Update on JVL’s complaint to the Charity Commission about the CAA

CAA and still an ongoing query

It is now two-and-a-half years since JVL first notified the Charity Commission of our concerns about the tone and content of Campaign Against Antisemitism’s published material and, in particular, its vituperative and unfounded attacks on Jeremy Corbyn and many others on the Labour left.

Between April 2020 and June 2022, JVL presented the Charity Commission with five detailed submissions setting out evidence to show that CAA is not a bona fide charity, but a partisan political campaigning group. To put it in legal language, the evidence is clear that CAA’s infringements of its own charitable objects and wider charities law and guidance are so persistent and flagrant that CAA deserves be stripped of its charitable status and wound up.

In response to our submissions, the Commission began a formal investigation and appointed a case officer to liaise with us. The case officer has asked JVL to provide an executive summary of our complaints, to assist the Commission in its deliberations. This executive summary is reproduced below. It is a useful guide to CAA’s tendentious, fiercely partisan and condemnatory approach to the subject of antisemitism, especially when CAA is directing its comments to the Labour Left and defenders of Palestinian human rights.

JVL awaits the Charity Commission’s decision.

Submission to the Charity Commission, finalised on 8 November 2022

The CAA was incorporated as a charity in 2014 with two principal charitable objects:

  • to promote racial harmony for the public benefit between Jewish people wherever in the world and other members of society by the elimination of antisemitism, including raising awareness of the occurrence of antisemitism and providing advocacy, assistance, care and relief in relation to those affected by antisemitism; and 
  • to advance education as regards the history, causes, effects and prevention of antisemitism for the public benefit.

While these are legitimate charitable objects, we consider that through its words and actions the CAA regularly and persistently conducts itself in ways which are not consistent with and do not fulfil its objects and are also in serious breach of charities law and the Commission’s own guidance.  To be more specific, the CAA has on frequent occasions over the last four years made explicitly political attacks on individuals and organisations, without reference to any substantive evidence of actual antisemitism on their part.  In our view some of its statements concerning certain public figures have bordered on the defamatory.

The CAA personnel may believe that through their actions and words they are acting in pursuit of the charity’s objects but, if so, they are doing so in ways which are deeply misguided, to the extent that the CAA’s conduct calls into question either:

  • the sincerity of CAA staff members’ and volunteers’ commitment to the combatting of anti-Jewish racism, and indicates instead that the CAA’s real objective is to shield the State of Israel from criticism of its policies towards the Palestinian people – in other words, the CAA is dishonest about its aims and objectives; or
  • the adequacy of CAA staff members’ and volunteers’ understanding of the meaning of antisemitism, such is their persistent conflation and equating of antisemitism with criticism of the State of Israel; in other words, the CAA’s understanding of the meaning of antisemitism is irrational and is based on a sense of political partisanship and exaggerated loyalty to the State of Israel (a secular nation state whose policies any citizen of a democracy should be free to criticise).

Since April 2020 JVL has put forward a total of five submissions to the Commission setting out our objections to CAA’s conduct and explaining why JVL considers CAA to be unfit to enjoy the status of a charitable organisation and the benefits that accompany that status.  They are:

  1. A formal submission 27 April 2020, in the form of an intended application to the Court under section 36(1)(b) Charities Act  2011 for the removal of the CAA from the Register. In this submission:
  • We set out numerous examples of the CAA’s published attacks on several individuals within the Labour Party, all of them poorly substantiated, using aggressive and often insulting language in a manner wholly unbecoming of a charity whose objects are to promote good community relations and educate the wider public.
  • We also set out a detailed explanation as to why the CAA’s so-called Antisemitism Barometer, supposedly a product of research in alliance with an academic at King’s College London, and which alleges that antisemitism in the UK is more prevalent on the political left than the right (the charge hence being directed at the Labour Party under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn), is based on a specious methodology which deliberately conflates criticism of Israel with hostility to Jews as Jews.
  1. Second supplemental formal submission 29 May 2020 in which:
  • We explained the mendacious nature of a lengthy attack which the CAA made against Jeremy Corbyn on his retirement as Labour Leader, a concatenation of lies, distortions, selective quotes and assertions of guilt by association; and
  • We reported on the CAA’s highly personal attack on Dr Ghada Karmi of Exeter University, one of the UK’s few remaining survivors of the Nabka, the mass expulsions of Palestinian people which accompanied the founding of the State of Israel in 1948.
  1. Our letter to the Commission dated 15 March 2021 in which we drew attention to:
  • the CAA’s complaint in December 2020 to Ofcom, concerning an eight-minute feature which had been broadcast on Channel 4 News featuring the concerns about free speech of young Palestinian students in the UK, with a Jew speaking on their behalf, Professor Avi Shlaim; and.
  • a worryingly malevolent and baseless attack against a distinguished public figure, Baroness Chakrabarti: an arguably defamatory piece in which the Baroness is described as the author of a “Whitewash” report and as someone whom Jewish youngsters at St Paul’s School for Girls should avoid on the occasion of her visit there.
  1. Our letter to the Commission dated 4 April 2022 in which we noted another seemingly malicious attack, this time on the journalist Yasmin Alibi-Brown.
  1. Our email dated 21 June 2022 in which we confirmed that our Education group had researched in detail CAA’s material produced for use in schools and that the research supports our contention that CAA is not a bona fide educational and human rights charity and is rather a partisan political campaigning organisation.

Our five submissions demonstrate that when dealing with, typically, socialists, human rights campaigners and non-Zionist Jews:

  • the CAA’s preferred methods of “promoting racial harmony between Jewish people and others by the elimination of antisemitism” are denunciation, insinuation and defamation of individuals and organisations whom the CAA regards as political threats, with scant regard for evidence of actual antisemitism (hostility towards Jews as Jews); and
  • the CAA’s method of educating the wider community in antisemitism, all too often, is:
  • to make dogmatic declarations, such as the CAA’s recent attack on Aberdeen University’s decision to adopt the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism in place of the IHRA “working definition” – see  here and note the CAA description of the University’s decision as “shameful” and “wrecking”, despite this being a patently politically sensitive issue of the very type on which any educational charity is legally obliged to take a balanced view; and
  • to present distorted partisan material as independent academic research: see our comments in our first formal submission on the CAA’s Antisemitism Barometer.

Comments (9)

  • Daniel Waterman says:

    Although I am of relatievly minor significance in the grand scheme of things the CAA were definitely after me, making absurd assertions about my anti-semitism even though I am Jewish. I am fairly sure they also attempted to deface my Wikipedia page since the act occurred simultaneously with CAA’s publication of my name and exerts of my Facebook page that were deliberately quoted to increase the likelihood of them being misunderstood.

    I, as did many others, raised my concerns within the Labour party and with various leading persons as well as emails to Jeremy Corbyn as it was clear to me that these allegations needed to be confronted head on. Nobody listened. We were effectively ostracised and silenced from within the Labour Party.

    When we look at the Labour party today, with Keir Starmer at the helm, it seems obvious that the real agenda was not at all to bring to public attention the urgent matter of anti-semitism, in Labour or anywhere else, but to ensure Jeremy Corbyn would not win the elections as this would inevitably have been a resounding victory not merely for the left, but in particular for those who want to see an end to austerity, and to neoliberalism.

    Israel, or rather the right wing alliance in Israel, has done an outstanding job at coopting Jewish organisations and pro-Israeli organisations to wittingly or unwittingly promote the interests of neoliberalism. Ostensibly, neoliberalism and Zionism are altogether different things, however in the Israeli state, the two are inseparable. The military industrial cooperation with the US has been fruitful and generated huge funds that also keep the Israeli state finances going. Israel and the US are allies and both these countries have ruthlessly promoted neoliberal agendas such as privatisation, in many instances supporting far-right government such as that of Victor Orban, or neonazi organisations in the Ukraine.

    The false accusations of anti-semitism orchestrated by the CAA and similar organisations were a defacto coup against democracy in the UK. As a Jew, I am profoundly saddened and alarmed that these accusations and the organisations behind them are able to operate with impunity, even when they clearly break the law. And it seems that in leveling the accusation of anti-semitism against Jews as a means of silencing them, the CAA is itself behaving in an ‘anti-semitic’ manner. I hope the Courts will speak clearly on this matter.

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  • Great work by JVL. The Charity Commission must be too scared to confront the CAA about its blatant law-breaking. This article in the journal of moral philosophy, ResPublica, contains some analysis of what the CAA is up to. Please use it if it helps the cause: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11158-022-09553-4. Or does this excessive delay call for a judicial review of the Charity Commission?

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  • Paul Seligman says:

    1. Thanks to Daniel Waterman for that interesting contribution.
    2. Notwithstanding the very deep connections between CAA Trustees and Zionist organisations (see, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Sacerdoti), it is likely that the vast majority of Jewish people, and many others, will take the campaign at face value, and many will support the actions against critics of Israel.
    3. They will therefore feel that any criticism of an organisation called the Campaign Against Antisemitism will be antisemitic.
    4. It’s tricky to make the valid points about charitable status without confirming those views.

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  • Allan Howard says:

    I wonder how long it will take the Charity Commission to complete its investigation and arrive at a decision? The reality is that anyone checking out their website for a few hours couldn’t possibly come to any other conclusion than they are a black propaganda outfit, precisely because it’s glaringly obvious that they ARE! The CC undoubtedly knows that they are, but they of course know that if they were to remove the CAAs charity status, all hell would break loose. And THAT just serves as an example of how much power the Israel Lobby wield.

    It is, in effect, blatant blackmail.

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  • Huw says:

    I’ve just read the CAA’s denunciation of Aberdeen University and it’s industrial-strength gaslighting. How can anyone prefer the frankly nonsensical IHRA “indefinition” to the precise and lucid Jerusalem Declaration?

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  • Stephen Richards says:

    As long as the IHRA definition has ANY credibility & status as quasi-‘guidelines’ or ‘law’, then anyone who citicises Israel is by definition, an anti-Semite. I doubt that the Charity Commission will challenge the IHRA definition & will accept the IHRA examples to illustrate.
    I believe the EHRC must publish the CAA ‘complaints’ & provide reasons for their acceptance as evidence & not only that, what criteria was used in its panel composition ie who decides who sits in judgement & which criteria did they use?

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  • Frances Kay says:

    Thank you for taking the time and trouble to approach the Charity Commission. Their delay in responding does not inspire confidence in the outcome, but I wholeheartedly agree with JVL that anti-semitism has been weaponised for political purposes to demonise, expel, expunge and disenfranchise anyone on the left who supports, or has supported, the Labour Party.

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  • Lorna Richardson says:

    I wholeheartedly applaud the application to delegitamise CAA and believe the CAA has shown itself to be partisan in its affairs, unfair to individuals and altogether undeserving of charitable status.

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  • Maggie Gothard says:

    Agree entirely. The CAA should be stripped of charity status and preferably disbanded.

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Comments are now closed.