False Allegation of FUCU Tribunal's Antisemitism Spurs Zionist QC

I'm not sure if this link works  If it does you will see a pdf page of an article by Jonathan Goldberg QC in the Jewish Chronicle.

UPDATE:  Here's a copy of the pdf. Click on it to make it bigger (I think)

Right let's have a look at what it says:

First up the headline is a bit dodgy.  It's Why the Ronnie Fraser case against the UCU was a legal and public relations disaster".   Now it wasn't simply legality and PR.  It was the presentation of dubious descriptions of events and a ludicrous definition of who is a Jew and what, therefore, antisemitism or anti-Jewish racism means.  In other words, the facts of the case that were against Fraser and his team.

In fairness, Goldberg gets into all that so I'm guessing he didn't write the headline.  I should point out that the article appeared in the same edition that carried the front page headline, Union case is 'Hitler's legacy' so the fact that it has a misleading headline and doesn't appear in the regular website presumably has something to do with JC editor, Stephen Pollard.

So here are some choice snippets:

It was misconceived in law, wasted a fortune in legal costs (rumoured in legal circles to be over £500,000) but worse of all it showed no Jewish seichel or streetsmart whatsoever.

Wow! £500k?  Who from? Where from?  Fraser mentioned sums like £70k and £50k going from the JC's Fair Play Campaign Group to Engage and it has never really been denied definitively.  There have also been online rumours of Israeli government support for "lawfare" cases in the UK but I've never seen as much as £500k mentioned before.

What about reactions to the outcome:

Those who now react to this defeat with sour grapes should more carefully study the judgment...https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/JCO/Documents/Judgments/eemployment-trib-fraser-v-uni-college-union-judgment.pdf.  From a lawyer's point of view it is impeccably written....

I do not accept that the court was antisemitic, as Dr Hirsh and others have insinuated.....

Do those who so rashly suggest on such shaky foundations that an English court was antisemitic have any conception of the damage they are doing to our community thereby?

What about points of fact and law?

Of the 10 factual complaints...all but one were found to be unmeritorious....with detailed reasons being given as to why the court rejected them.....

A main premise..- that the union was responsible in law for anti-Israel views promulgated by individual members...- was held wrong in law.  Nor was that by any means the only error in law

We now get to possibly the best bit:

The underlying notion that a commitment to Zionism should be a "protected characteristic" in English employment law was in my view almost as fanciful as suggesting that supporting Tottenham Hotspur should be a protected characteristic, because so many Jews do so.

He goes on to criticise those who take umbrage at the court's withering criticisms of the two MP witnesses ("glib evidence") for Fraser and the Jewish Leadership Council CEO, Jeremy Newmark, ("untrue", "preposterous", "extraordinarily arrogant", "disturbing") before returning to the "protected characteristics" issue:

...why should the court be criticised.....for saying "a belief in the Zionist project or an attachment to Israel or any similar sentiment cannot amount to a protected characteristic. It is not intrinsically a part of Jewishness and, even if it was, it could not be substituted for the pleaded characteristics, which are race and religion or belief."

The critics have chosen to take five words out of context.....

In context, the court was saying no more than that an attachment to the modern State of Israel ("modern" is important here) is not intrinsic to Jewishness.  And that is surely correct.

....who can ignore the stark fact that many fellow Jews, including, for example, certain Israeli academics and at least one sect of ultra-Orthodox Jews, are among Israel's most rabid detractors, whereas many gentiles are fervent zionists (Lord bless them).

The QC then goes on to suggest legal fights that Zionists could win, like suing for disrupting Zionist events.

He could be a surer ground there unless the disrupters of events can show that they are merely trying to prevent worse crimes by the racist war criminals of the State of Israel and their supporters.

What clearly won't work any more is the lie that Jews are essentially Zionists and that therefore anti-Zionism is a form of racism.  Jews have many different political persuasions and anti-Zionism is one of many forms of anti-racism.

Letters: From Guernica to Gaza

An interesting crop of letters in today's Guardian some good, some bad.  Here are some good ones:

The two large and very similar photos of women, one a grieving Palestinian, the other an Israeli in shock (Report, 17 October), trade in a grotesque deception: that Israel and Gaza are suffering in equal measure. If it is no surprise that Netanyahu seeks re-election by pulverising Gaza and claims that Israel is the victim of Palestinian aggression, it is however reprehensible for the Guardian to plug the shop-worn fable of equivalence. The fourth most powerful (and US-backed) army in the world is once again bludgeoning one of the most oppressed, impoverished and overcrowded places on the planet. No matter that Israel struck first or that Hamas fired rockets, this absurd horror has been going on for years. There is no equivalence between occupied and occupier, prisoner and jailer. What we are watching again is the shooting of fish in a barrel.
Bruce McLeod
Skipton, North Yorkshire

As Jewish supporters of Palestinian rights, we have once again watched in horror as Israel escalates its lethal bombardment of the civilian population of Gaza. Numerous people, including children, are being killed or wounded. Israeli casualties came only after Israel, having started the slaughter by killing a 13-year-old boy in Gaza on 8 November, shattered a truce by assassinating the military leader who had negotiated it. So who is the terrorist and who wants peace?

Israel's political-military leaders cynically escalate the conflict, trying to justify their blockade of Gaza and acting tough in the runup to government elections. Having turned Gaza into an open-air prison, they again punish the Palestinians for electing leaders who attempt to resist the illegal occupation.

Too many of our media collude with the official Israeli version: that the attacks are "targeted" retaliation for rockets launched from Gaza. Despite hand-wringing by some western governments, they encourage Israeli belligerence by labelling Hamas a terrorist organisation, supporting the Gaza siege and denying Palestinian rights, both within and outside Israel. We support the peaceful campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) designed to help achieve those rights.
Miriam Margolyes
Alexei Sayle
Mike Marqusee
Seymour Alexander 
Jo Bird
Haim Bresheeth
Elizabeth Carola
Ruth Conlock
Mike Cushman
Nancy Elan
Susan Elan
Pia G Feig
Deborah Fink
Sonya Fraser
Claire Glasman
Tony Greenstein
Ruth Hall
Abe Hayeem
Rosamine Hayeem
Selma James
Michael Kalmanovitz
Berry Kreel
Leah Levane
Rachel Lever
Les Levidow
Moshe Machover
Martine Miel
Simon Natas 
Diana Neslen
Juliet Peston
Renate Prince
Frances Rifkin
Larry Sanders
Vanessa Stilwell
Sam Weinstein
Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi

Devra Wiseman

Jonathan Freedland really should take off his blinkers (A battle that solves nothing, 16 November). The conflict between Palestinians and Israelis is not just about who started firing the most recent lot of missiles. It's about a decades-long refusal by the Israelis to acknowledge the background – their occupation, annexation and frequent destruction of Palestinian olive groves, homes and wells; their refusal to be bound by international law over their settlements; the "Berlin Wall" they have erected through farms; the checkpoints that prevent critically ill people from getting to hospital – that has provoked Hamas intransigence and bitterness. If Jonathan Freedland – let alone the Israelis – cannot take this on board, can there be any hope for reconciliation?
Fr Julian Dunn
Great Haseley, Oxfordshire

And finally, for the good ones:

As a Jew who escaped the Holocaust in a Kindertransport 74 years ago and who voluntarily joined the British army to help fight the evil of Nazism, I utterly condemn the disproportionate response of the Israeli government to the Hamas rocket attacks. I am dismayed that both the British and American governments have given Israel carte blanche for these acts of barbarity in Gaza. Has the world learned nothing sinceGuernica?
Emeritus professor Leslie Baruch Brent 
London

Typically, in the interests of balance, there are some appalling ones too including one from a "Professor Marc Saperstein" of Cambridge, who Tony Greenstein claims is a fake of some sort. Don't tell me there's a hasbarista shortage.