Bristol Palestine Alliance: where “anti-Zionism” and antisemitism meet

By Zack Muddle

The “Bristol Palestine Alliance” has doubled down on ignorant and poisonous antisemitism, deflecting and refusing to listen to criticism of renowned antisemite David Miller in a statement which reads as a playbook of antisemitic tropes.

David Miller’s well documented antisemitism goes well beyond the type which is (unfortunately) widely espoused on the left. Even Socialist Workers’ Party have criticised him for it, despite SWP’s own poor record.

But after Jewish students rightly protested Miller at a BPA-hosted meeting he headlined, BPA released a statement which, over nine instagram slides, doesn’t even mention Miller. Instead BPA throw sand in our faces.

BPA, along with its component member organisations, has (co-)organised many, perhaps most, of the bigger protests in Bristol against the Israeli government’s flattening of Gaza, so the statement warrants a response.

The Miller event, “Genocide in Gaza: Zionism, Islamophobia and The Weaponisation of Anti-Semitism” was billed as about “How to understand and dismantle Zionism”. It was about playing down antisemitism, more than it was about fighting anti-Muslim racism. Indeed, in misdiagnosing the problem as down to “Zionism” it surely failed to equip attendees to oppose anti-Muslim racism. To summarise the Jewish student protest at the Miller event as “Union of Jewish Students attempts to disrupt anti-Islamophobia event” is misleading at best.

In any case, Bristol University’s Jewish Society — which is affiliated but not identical to the UK-wide UJS — was specifically protesting against Miller, and not, so far as I can tell, trying to disrupt the event.

Never defining what they mean by “Zionism”, BPA describes it as an “inherently racist ideology which deliberately incites and uses Islamophobia here in the UK to stifle and undermine criticism of the State of Israel”. Their evidence? Islamophobia has been documented on a range of right-wing media outlets, plus some BBC programmes, plus the “startling ‘coincidence’ is that the coverage in all these platforms is simultaneously and vehemently pro-Israel too.”

Actually, the extent of the BBC’s “pro-Israel” bias is overstated. More importantly, two things being found together does not equal causation. Transphobia has been widely documented in all these media, which all simultaneously believe that the earth is spherical. Does this mean Spherical Earth Theory is inherently transphobic? Thankfully not.

By placing blame for anti-Muslim bigotry on “Zionism”, BPA erases much anti-Muslim racism and whitewashes its roots. Bigotry against Muslims, like antisemitism, was promoted in Europe for many centuries before the birth of Zionism. To blame it on “Zionism”, or on the perhaps 0.4% of the UK population who are Jewish, is to ignore the deep roots in Christian and early European anti-Muslim bigotry, wider racist and anti-migrant ideas, British foreign policy, scapegoating by the right, and more.

Their failure to define “Zionism” is telling. Many on the left, presumably including BPA, use the term in vague and contradictory ways. They use it to denote a minimal belief in the right of Israeli Jews to self-determination, which may be combined with strong denunciations of Israel’s oppression of Palestinians; and to denote a “maximalist” support for the policies of a far-right Israeli government, for Israeli expansionism, Jewish supremacy, and anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism. They suggest that both are the same: that you cannot support Israel’s right to exist without backing anti-Muslim bigotry, and that anti-Muslim bigotry flows mainly or solely from acceptance of Israeli-Jewish self-determination. “Zionists” is sometimes used interchangeably with “Jews”.

One classic antisemitic trope is the idea that Jews are shadowy puppet-masters controlling the world. The idea that “Zionists” are the cause of Islamophobia, or the Islamophobia of British right-wing media outlets, reproduces such a trope. So too is seeing the perspectives of publications in the UK on Israel as down to “Zionism” rather than due to wider political perspectives or particular interests of British imperialism. Britain makes all sorts of alliances with other countries for its own political gain. Britain doesn’t sell arms to Turkey because of the influence of Turkish people or “the Turkish lobby”; the media outlets that support Ukraine’s war of self-defence aren’t controlled by Ukrainians; The Guardian is critical of Israel’s war and war crimes but not because it is controlled by Palestinians.

The implication, too, that Bristol JSoc was protesting Miller’s antisemitism not for the stated and obvious reason of being Jewish and opposed to antisemitism, but for some hidden “pro-Israel” motivation or due to the “World Zionist Organisation” are as ignorant as they are antisemitic.

Malcolm X was a complex figure, with many sides and a complex political development. BPA’s quote from him denouncing the existence of Israel was written in September 1964. He had earlier that year broken from his 16-year stint with the Nation of Islam, an organisation which promoted far-right-type virulent hatred of Jews, including promoting conspiracies about the Holocaust, and which would assassinate Malcolm X the next year for leaving. In September 1964 he still kept much of their antisemitism, as seen in the essay BPA quoted, referring to the “Zionist-capitalist conspiracy”, and wider conspiratorial thinking. Israel had no occupations, neither the West Bank nor Gaza, before 1967 — the “occupation” in 1964 that both Malcolm X and BPA are referring to is the existence of the Jewish-majority state, Israel, itself.

Anachronistically, BPA then advocate, quoting him, this struggle “by any means necessary”. But there, Malcolm X was talking not about Palestine and Israel, but about the struggle against the oppression of Black people the USA. And fair enough. What could BPA then be referring to in the context of Israel/Palestine, today? If they aren’t celebrating the massacre of 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in Israel on 7 October, they surely would have clarified that.

Hamas is a clerical-fascist organisation which has kept the people of Gaza in a stranglehold, and wants to establish a theocratic state over all of Gaza, Israel, and the West Bank, driving out or killing Israeli Jews to do so. Their raping, butchering, and mutilating on 7 October has achieved just one thing — propping up their previously-falling popularity as a predictable flattening of Gaza by Netanyahu’s Israel has allowed them to position themselves, falsely, as freedom fighters.

BPA’s statement has a strange and dismissive arrogance, especially coming from a supposedly left-wing organisation. Talking of “true Islam”, BPA’s apparent theological insight implicitly dismisses the “false” Islam of others, presumably the almost 200 million Shia Muslims around the world. I’m atheist and believe all religions feature false beliefs and indeed are generally harmful, but pronouncing that some people have a “true” version of one religion is to dismiss others on the grounds of religious sectarianism.

Elsewhere, they racially profile the fifty Jews protesting as “all-white”. I don’t know if that’s true: there are a fair number of Black or “brown” Jews, but it may be that the small Bristol protest included none of those. But in the context of an antisemitic screed, it’s hard not to see this criticism as dismissive of forms of racism and bigotry not directly associated with skin colour: in this case antisemitism, but also racism against Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller people, racism against Eastern Europeans, and the like. It is notable that BPA fail to mention, in a response to a protest about antisemitism, the big spike in antisemitic hate crimes in the UK since 7 October.

JSoc’s protest presumably would have drawn a wider (and more diverse) crowd if it had been announced publicly. But the fact that they didn’t feel able to do so says a lot — and BPA’s statement may strengthen such fears.

On Sunday 18 February, a vigil was held in Castle Park for the people kidnapped by Hamas on 7 October and still held now. There were perhaps 60 people there, mostly not students. Many told stories of their families and friends killed or captured by Hamas. It was heart-wrenching, many tears flowed. But the vigil was organised with strict instructions to not share on social media.

Why the fear? Possibly some would have denounced or even picketed it as “pro-Israel”. But not a word was said in support of Israel’s war on Gaza, or Netanyahu. Quite the contrary. People spoke of “shared humanity”, showed compassion for the people of Gaza “suffering unimaginable violence”, talked of peace activists who had been killed by Hamas. We held a minute’s silence for Gazans.

People need not be left-wing to be able to publicly grieve or call for the release of hostages. But the grieving people at that vigil revealed, in BPA’s words, a much greater “empathy, humanity and awareness” than BPA’s statement and (at best) one-sided compassion.

BPA’s demand that UJS unequivocally condemn the widespread killing of Palestinian civilians, and other war crimes of the state of Israel, or be indicted, shunned, or banned is antisemitic. Jewish students in the UK are not responsible for the actions of the state of Israel, the only majority-Jewish state.

If Muslims protest against an individual who promotes serious anti-Muslim bigotry, left wing people would rightly stand in solidarity with them and against the bigot. They wouldn’t instead demand that the Muslims condemn Hamas for its 7 October pogrom, the Islamic Republic of Iran for executing gay people, Qatar for its severe exploitation of migrant workers, or the Houthis for practicing slavery.

If Hindu students in Bristol complained of racism, I wouldn’t respond by asking them to denounce Modi, the Gujarat massacres, or the like. Jews shouldn’t be held to a different standard. It is particularly offensive that BPA here seem to evoke the Holocaust, presumably to weaponise and needle at Jewish collective trauma, through telling JSoc how to interpret “never again”, a declaration originating from liberated prisoners at Buchenwald concentration camp, a camp in which well over fifty thousand people were murdered by the Nazis. More so shortly after seemingly celebrating Hamas’s recent anti-Jewish pogrom.

If BPA had opened their eyes or ears, they may have realised that many of their demands — antisemitic though they were — had already been carried out by Bristol JSoc. The day before the statement was released, JSoc shared info about the first meeting of Bristol Friends of Standing Together (B/UK FoST). Standing Together is the biggest grassroots movement of Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel for peace and social justice.

Standing Together have not just condemned, but organised protest against Israel’s killing of tens of thousands in Gaza, including specifically mourning Hind Rajab’s murder. They have organised the largest protests in the country where they can have the most impact: Israel. They have condemned Israel’s far-right’s rhetoric, and organised Jewish-Arab solidarity to combat racism and racist violence. They, Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel, fight for peace, equality, independence, and safety for both peoples, Palestinians and Israelis.

I hope and assume many people involved in BPA, or its member organisations, don’t endorse BPA’s disgraceful statement. Certainly many or most people who attend the protests that they co/organise wouldn’t have written such a diatribe. Such antisemitism can discourage Jewish people from attending these protests, and can discourage consistent left-wing people who seek to fight antisemitism. That’s understandable. But for me, it has the opposite impact, motivating me more to intervene.

Many protestors attend from a justified horror at what is happening in Gaza. With leadership and currents within the protests as politically bad as BPA’s, there is a risk of that righteous anger being channeled into left antisemitism and proxy nationalist chauvinism. That will harm, not help, the Palestinians. It is down to progressive activists who oppose the war and left antisemitism, and who fight for equal rights for both people, including the right to national self-determination, to provide a different route for protestors to express their opposition to injustice, to win people away from the bigoted ideas.

Some of us have already been doing that with bulletins and publications from Workers’ Liberty, as well as leaflets about UKFoST. Now that Bristol Friends of Standing Together is off the ground, with an initial meeting of perhaps 25 people, BFoST will be organising vigils, public meetings, and stalls; and some of us will continue to intervene in wider protests against the war on Gaza. Join us!

• This article also appears (under a slightly different headline) in the present issue of Solidarity and on the Workers Liberty website