CAA claims that the BBC has endorsed them. We wonder if this is an overstatement. We doubt they have been carefully checked by the BBC. They show considerable partiality and insufficient regard to evidence and, at times, draw on bizarre sources of support.

The teacher guides are accompanied by 40 Power Point slides with a few linked videos. The first two guides to be produced were aimed at Church of England and Catholic Schools, and then a third was added for non-denominational schools. Differences between the versions are slight, with a few extra quotes from senior church figures in those targeted at Christian schools. There is no version for Islamic, Jewish, Hindu or Sikh schools.

The guides are written from the perspective of an observant Jew engaging in an interfaith dialogue. The size of the UK Jewish population is taken from the census figure of 290,000. The only way to express one’s Jewishness on the census is by religious affiliation so the figure is a considerable underestimate of UK Jews, likely to be closer to the 410,000 that the Institute for Jewish Policy Research estimates as having ‘a right to Israeli citizenship’.

We had reasons to be cautious about the value of these materials and our reservations have been confirmed by close reading. CAA is a registered charity. However, it is at the forefront of the attempt to politicise antisemitism as a weapon against the left wing of the Labour Party. It saw itself and its followers as crusaders in a battle to defeat a Jeremy Corbyn led Labour Party, repeatedly portraying the leader as antisemitic. It ramped up its allegations before the 2019 General Election, organising rallies and contributing to poster boards, and issued a triumphalist video when Labour was defeated. The video features Joe Glasman, described as “Head of Political and Government Investigations” with CAA. He thanks all allies of CAA who helped to ensure that Mr Corbyn was “slaughtered”. The CAA strongly supports the State of Israel and delegitimises criticism of it by equating this with antisemitism. Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) has challenged CAA’s charitable status because of its strong political alignment.

Of course, Zionist organisations are as entitled to express a view on antisemitism as other groups, but in presenting material for schools they have to have regard to ‘impartiality’ and portray a range of points of view. The government has issued guidance on ‘political impartiality in schools’ which seem surprisingly fair. We explore some of the ways in which the materials fail to match the standards of this guidance.

We look at the aims of the materials, the way they define antisemitism, and how they draw on evidence and sources of information. We consider their impartiality and the representation of alternative points of view. We point out how the lack of reliability of the materials and their strong political bias undermines an evident strength in portraying historical and contemporary examples of antisemitism.

The aims of the materials

We are concerned about what the materials set out to achieve and whether the aims can be realised. They are certainly about establishing the significance of antisemitism in the present and past but if the aim is also to reduce antisemitism then their zero-tolerance approach is questionable.

The title and opening of the guides are revealing. They are called ‘Love Your Neighbour’ which is a reference to Leviticus Chapter 19 verse 18 and to repetition of this sentiment in the New Testament. The whole of the verse reads:

Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people but love your neighbour as yourself.

While vengefulness is modelled elsewhere in the Old Testament, here the exhortation is towards reconciliation and forgiveness. This is not the approach that the CAA takes towards those that they consider to be making antisemitic statements.

This is clear from the opening picture which consists of a child and a woman among others, both holding up CAA posters with the slogan, “Zero Tolerance for Antisemites”, as part of a larger demonstration. We have covered the face of the child, since it raises safeguarding issues for us and schools will commonly not wish to publish face to camera pictures of children. The picture implies that the task for reducing antisemitism is to search out “antisemites” and punish them in some way by showing zero tolerance.

We think that educational material on antisemitism should have broader aims which include helping teachers and students to identify and avoid antisemitic words, actions and artefacts. Antisemitic words or actions should always be responded to, by naming them. Calling for zero tolerance can make the task of reducing antisemitism more difficult by focusing on exclusion and punishment rather than engagement, dialogue and education to prevent future discrimination. The idea of zero tolerance emerged as an instrument of judicial policy and has been heavily criticised as counterproductive. We have previously drawn attention to its shortcomings as part of ‘extreme discipline’ within education and as being seen as a legitimate way of responding to antisemitism by the EHRC in its investigation into antisemitism in the Labour Party.

Placing this image at the start of the material treats as the same, someone who has made an antisemitic remark and someone who does so persistently with intent to discriminate even after attention has been drawn to the implications of what they have said or done. We would say that a person is antisemitic or is an antisemite only in the latter case. A similar distinction is made between uttering a sexist remark such as a stereotype about women and girls and doing this persistently after attention has been drawn to it and so being a person who is misogynist.

Defining Antisemitism

We would expect a definition of antisemitism to be given at the start of the guide but this does not happen until page 7 when we are told: “antisemitism is a hatred of Jews – individually or as a group”. This is extended on page 15 as:

Antisemitism is racism against Jews. Antisemitism can target Jews in religious terms and in racial terms.

Antisemitism is compared to a virus (p 6) which has mutated over the years from “hatred of the Jewish religion” through “hatred of the Jewish race” to “hatred of the Jewish state” (slide 25). This analogy with a mutating virus is unhelpful, implying that it is lockdown, separation and isolation that may overcome antisemitism rather than interaction and education through dialogue. It is only in the appendix (p22) that the draft International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition is introduced which the CAA has vociferously advocated:

“The International Definition of Antisemitism has become the standard definition used around the world.” P 22

There is no acknowledgement of the contentious nature of this definition. There is no invitation to criticise its limited opening formulation – “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews” – or mention its notable critics, which include the person who wrote it, Kenneth Stern, or to compare it to any other definition. An obvious contender for comparison is the  Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism which proposes that:

“Antisemitism is discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish)”.

The JDA set out to improve on the IHRA definition, which in the view of its authors had “caused confusion and generated controversy, hence weakening the fight against antisemitism.” One of the main controversies involves the extent to which the IHRA definition encourages the elision between antisemitism, antizionism and criticism of Israel. Although it clearly states that whether or not a statement about Israel is antisemitic depends on context, nevertheless in applying it, context is routinely ignored. The definition is commonly misused including by the CAA and also by the Labour Party in following up on antisemitism complaints. For the CAA, saying Israel is a racist or an apartheid state is antisemitic in itself, whereas within the IHRA definition this would only be antisemitic if it also expressed “hatred” towards Jews. The JDA clarifies when a statement about Israel is likely to be antisemitic and when it is not. The latter group covers “opposing or criticising Zionism” and “supporting Palestinian demands for justice”. The point here is not to prove that the IHRA definition is inferior to the JDA formulation but that materials for teachers must give them access to a range of views.

Although a Zionist himself, Kenneth Stern acknowledged that had his circumstances been different he might have taken a different view:

 “Had I been born into a Palestinian family displaced in 1948, [I] might have a different view of Zionism, and that need not be because [I] vilify Jews or think they conspire to harm humanity.”

The idea that dislike, criticism or even “hatred of the Israeli state” equates with hatred of Jews can be seen as a denial of the rights of Palestinians to respond to their initial and ongoing dispossession and the brutality shown towards them. The fact that Palestinians cannot voice criticism of their situation without someone suggesting that they are motivated by antisemitism, is discriminatory. It is a form of racism.

Because some Jews are highly critical of the Israeli government and its present and past policies they have also been subjected to allegations of antisemitism. This has contributed to a form of sectarianism between Jews similar to doctrinal divides between Sunni and Shia Muslims and Protestant and Catholics in Northern Ireland. It has divided families. The CAA, other establishment Jewish groups and their mouthpieces in the Jewish press seem to reserve a special venom for Jewish supporters of Palestinian rights.

Antizionism is a fundamental belief, the holding of which is protected under the 2010 Equalities Act.  Such protection of beliefs and opinion was demanded in the government guidance on impartiality in schools. “Mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs” is heralded there as a fundamental British value. We may dispute whether the present UK government and many other British people, act on such a value but it should infuse the work of educators.

The use of evidence

For materials to be appropriate for use in schools we have to have confidence in their accuracy, that they are supported by evidence and provide access to a range of opinions and sources. In these materials evidence is used selectively, only one side of contentious issues is represented, and the selection of supporting sources is sometimes bizarre.

Once confidence in the materials is undermined then doubt is cast on aspects that should be their strength, namely, the documenting of current and historical examples of antisemitism. Antisemitism is a form of racism and we need to assess what it is, how often it occurs and in what contexts. Because of the political nature of the materials all such examples have to be separately checked.

The worrying claim that compared to others, the proportion of Jews experiencing religion based hate crimes is “four times the amount reported for other faith groups” (p3) is imprecise because it is unclear to which faith groups it refers but it seems to be true in comparison with Moslems, the next highest recipients of hate crimes in government figures.

A shocking example is given of the response to Aston Villa football club issuing a Happy Passover message to its supporters. The guide reports that “there were 27,000 ‘angry’ reactions according to Facebook”. This seems to be true, very nasty, and warranting a thorough investigation into who made these responses and whether they were orchestrated in some way. The twitter posting of the same good wishes received 773 likes. It is also reported in the guide that a message saying, ‘Happy Holi’, for the Hindu festival, had ‘an overwhelmingly positive response’. While the negative response was nowhere near as numerous in this case it does seem that there were 400 angry responses to it on Facebook.

However, the forensic dissection of evidence is not strong in this material. It quotes an Oxford University Survey into beliefs about Covid 19 (Freeman et al 2020), saying that around a fifth of 2,500 people surveyed, agreed that to some extent with the statement: ‘Jews have created the virus to collapse the economy for financial gain’. This was about the same number as agreed with a similar statement about Muslims although this is not mentioned. But how reliable should we regard the findings of this survey? One of the statements to which respondents were asked to consider the extent of their agreement, read: “the virus is a smokescreen for a global conspiracy that swapped the real world with a simulation”. 22% of those surveyed agreed at least a little with this statement and 4% thought it definitely true. Extremely high levels of credence were given to this and other absurd propositions which raises questions about how seriously the survey was viewed and casts doubt on the validity of its findings.

We checked key quotations in the guides. The opening quote in the guide refers to Einstein saying: “The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.” We remembered it differently but the CAA version is one of a number of alternative paraphrasings of a remark Einstein made about Pablo Casals recorded in a book written in French.

“He perceives very clearly that the world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it.”

A quote attributed to Edward Burke in the 18^th Century (page 12) – “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil …. Is that good men do nothing” – seems to be less accurate. It was adapted from something said by James Stuart Mill in the 19^th Century. We take the view that lesson plans for young people should be as carefully fact checked as possible. We felt driven to start checking the detail of the guides once our confidence in their accuracy was undermined.

There is the familiar misrepresentation of the source of the disgusting antisemitic abuse of Luciana Berger who is said to have experienced “antisemitic internet trolling and death threats from far-left members of the Labour Party” (p16) which caused her to leave the Party. There is no mention of the worst cases of abuse directed towards her which resulted in criminal convictions for people on the political far-right. In 2016 MP Luciana Berger had reported on the disgusting twitter abuse she received. Five cases reported to the police led to convictions. Three men who went to prison were all active fascists as described here, here and here. An ex-Labour Member abused her politics and was given a suspended sentence. An earlier 2012 case involved disgraceful antisemitic abuse from someone on the political left. though it was not clear if he was a Labour Party member. The CAA guide makes it seem that the abuse came only from the left as did Luciana Berger herself in an LBC interview in 2019.

There is a very strange version of a story about John Mann which links the earlier abuse of his wife to his position as chair of the all-party group on antisemitism in the House of Commons:

Because John Mann has challenged racism against Jews, his wife [Jo White] was sent a dead bird through the post by a Marxist anti-Semite. His wife was threatened with violence by far-left members of the Labour Party and their allies just because her husband spoke out against antisemitism. (p.17)

The dead bird was actually sent in 2012 by a Labour member furious at not being selected as a Labour Party candidate for a council seat when Jo White was selected to stand in an all women shortlist. It reflected antagonism to all women shortlists and perhaps jealousy but does not seem to have anything to do with antisemitism. Neither John Mann nor his wife are Jewish and the event predates his role as a crusader against antisemitism. Nevertheless, it seems that John Mann and his family have been endangered and abused because of his position and there can be no mitigating circumstances for such actions.

The choice of sources

Perhaps these guides show their bias most strongly when it comes to the choice of sources of support. David Baddiel’s book, “Jews Don’t Count”, is mentioned at the very start of the guide in support of the assertion that “antisemitism is low down on the perceived hierarchy of racisms” p 5. This is provocative and arguably false given the focus on antisemitism in the media over the last few years. The contrary complaint has been made that the mass of attention in the media on antisemitism has created a hierarchy that places racism against Jews at the apex and anti-black racism, Islamophobia and racism against Gypsy, Roma, Travellers, at progressively lower rungs of a hierarchy. There are many serious books on antisemitism. Giving such prominence to a celebrity author who shares the CAA’s stance on antisemitism, and has little interest in putting forward evidence for his propositions, might not be the best way to suggest that the topic is to be approached with impartiality.

The material places considerable credence on the views of Maajid Nawaz, formerly a “shock jock” on LBC. He had been a member of a radical Islamic group, had expressed antisemitic sentiments but had subsequently rejected them. The CAA suggests that this gives his views on antisemitism a special “authority”. For example, he is quoted as linking the far left, the far right and Islamists together as “fascist” extremes, saying that “all three use antisemitism to recruit new members”. This is a highly contentious claim and no evidence is provided for it.

A closer look into Nawaz’s views casts doubt on the reliability of his social commentary. At one point he was a co-signatory to a letter claiming that lockdowns in the pandemic were carried out under instruction from Xi Jinping president of China. He was dismissed from his show on LBC for posting bizarre conspiracy theory tweets about the purpose of vaccinations: he linked news of mandatory vaccinations for over-50s in Italy to “a global palace coup that suspends our rights… by a network of fascists who seek a New World Order”. This is perilously close to an antisemitic trope about Jewish power. Nawaz is also a Trump supporter, believes he was fraudulently denied election victory, and that the attack on the Capitol was instigated by anti-fascists. One hopes that had CAA done some due diligence on this person they would have been unlikely to rely on him as a source.

The Queen is quoted as an expert on the importance of showing mutual respect (page 7). It seems doubtful that the Queen’s life experiences and her connection to rigid establishment hierarchies, fit her well for putting into action a view that everyone is of equal value and deserving of equal respect.

The overall impression is that sources are chosen because they espouse a particular point of view, not because they are particularly reliable or careful about evidencing what they have to say.

Concluding remarks

The strong political bias of CAA arguments leads to contradictions in the materials when promoting open-mindedness and the avoidance of prejudice. It is stated for example that:
“If you hear someone say ‘all Jews, black people or Irish are…’ you know it is prejudice.” (p7) Yet the very strong impression is given that all Jews think alike and are uniformly supportive of the State of Israel, seeing strong opposition to the Israeli state as antisemitism. This is unacceptable stereotyping and denies the reality of the variety of Jewish identities and views.

The guide also suggests that we should be careful to avoid falsehood and its repetition:

There is a saying: ‘If you tell a lie often enough, people begin to believe it.’…A lot of prejudice starts with fake news. (P8)

The Big Lie, a major item of fake news, in UK politics in the period 2015-2019 was that there was a high percentage of the members of the Labour Party that displayed antisemitism when the proportion of Labour members accused of antisemitism was very small – less than 0.1%. It would be entirely unacceptable for any school to use this material without putting counter arguments and evidence to the CAA line.

Tony Booth, Miriam David, Glyn Secker, May 2022