When someone is honestly 55% right, that’s very good and there’s no use wrangling. And if someone is 60% right, it’s wonderful, it’s great luck, and let him thank God. But what’s to be said about 75% right? Wise people say this is suspicious. Well, and what about 100% right? Whoever says he’s 100% right is a fanatic, a thug, and the worst kind of rascal.
(An old Jew of Galicia, from Milosz; The Captive Mind, 2001)
In October 2012, Ronnie Fraser sued the University and College Union (UCU). He argued that a culture of institutional antisemitism had been created and then maintained by the union; he argued that this constituted antisemitic harassment against him under the meaning of the Equality Act (2010). The environment in the UCU, he said, using the language of the act, was ‘intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating and/or offensive to him, in respect of his Jewish identity’.1
After spending three weeks hearing testimony, the tribunal judged that there had been no antisemitism at all. The tribunal found against Fraser on everything: on technicalities, on legal argument and on every significant issue of substance and of fact. The tribunal found everything the UCU said in its defence to be persuasive, and it found nothing said by Fraser or any of his witnesses to have merit. The culture, the practices and the norms inside the union were found to be not antisemitic, either in intent or in effect. Indeed, everything that Fraser and his witnesses experienced as antisemitic, the tribunal judged to have been entirely appropriate. In particular, what was appropriate was the way that union staff, rules, structures and bodies operated. Fraser said that there was a culture in which antisemitism was tolerated, but the tribunal did not accept that even one out of the many stories that it was told was an indicator of antisemitism.
Instead, the tribunal found that ‘at heart’ the case represented ‘an impermissible attempt to achieve a political end by litigious means’ (para 178). The tribunal meant that saying that the boycott campaign brought with it a culture of antisemitism was in fact a bad-faith attempt to silence criticism of Israel. The tribunal responded with a legally binding Livingstone Formulation.
* * *
By the time of the UCU Congress of 2011, as we have seen, opposition to the boycott campaign within the union was almost wholly silenced and defeated. The boycott campaign brought forward a motion to disavow the EUMC Working Definition of antisemitism. Rather than stop doing that which could be judged antisemitic under the definition, Congress preferred to disavow the definition. Congress is the sovereign body of the UCU; it speaks for the UCU, and it acts as the UCU.
Ronnie Fraser opposed the motion. Ronnie was an A Level maths teacher, and he ran a campaign called Academic Friends of Israel from his back bedroom. He had been struggling against antizionism in, first, NATFHE and then UCU since before the rise of the boycott movement. All the other activists who had been trying to oppose antisemitism either had left the union in disgust, had been pushed out of the union, or had been silenced by the antisemitism. Ronnie kept on going, doggedly, to the end.
At the UCU Congress debate over the Working Definition in 2011, Ronnie Fraser took a speech against the motion. He said:
Congress, imagine how it feels when you say that you are experiencing racism, and your union responds: ‘Stop lying; stop trying to play the antisemitism card’ …. The overwhelming majority of Jews feel that there is something wrong in this union. They understand that it is legitimate to criticize Israel in a way that is, quoting from the definition, ‘similar to that levelled against any other country’ but they make a distinction between criticism and the kind of demonization that is considered acceptable in this union.
(Hirsh 2011a)
Congress greeted his speech in silence, and it overwhelmingly passed the motion. I was there as a visitor, reporting on proceedings for Engage. The delegate from my own UCU branch, now a Professor of Media and Communications, said, to warm applause: ‘As a Jewish member of this union I urge you to support.’ The EUMC definition, he said, conflates justified criticism of Israel with antisemitism and thereby functions to prohibit criticism as though it were antisemitism. ‘Adopting the EUMC definition unnecessarily curtails our ability to intervene, to call for justice, to call for freedom for Palestinians,’ he said (Hirsh 2011a).
I later wrote in my own witness statement in the Fraser v. UCU case:
I saw Ronnie in another room straight after this debate. While we were discussing what had happened, it became clear to me that he was very upset and on the verge of tears. He stopped speaking and walked away from me for a few moments to collect himself. I was taken aback by this because I thought of Ronnie as somebody with a very thick skin and who was very tough. I still do. But he had been hurt. I believe that he was hurting because he had just experienced an antisemitic response from a big hall of his trade union colleagues to his speech.2
I saw a Jewish teacher, a grandfather and a son of two Holocaust survivors experience the antisemitism which was standard and routine within the UCU; it made him cry in pain and in isolation. The union, which is ready to hear about some other racisms with compassion, listened to Fraser with a glass ear.
Later, the union was to instruct its lawyer, Antony White QC, to subject him to two days of cross-examination in which he was accused – relentlessly, articulately and professionally – of crying antisemitism for trumped-up political reasons. Fraser was courageous and tough, but he was not quick or sharp in the witness box. Ronnie did not do well under cross-examination.
The UCU disavowal of the definition was the moment at which a consensus finally crystallized in the Jewish community in the UK, which was articulated by its key institutions, that there was now a problem of institutional antisemitism within the union.
Ronnie Fraser approached lawyer Anthony Julius and asked him to represent him in a case against the union. Julius is a scholar of antisemitism, and he had represented Deborah Lipstadt in her successful defence in 2000 against a libel suit brought by Holocaust denier, David Irving. Julius was also known for representing Princess Diana against Prince Charles in their divorce. He took the case on a pro bono basis, out of commitment to the cause.
In July 2011, Julius sent a formal letter to the UCU (Julius 2011). It alleged a course of action by the union which amounted to institutional antisemitism, and it gave examples: annual boycott resolutions against only Israel; the conduct of these debates; the moderating of the activist list and the penalizing of anti-boycott activists; the failure to engage with people who raised concerns; the failure to address resignations; the refusal to meet the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s (OSCE) special representative on antisemitism; the hosting of Bongani Masuku; the repudiation of the EUMC Working Definition of Antisemitism.
The UCU defended itself vigorously. It said that it was an antiracist union, that it militantly opposed antisemitism and that Fraser was illegitimately trying to frame his political defeat as a ‘friend of Israel’ in terms of antisemitism. The union had done nothing inappropriate, it claimed.
The tribunal sat in the autumn of 2012. It accepted evidence on behalf of Fraser from thirty-four witnesses: union activists, scientists, sociologists, historians, lawyers, philosophers, Members of Parliament, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Atheists, academic experts on antisemitism and Jewish communal leaders. Witnesses gave written statements and were subjected to cross-examination.
In her witness statement, Annette Seidel-Arpaci, a union member and at that time a visiting research fellow at Leeds University, testified:
In my experience … there was an assumption that any UCU member opposing the union’s stance against Israel and Israeli colleagues was Jewish. This assumption by itself appeared to me as a demonstration of UCU’s intertwining of ‘Israel’ and ‘Jews’ …. In my experience, the conduct of UCU members campaigning for a boycott of Israel felt at all occasions like the notions of Israel and Jews were collapsed into one and the same. Moreover, as a scholar working on Holocaust memory, I felt very unsettled about the use of language by UCU activists that intertwines the experience of Jews in Europe with current Israeli politics on the occasion of events related to Jewish history.
Annette Seidel-Arpaci, who has both a Muslim and Christian family background, stated that she felt in conversations with UCU members that she was automatically expected to support a boycott of Israel. She was not cross-examined on this evidence, and so in procedural terms it stood unchallenged. The union’s lawyers argued that it should be ignored because what happened in Leeds UCU to Annette Seidel-Arpaci was not relevant to this case which related to Ronnie Fraser in London; the tribunal did not refer to her evidence and appears to have accepted the union’s argument on this point. But Ronnie’s case was that UCU allowed and maintained a culture of antisemitism; he contested the claim that what happened in Leeds was not relevant to the culture of the organization as a whole, of which he was a member.
David Seymour, who was a lecturer in law and a union member, testified in relation to the ‘activist list’, the internal union email forum:
I have observed the objective aspect of antisemitism being expressed on the Activist list many times, on familiar terms. These include, inter alia, that ‘Zionists’ or ‘supporters of Israel’ have access to unaccountable resources; that individuals act in concert with others (such as the suggestion that the posts of each individual are co-ordinated collectively, domestically and internationally); that those opposing the boycott are part of a larger ‘lobby’ … and that this lobby holds a dominant influence over those with whom it comes into conflict; that specific individuals (as part of the lobby) combine to undermine union democracy; that Jews remain in the background while others, non-Jews, are in the front-line; that Zionists are responsible for major catastrophes (i.e. 9.11).
… I was told that my identification of antisemitic tropes and imagery was a ruse either to ‘deflect criticism of Israel’, or to further the interests of the so-called ‘Lobby’ and, as such, to act to the detriment of Palestinians (and the Union). At times, I became the object of an abusive dialogue that took place between two prominent list contributors …. Like my communications with the list moderator, the substance of my complaints was ignored and, instead, accusations of mal fide were heaped upon me in this environment open to all Union members.
It was during this time that I began to feel the subjective effects of this constant stream of antisemitism. The sheer unpleasantness of having to read these comments coupled with the dismissal of my concerns by the Union and those on the activist list, left me feeling a sense of vulnerability. This sense of vulnerability and depression and feeling of isolation that gradually came to accompany it, began to spill over into other areas of my life. It was these feelings that I expressed when I formally removed myself from the activist list. Its effects linger and can be traced to my initial reluctance to recall the matters described in this statement. It is a period of my life that I did not wish to recollect. In retrospect, I believe that the negative feelings I had at the time were the result of what I can only describe as an environment of ‘antisemitic bullying’.
David Seymour was cross-examined in court. The tribunal wrote the following:
Some witnesses were most impressive. These include … Dr Seymour. They gave careful, thoughtful, courteous evidence and were clearly mindful of their obligations as witnesses in litigation.
(para 148)
Having praised him, the tribunal ignored his evidence. It did not refer to Seymour’s evidence at any other point in the judgment, and it appears to have given it no credence at all.
Mira Vogel, who was a member of the central support staff at Goldsmiths, University of London, wrote the following in her witness statement:
Opposing the boycott campaign on the UCU Activists List, an email discussion group with a membership of roughly 700, was a bruising experience which left me feeling powerless.
I was groundlessly accused on the Activists list of orchestrating UCU resignations ….
I was also subjected to a diagnosis of problems with my character, which were explained in terms of flawed Jewishness on my part. This person had also addressed me with insinuating and racialized observations such as ‘Apologies for my style. It is genetic you know …’ and ‘Live together is the best therapy for racism – Jews know this better than anybody’. In doing so he illustrated a troubling pair of associated assumptions which characterize UCU’s boycott campaign: anti-boycotters are both Jewish and profoundly morally inferior. I am not aware of UCU moderator efforts to disrupt this association …
While Zionism is maligned and epitomised as an evil force within UCU, I worry that my identification as a Zionist by UCU activists could become a serious problem for me at work. Ignorance about Zionism on the part of boycott campaigners is often profound …. Because I need to be in a position to support colleagues and students across Goldsmiths, as far as my day-to-day work is concerned it would be better for me to avoid situations where they are given to understand that I am aligned with or part of a Jewish supremacist movement which tries to manipulate world powers and plans genocide against Palestinians – particularly when colleagues are encouraged by Resolution 30’s statement that ‘Congress believes that in these circumstances passivity or neutrality is unacceptable’.
The tribunal did not refer to Mira Vogel’s evidence anywhere in its judgment.
Duncan Bryson was a history lecturer at a college in the West Midlands. He gave evidence about the culture at UCU Congresses that he attended as a delegate:
There was a leaflet that branded opponents of the boycott as ‘apologists for massacre’. This seemed to me quite an incredible leap to make. Also, one of the stalls had a large banner above it reading ‘Zionism = Racism’. This is the level of debate – it is very simplistic and does not allow for other opinions. Such sentiments made it difficult for me to express my doubts about the boycott because I felt I would be treated in a very hostile way.
The debate was ill mannered, there was often loud heckling and constant interruption from the floor, speakers did not always appear in order, one speaker struggled to finish his piece amongst the noise, members of the NEC [National Executive Committee] including the chair, intervened with pro-boycott statements.
In this atmosphere I did not feel comfortable contributing to the debate. I felt, rightly or wrongly, my stance on this issue would alienate me from comrades with whom I wished to make common cause on other issues. I felt that by expressing my dissenting views on the boycott I would compromise relationships within the union, that I would be seen as a ‘Zionist’ or an ‘apologist’. To clarify, I am used to the rough and tumble of debate and I am not generally uncomfortable speaking in public. But this was beyond the usual rough and tumble.
Duncan Bryson’s evidence was not referred to in the tribunal judgment.
Steve Scott, director of Trade Union Friends of Israel (TUFI), wrote in his witness statement:
Since the 2008 conference at which TUFI exhibited, the UCU has categorically refused to allow TUFI to exhibit at its subsequent conferences, justifying its decision with the claim that they now only allow affiliated organisations …. TUFI formally asked the UCU if they would affiliate to TUFI, but we were told that they would not be affiliating to TUFI. No reasons were given ….
The UCU debate on Israel and Palestine at the national activist level has become so toxic that I believe anyone trying to promote a balanced debate is fighting a lost cause. The entrenched commitment to an aggressive anti-Israel stance and the level of anti-Israel rhetoric among conference delegates makes the UCU conference an intimidating atmosphere for voices of opposition. I can only imagine how oppressive the environment is for the UCU’s Jewish membership in the context of this fierce political agenda.
Stephen Scott’s evidence was not referred to in the tribunal judgment.
David-Hillel Ruben was a senior University of London Professor of philosophy. He wrote in his witness statement:
I attended a general, London-wide meeting at SOAS [School of Oriental and African Studies] called by the union on Israel, and was laughed at and harangued. If anyone thinks these special meetings are places where open-minded discussion occurs, he should attend such a meeting in order to be disabused of this thought. They are meetings where the true believers speak to one another about Israeli imperialism and aggression. The narrative from only one side is heard. No one can seriously take these meetings to be balanced. They have in fact a threatening effect on those who have anything positive to say about Israel ….
It was impossible for me to feel that this was any longer ‘my’ union, one to which I was welcome to belong. Here is what a member of the national executive committee wrote to me recently:
If Zionism is racist, then I am being told that I, my family, my friends are racists. As Director of a small university campus from 1999–2011 (NYU [New York University] in London), I tried to encourage union membership amongst our part time academic staff. I failed. No one wanted to join. I spoke time and time again to many, Jews and non-Jews, who had already resigned from the union out of disgust over their policies on Israel.
… In truth, although I resigned from the union, it felt much more like my union having been taken away from me. Over the years, I watched the anti-Israel sentiment grow. I have watched the anti-Israel sentiment in the union grow from a peculiar occupation of the union, although well within the bounds of political legitimacy, to what it is today: a fetish that has crossed the line into anti-Semitism. I appreciate that a few of the union anti-Israel activists are themselves Jewish, but the appellation of anti-Semitism is an objective one and I believe it accurately describes the union today.
Josh Robinson was a research fellow at Cambridge and a union member. He wrote in his witness statement:
From June 2007 onwards, traffic on the activists’ list was dominated for several months by discussion of the motion and Israeli-Palestinian politics more generally. Opponents of Israel made countless antisemitic statements. I documented some of these in a 22-page complaint which I submitted to UCU in May 2008. The document consisted of three complaints pertaining to antisemitic conduct on the activists’ list on the part of three individual members of UCU, and one pertaining to institutional antisemitism within the union as a whole.
Josh Robinson was eventually informed that the complaint would be considered by Tom Hickey, one of the leaders of the boycott campaign in the union, and Matt Waddup, who was himself responsible for monitoring the activists’ list, and was now being asked to sit in judgment over his own conduct. Robinson questioned the choice of these two with a union official and was told that they were the correct and appropriate individuals to choose. Josh Robinson never received a response to his formal complaint. He goes on:
I find it difficult to draw from these events and the reaction to my complaint of institutional antisemitism any conclusion other than that those responsible for its investigation had decided in advance that there was no case to answer, and were acting (or rather: not acting) accordingly. This does strongly suggest that UCU as an organization is not committed to the establishment of an environment that is free from discrimination.
The tribunal accepted Robinson’s description of these events, and it judged that the failure to deal with the complaint was ‘unfortunate’; but, it went on, this failure was not ‘capable of sustaining a complaint that the Respondents harassed the Claimant’ (italics in original) (para 160). Ronnie Fraser alleged that there was an environment in the UCU that was, in the words of the act, ‘intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating and/or offensive to him, in respect of his Jewish identity’. In plain English, he was alleging institutional antisemitism. Robinson made a formal complaint through the union structures about what he called ‘institutional antisemitism’; he interpreted the union’s ‘unfortunate’ failure to respond as further evidence of it. The tribunal judged that what happened to Robinson, and his complaint was not evidence of anything relating to Fraser.
Jon Pike was a leading activist in the Engage network, a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the Open University, and he had been elected onto the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the UCU. In relation to his experience of the activists’ list, he wrote in his witness statement:
To say discussion was bad mannered would be an understatement. It was like a cess pit. Vile accusations and comments were routinely directed at anyone who questioned the boycott policy or expressed anything but hatred for Israel.
I complained formally through the complaints procedure of the union about some of these comments. I wrote a detailed complaint about three named members, whose comments seemed to me to be the most egregious. I listed other comments, and tried as best as I could to point out why they seemed out of order.
One of those about whom I complained, then counter-complained by accusing me of Islamophobia. However, this complaint did not cite any evidence against me at all.
However, my complaints were quickly rejected; no reference was made to the evidence I had submitted.
I was on the NEC …. It was an unpleasant experience for me. I suffered from insomnia, and began smoking, especially around the time of NEC meetings. I can only describe it as a very hostile environment.
The way it would manifest itself would be, for example, that at meetings, and outside meetings, people would blank me and refuse to acknowledge me, including in the queues for coffee. Some people who agreed with me politically in private would refuse to talk to me in public, or on occasions when they could be seen by others ….
I felt I had to resign after [the 2009] Congress because it was such an appalling experience …. A member of the SWP [Socialist Workers Party] stood up and said ‘Jon Pike has just made the worst speech ever in the history of congress’. He was applauded, until the president intervened to say that personal attacks should not be made. This indicates the level of hostility which I faced. I had experienced nothing like that in my ordinary life as an academic where it was not strange to hold the broadly liberal view that I held.
Whatever your view was on Israel, this was enough to define you politically. I was simply known as Jon Pike the ‘Zionist’. It was commonly assumed that I was Jewish. ‘Zionist’ was uniformly seen as a term of condemnation, indeed demonization. Individuals with who I thought I had merely a nodding acquaintance, or who were near strangers would mutter under their breath when they found themselves in my proximity (for example in the gents). On one such occasion, I was told by another member of the NEC that ‘if you can’t take the flak you should get out of the union’.
… In the course of my involvement with the AUT and the UCU I met many Jewish academics who opposed a boycott of Israeli universities. Very few of them were able to withstand the levels of hostility and abuse that was directed against them in the union, and maintain their participation. Dozens of Jewish members have left the union, ground down by the abuse and hostility that has been directed against them. The main two exceptions are David Hirsh and Ronnie Fraser.
The tribunal, in its judgment, did not address any of this evidence given to it by Jon Pike.
Mark Osborn gave evidence about an incident which had happened in 2006 when he was a member of NATFHE, at a regional meeting. In his statement he recounts that there was a discussion about who would be delegated to national conference:
Various speakers at this meeting objected to one proposed National Conference delegate, Ronnie Fraser. Ronnie is a religious Jew and does not attend Saturday meetings, although he is a delegate to the Region from his branch.
One objection to Ronnie was that he does not attend Region meetings, and so, on these grounds, couldn’t be a delegate from the Region. However, many other National Conference delegates, in the past, had not attended Region.
At this point Tom Peters [name changed] from Kingsway College spoke, declaring that Ronnie should not be a delegate because he was a ‘Zionist and a racist’.
I interrupted, saying that calling Ronnie Fraser a racist was a disgrace, and that the remark should be withdrawn. Eventually [Tom Peters] did ‘withdraw’ the remark but in such a way that the allegation was both withdrawn and re-stated: TP declared Ronnie Fraser was not a racist, but that Zionists are racists and that Ronnie Fraser is a Zionist.
The chair of the meeting regarded this high-volume exchange between myself and Tom Peters as an irritation. The chair (I don’t know this man’s name) eventually asked Tom Peters to withdraw the allegation that RF is a racist – but as a bureaucratic method of continuing the meeting, rather than as a matter of principle.
Although Tom Peters’ remark was awful, at least he was being honest; others were trying to edge ‘the Jew’ out on technical reasons of attendance – a cover for political hostility.
Tom Peters then proposed a vote to elect the Region’s National Conference delegates. The proposal was made – explicitly – in order to exclude Ronnie from the delegation. There were no hustings.
The tribunal ruled that this, and a number of other pieces of evidence, were out of time. Anthony Julius had addressed this issue at the beginning of the trial as follows:
The complainant’s case is that the actions relied upon are cumulative: each instance of harassment has caused the evolution over time of the environment proscribed ….
It is continuing: the acts complained of amounted to a series of continuing acts which contributed to the [prohibited environment] …
… It is clear that these issues have been raised with UCU on numerous occasions, throughout the period complained about … there can clearly be a fair hearing on the issues that are raised by this claim.
(Fraser’s skeleton argument, para 61.5)
The tribunal dismissed this reasoning as follows:
Employment tribunals exist to deliver swift, practical, economical justice in the employment field and some related areas. Narrow jurisdictional time limits are in keeping with the scheme, being designed to ensure that disputes are not allowed to fester but are promptly litigated and determined so that the parties can put their differences behind them and move on. It is for the Claimant to show a good reason to entertain a claim out of time. The length of the delay, his awareness of the tribunal’s jurisdiction and his access to legal support all argue compellingly against us exercising the discretion which he invokes. Quite simply, no good reason is shown to consider this very late claim.
(para 175)
Ronnie Fraser had been resisting what he understood to be a thickening culture of antisemitism within the union, for years. He did not go to court immediately. Members resisted antisemitism by making arguments and by persuasion, by writing articles, blogs, and papers; they did so by putting motions in branches and at Congresses; they tried to educate and to persuade; they attempted to participate in debates on the activists’ list; they tried to take complaints through the formal complaints procedures of the union; they tried resigning in protest. Court was a last resort. Now the tribunal judged that anything which happened before the time limit was irrelevant. It could only do this by dismissing the argument that there was a growing problem in the union of institutional antisemitism. It first dismissed the claim that there was a relevant course of action, in order then to dismiss each instance as having occurred before the cut-off date.
There was another argument made in relation to Mark Osborn’s testimony. It was said by the union that Fraser was absent when this incident occurred; he could, therefore, not possibly have been harassed by it; it was said that Annette Seidel-Arpaci’s testimony could not have related to Fraser, because he was not in Leeds; it was said that things written on the activist list could not constitute harassment, because one chose to look at them. The judgment states:
While the conduct need not be aimed at a claimant, the further he stands from it, the less likely the tribunal is to find that in fact he experienced the stated adverse effect or, if he did, that it was reasonable for the conduct to have that effect.
(para 42)
Imagine making an analogous argument in relation to pornographic pictures on the walls of a workshop. Women could only be affected by them if somebody told them they were there; a woman in one workshop could not be affected by them if they worked in another workshop; if a woman did not look at the pictures, they could not affect her. But they would still add to an environment which constituted a violation of the act; and even if no woman employee ever saw them, or even ever heard of them, they would still relate to the possibility of women being employed in the future. The UCU relied on arguments which it would have opposed sturdily in another context; the tribunal accepted arguments which it would not have accepted in another context.
Dennis Noble was an Emeritus Professor of Physiology and a celebrated scientist; he is not Jewish. He wrote the following in his witness statement:
In the context of UCU’s insistent calls for sanctions (including boycotts) against Israel, its refusal to take the opportunity to dissociate itself from the public expression of anti-Semitic views clearly showed that the union itself is institutionally anti-Semitic.
Dennis Noble’s testimony was not mentioned in the judgment.
James Mendelsohn was a Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Huddersfield and a former union member, having resigned in protest at the antisemitism he said he suffered in the union. He testified as follows:
I do not believe that a trade union which did in fact abhor anti-Semitism would ignore emails from its members raising concerns about issues related to anti-Semitism, as Sally Hunt did; reject calls for condemnation even of Hamas’ anti-Semitic rhetoric, as Ray Lesley [name changed] and members of the Yorkshire and Humber Regional Committee had done; invite a man convicted of anti-Semitic hate speech to its premises to promote the boycott campaign, in the form of [Bongani] Masuku; or reject a definition of anti-Semitism outright, without suggesting an alternative. The UCU was an uncomfortable place for Jewish members, and I felt I had no choice but to resign.
James Mendelsohn’s testimony is not addressed in the tribunal judgment.
Raphael Levy was a lecturer in Biology at Liverpool University and a union member. He wrote:
I witnessed first with incredulity, and then with increasing anger and despair, the atmosphere of antisemitic bullying and hatred on the activist list. I was a member of that list for a period in 2008. I read comments targeting another member of the list, Mira Vogel, and implying a separation between Jewishness and humanity. There was no intervention from the moderator. I found this disturbing and decided to raise the issue on the list.
Following my post, I received unsolicited responses by email (off list), not of support, but denying that anything wrong had happened, characterizing my concerns as madness (‘losing the plot’), provocations or as a dishonest attempt to silence debate, as well as a call on Jews to ‘speak for themselves’, i.e. declare themselves good Jews who hate Israel.
The most shocking aspect of all of this for me was not that a couple of individuals would utter racist statements, but the fact that these were tolerated. No action was ever taken by the UCU against antisemitism. On the contrary, antiracists such as David Hirsh were excluded from the list. Clearly that list was not a safe place for Jews. This was not a place for rational debate and anyone who dared challenge antisemitism or the UCU support of the boycott of Israeli colleagues was the target of abuse.
My experience of participating on the list was painful, sad, and dispiriting. The daily delivery of hate and the fact that there was never any official objection to the rabid antisemitism was probably the worst part of it.
Raphael Levy’s testimony is not mentioned in the judgment. The judgment does, however, exonerate the union’s management of the list:
The List, a facility open only to members of the union who wished join it, was operated fairly and Mr Waddup’s management of it was almost wholly unobjectionable. The Respondents’ conduct (through him) cannot be described as ‘unwanted’, in the sense which we ascribe to that word. Nor is the requisite effect established. If the Claimant was upset to a significant extent by anything to do with the List, it was not Mr Waddup’s management of it but the nature of the comments of pro-Palestinian contributors.
(para 160)
Lesley Klaff was a Senior Lecturer in Law at Sheffield Hallam University and a union member. She gave evidence concerning a large number of issues which related to local union members. This is one of them:
It was in May 2007 that I first became aware of a Sheffield Hallam University colleague, anti-Zionist and Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) activist named John Harry [name changed]. He was a UCU caseworker at Sheffield Hallam University. He was introduced to me by means of email correspondence sent to me by a Sheffield Hallam University UCU branch executive officer named Peter Smith [name changed]. Peter had apparently informed John that I was Jewish, a Zionist, and anti-boycott. John then composed an email for me, containing questions for me to answer about Israel. The email was forwarded to me by Peter Smith on 10 May 2007 ….
I experienced John’s email as offensive. It invoked the classic trope of ‘Jewish criminality’ (theft of land and water) and the newer trope of ‘Israel-equals-apartheid South Africa’. It also misstated the facts as I knew them to be. In fact, this was to be the first of several such distressing emails that I would receive from John Harry. They only ceased when he retired from Sheffield Hallam University …
There was no doubt in my mind that John’s anti-Zionist on-campus activism which included his asking me questions and challenging me to a public debate, was engendered by the UCU national executive’s discriminatory measures against Israel. In fact, John’s initial email to me was written and sent in the context of his on-campus pro-boycott campaigning just prior to the implementation of Motion 30 at UCU Congress.
The combined effect of Motion 30 and John’ simultaneous on-campus pro-boycott campaigning (in which he distributed pro-boycott leaflets) was to create a hostile working environment for me as a Jewish person with strong ties to Israel. This is because for me the boycott strategy resonated with the history of anti-Semitism, was based on false facts, and promoted a discourse which employed anti-Semitic tropes.
Lesley Klaff’s evidence was not mentioned by the tribunal in its judgment. What happened at Sheffield Hallam, insisted the union’s barrister, on the union’s instructions, could not constitute harassment against Ronnie Fraser in London.
Eve Garrard was a research fellow in Philosophy at Manchester University and a union member. She wrote in her witness statement:
It became clear that the Union’s primary concern about the charges of discrimination which some (mainly but not exclusively Jewish) members began to raise was that such charges caused offence to pro-boycotters in the Union. The Union was anxious to protect pro-boycotters from being offended, but showed no concern for the worries of Jewish members who felt that their union was discriminating against Jews who supported Israel.
… Further reinforcement of my concerns was provided by the readiness of some contributors to dismiss all worries about discrimination by claiming that charges of anti-Semitism were only made in order to distract attention from Israel’s crimes. This unsupported claim, each time it was made, repeated the insinuation that people concerned about the disproportionate impact of boycott proposals on Jewish members of the Union were in fact liars engaged in manipulation and deceit. The spectacle of members of my own Union engaging in all this was extremely distressing: these, after all, were my academic colleagues, whom I should have expected at the very least to be able to provide adequate arguments for their selective hostility to the Jewish state. I should also have expected them to show some attempt to understand and take seriously the concerns about discrimination which I and other anti-boycotters were expressing. The Union executive did not at any point intervene to restrain this behaviour, and indeed itself at one point declared that criticism of Israel could not be regarded as anti-Semitic.
Observing [the Congress debate in 2008 in Manchester] was an even more distressing experience than I had expected it to be. I stood in the audience and watched as motions criticising countries such as Zimbabwe and Sudan, and proposing moderate responses to them, were presented and passed by delegates who were quiet almost to the point of somnolence. But these self-same delegates became extremely alert and enthusiastic when the prospect of punishing Israel’s putative crimes was put before them. I watched these people – my peers and colleagues, in effect – collectively decide not to allow this vote to go to the Union membership, presumably in case the membership refused to pass it (as indeed all the evidence suggests they would have done). As I watched the proposer of Motion 25 being given the chance to speak twice, where people who might have opposed the Motion weren’t given the opportunity to speak at all, I felt I was in the presence of something I had never thought to find among academic colleagues: a fixed determination to punish the Jewish state, come what may, irrespective of considerations of fairness or equity, or of the consequences for Jewish Colleagues. I felt quite exceptionally lonely and isolated, watching other academics in my own Union enthusiastically pass a motion which was bound to bear adversely on many, perhaps most, of their Jewish colleagues.
… I feel I have been seriously let down by the UCU. My Union was supposed to represent and support me; but instead I found it to be a place where my concerns, and those of others who share them, were entirely ignored, and treated as being of no importance. It had become for me a place in which I was regularly faced with profoundly offensive comments and behaviour. In the end I felt that I had no choice but to leave.
None of this from Eve Garrard was mentioned in the tribunal’s judgment.
Robert Fine was an Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Warwick, a veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle and a union member. He wrote in his witness statement:
I consider that UCU was correct in saying that criticism of Israel or of Israeli government policies is not necessarily antisemitic. However UCU did not acknowledge that some criticisms of Israel may be antiemetic, or that some members of the union felt this to be the case. This lack of acknowledgement indicated that antisemitism was not one of the forms of racism that UCU took seriously.
… When the academic boycott motion was debated at one Congress, opponents of the motion were given a tightly circumscribed opportunity to speak. When one opponent of the motion used the word ‘anti-Semitism’ in the course of his speech, I found it especially regrettable that he was audibly jeered and that the organisers of the meeting, as I recollect, did nothing to stop the jeering of the speaker (who I believe was the plaintiff in the case, Ronnie Fraser). It went without question that other forms of racism were rejected by UCU, which sees itself as a bastion of support for academic freedom and anti-discrimination, but talk of antisemitism seems to have been treated as a ruse. It again appeared to me that UCU did not take the matter of antisemitism seriously.
Some academics from within and without the Jewish community, including myself, have felt increasingly isolated because of the UCU attitude toward the boycott of Israel and toward the issue of antisemitism. A number of colleagues resigned because of what they see as a culture of antisemitism. I myself did not do so, partly because I value very highly the role of the union, but I would certainly endorse the view that there has been a culture of neglect within the union as a result of which allegations of antisemitism have not been addressed and some members, Jewish and non-Jewish, have been significantly harmed.
Robert Fine’s testimony is not mentioned in the tribunal’s judgment. The tribunal did come to a judgment about the conduct of debates at UCU Congress, however:
the proceedings were well-ordered and balanced. They were carefully controlled from the Chair. They were managed in an even-handed fashion with speakers selected in turn to speak for and against the motions. On the very rare occasions when it was necessary to call Congress to order, the chairman did so and those present responded appropriately. The debates were conducted with courtesy. Speakers on both sides received applause. Despite the strength of feeling, they lightened the occasion with humour from time to time. We were quite unable to detect the atmosphere of intimidation which the written case on the Claimant’s behalf attempted to convey.
Ariel Hessayon, a Senior Lecturer in History at Goldsmiths, University of London, wrote in his statement:
I … participated in the UCU Activists’ List until I had my posting rights blocked …. This followed posting a message on behalf of Dr David Hirsh, who had himself been banned from posting on the list ….
I can certainly say that participating in the Activists’ List was a deeply unpleasant experience: the atmosphere was frequently hostile and always intimidating. While I never personally felt humiliated I was confronted on an almost daily basis by extremists fixated on a single-minded obsession, one which constantly challenged and indeed sought to undermine my sense of my own Jewish identity.
Ariel Hessayon’s evidence is not mentioned in the tribunal judgment.
A coordinated campaign by Ronnie Fraser, his lawyers and his witnesses to try to intimidate critics of Israel with a fake accusation of antisemitism would indeed be disgraceful. This is what the tribunal, in the end, concluded had been happening, and this explains the unusually intemperate and emotional language employed in its dismissal of Fraser’s case. This also explains the tribunal’s refusal to consider with seriousness the detailed evidence which the witnesses presented of how antisemitism functioned within the UCU.
The tribunal judged that Fraser was trying to mobilize an allegation of antisemitism in order to undermine the freedom of speech of critics of Israel. It judged: ‘We are also troubled by the implications of the claim. Underlying it we sense a worrying disregard for pluralism, tolerance and freedom of expression’ (para 179). The tribunal said that Fraser was trying to persuade it to outlaw criticism of Israel as antisemitic. This was in spite of the fact that Julius and a large number of witnesses had been clear about the ways they considered the distinction between criticism of Israel and antisemitism to be of key importance. There is nothing unusual about those who defend racism claiming that antiracists disregard their right to free speech. Sometimes, the tribunal appears to veer towards the view that those who complained of antisemitism were simply over-sensitive and lacking in objective judgment. But the central findings, that this was politics dressed up as litigation, and that this was an attempt to prohibit free criticism, are allegations of bad faith.
It is striking that the response that Fraser’s allegation of antisemitism received in the tribunal turned out to be similar to the response which he had received within the union itself. The tribunal backed the union’s way of thinking about antisemitism completely.
Fraser said that the key mode of intimidation in the UCU was the constant allegation of bad faith, the allegation that Jews who say they feel antisemitism were actually lying for Israel. The tribunal replied that Ronnie Fraser, who said that he felt antisemitism, was dressing up a political end as a problem of racist exclusion. The tribunal held that it was appropriate to make the accusation of bad faith against Jews in the union who said that they experienced antisemitism.
The Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism (2006) reported that the boycott debates were likely to cause difficulties for Jewish academics and students, to exclude Jews from academic life and to have a detrimental effect on Jewish Studies. UCU responded that these allegations were made to stop people from criticizing Israel. Jon Pike explained how seventy-six members of the UCU publicly endorsed a critique of the union’s response which he had written with David Hirsh, but the union took no notice. John Mann MP told the tribunal that UCU had been unique among those criticized by the inquiry in its refusal to listen.
Sean Wallis, a local UCU official, said that anti-boycott lawyers were financed by ‘bank balances from Lehman Brothers that can’t be tracked down’ (Kovler 2009). Ronnie Fraser asked him whether he had indeed made this claim. Wallis admitted having said it. But it was Fraser who, for the crime of asking, was found to have violated union rules concerning ‘rude or offensive communications’ (Fraser’s Witness Statement).
Gert Weisskirchen, responsible for combating antisemitism for the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, asked the union leadership for a meeting to discuss antisemitism relating to the boycott. The union did not meet with him. When thirty-nine union members protested publicly, the union ignored them. Weisskirchen provided evidence to the tribunal. He wrote:
I can only describe the UCU’s response to me as cold and dismissive. All UCU officials and representatives resolutely refused to meet with me or address any of my publicised concerns, simply stating to me that all relevant individuals were ‘too busy’ at all of the dates and times I had proposed.
In my 40 years of trade union membership I had never encountered a response akin to the one I received from the UCU.
The union invited South African Trade Unionist Bongani Masuku to speak at a pro-boycott conference in London. Masuku was known to be under investigation by the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) for antisemitic hate speech. He had written, for example, in public:
Bongani says hi to you all as we struggle to liberate Palestine from the racists, fascists and Zionists who belong to the era of their friend Hitler! We must not apologize, every Zionist must be made to drink the bitter medicine they are feeding our brothers and sisters in Palestine.
Masuku also said that vigilante action would be taken against Jewish families suspected of having members serving in the Israeli military, and that Jews who continued to stand up for Israel should ‘not just be encouraged but forced to leave South Africa’. Evidence about Masuku was presented to the tribunal by Wendy Kahn, the director of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies. She wrote in her witness statement:
Against the backdrop of Mr Masuku’s speech at the University of Witswatersrand and the complaint to the SAHRC, UCU’s invitation to COSATU [Confederation of South African Trade Unions] showed very poor judgment. That UCU provided Mr Masuku with a platform to speak, after it became aware of the Finding is simply shocking. UCU has failed to apologise for the incident and has not disassociated itself from COSATU, which continues to publish a stream of anti-Semitic rhetoric. The SAJBD [South African Jewish Board of Deputies] considers that UCU’s actions stand in stark contrast to its self-stated interest in confronting all forms of anti-Semitism and show a flagrant disregard for the feelings and sentiments of UCU’s Jewish membership.
The union ought to have known Masuku’s record. Ronnie Fraser told the union about Masuku’s record. Masuku was found guilty in South Africa of hate speech before speaking as a guest of UCU. And, months later, UCU Congress explicitly rejected a motion to dissociate itself from Masuku’s ‘repugnant views’.
Masuku and COSATU persistently refused to recognize the SAHRC finding, and they refused to apologize for Masuku’s behaviour. Eventually, the SAHRC sued Masuku and COSATU in the Equalities Court in Johannesburg. The case was heard in February 2017; the expert witness on antisemitism for the SAHRC was David Hirsh. The judgment has not yet been handed down.
On the activists’ list, Ronnie Fraser responded to talk of the ‘blockade of Gaza’ by pointing out that there was no absolute blockade of Gaza. In response, another union member said that he was like the Nazis at Theresienstadt. In my own cross-examination, I explained to the tribunal the significance of this response. I told them that Theresienstadt was a ghetto and concentration camp in Czechoslovakia which the Nazis had dressed up as a humane home for Jews in order to show the Red Cross. I tried to help the tribunal to understand what it meant for a son of two Holocaust survivors to be denounced as being like a Nazi, in this way, in public, by his union comrades. The union found that there was nothing inappropriate about this comment which warranted union officers to step in. The tribunal found there was nothing inappropriate about the union’s refusal to step in.
A significant number of union members resigned over the issue of antisemitism. Congress voted down a motion requiring the union officers to investigate these resignations. There was no mechanism for counting resignations over antisemitism, and such resignations were instead counted, according to the testimony of the union officer responsible, as being related to ‘disagreements over the Middle East’.
There was an instructive exchange during the cross-examination of the general secretary of the UCU, Sally Hunt. Anthony Julius took her through a large number of examples of allegedly antisemitic things which had been said or written within union spaces – during Congress, at other meetings and on the UCU activists’ email list. Hunt considered each example, and she judged each one in turn to be not antisemitic. As though rather exasperated, Julius put a hypothetical to her: ‘If somebody said, “If you want to understand the Jews, read Mein Kampf”, would that be antisemitic?’ Hunt answered that within the union context, because the union is an antiracist union, then no, it would not necessarily be antisemitic.
This answer is an explicit endorsement of the politics of position over the politics of reason. For Hunt, what was important in judging whether a statement was antisemitic was the space in which it was made and the people who made it, not the content of the statement itself. Hunt seemed to regard antisemitism within an antiracist union to be unthinkable. Instead of coming to terms with the normalization of antisemitism in the union, Hunt defined the antisemitic behaviour and the antisemitic speech as being antiracist, not by virtue of its content but by virtue of its occurrence within a space which is a priori not antisemitic. Anybody who challenges this a priori truth must be cast out; anybody who tries to engage with the truth by discussion, reason, evidence or argument risks their status as part of the community.
Having presided over the relentless cross-examination of Sally Hunt, having seen her deny that each example was antisemitic, having seen her reject even that hypothetical, Judge Snelson scolded Anthony Julius in a rather condescending way and expressed the hope that Julius would soon come to discussing the evidence of the case.
Having heard all the evidence, the tribunal, like the union, judged none of them to be evidence of antisemitism. It judged:
The Claimant is a campaigner. He chooses to engage in the politics of the union in support of Israel and in opposition to activists for the Palestinian cause. When a rugby player takes the field he must accept his fair share of minor injuries …. Similarly, a political activist accepts the risk of being offended or hurt on occasions by things said or done by his opponents (who themselves take on a corresponding risk).
(para 156)
It is unimaginable that a tribunal today would say the same thing to a woman who complained of sexual harassment at work after she chose to wear a tight skirt to the office, or after she had chosen to campaign in favour of women’s rights. But this is what the tribunal said to the Jewish man.
The rugby analogy demonstrates one of the central problems with the approach taken by the tribunal. The tribunal seemed unable to grasp the key distinction between criticism of Israel, on the one hand, and speech or action which could be judged to be antisemitic, on the other. In fact it said that it took the distinction seriously, and it accused Fraser of not doing so. The problem comes, however, when in practice everything is judged to be criticism and nothing is judged to be antisemitism. The result is the position that since Fraser took on the responsibility of defending Israel, then he should expect some antisemitism as part of the ‘game’.
The tribunal also mentioned that it had been inappropriate to allow Tom Hickey, a union official, to sit in judgment over formal claims of antisemitism. Why? It says that the reason is that he is a ‘well-known pro-Palestinian activist’ (para 181). Surely, however, it is insulting to ‘pro-Palestinian activists’ to suggest that they are unqualified to judge what is antisemitic and what is not. Being pro-Palestine should be one thing; being antisemitic should be quite another. The tribunal found itself unable to work with the distinction. The reason why Hickey was an inappropriate judge, as the tribunal was told, was because he was not good at making the distinction between antisemitism and criticism of Israel, not because he was ‘pro-Palestinian’. Fraser had offered the tribunal a video3 to watch which showed Hickey saying that the attempt by Israeli archaeologists to write a history of Israel as something which had always existed was ‘more insidious, and in some sense, almost nastier’, than the Nazi genocide of Jews. Belief in this kind of bizarre and extreme position, which many would judge to be antisemitic, was the reason this man was inappropriate to judge a formal complaint of antisemitism. But the tribunal refused to watch the video, and it misconstrued the point about why he was an inappropriate judge.
Speaking for myself, I never chose to play rugby. I found that my union was considering setting up an exclusion of our Israeli colleagues from UK campuses, so I tried to make arguments against it doing so. I was, as it were, pushed onto a rugby field. There, I found myself being outnumbered and repeatedly knocked to the floor by organized opponents. I was confronted by relentless, if sometimes subtle, antisemitic rhetoric, hostility and accusations of bad faith. I appealed to the union, who was playing the part of the referee. But the referee said that it must remain neutral between the two rugby teams, and I should just get on with the game. But I was not part of a rugby team and I did not want to play. I only wanted my union to stop with the hatred of Israel and with the antisemitism which came with it. And when I tried to step outside of the rugby field and say publicly what was going on, I was punished for breaking the rules of the game. It may be appropriate to rugby-tackle somebody who has chosen to play rugby, but, when this happens outside of the rugby field, it has a different meaning.
There was a time when I and a number of others, many of whom eventually gave evidence for Ronnie in front of the tribunal, were trying to have our voices heard on the activists’ list. Most of us, unlike Ronnie, were not particularly ‘pro-Israel’ but strong critics of Israeli policy and of the occupation. Indeed, some of my own criticism of Israel was so strong that it was read out to another witness under cross-examination as being indistinguishable from the antisemitic rhetoric of which Ronnie complained. But the witness explained to the tribunal how it was different. Nevertheless, if ever we raised the issue of antisemitic rhetoric on the list, we would immediately be denounced for crying antisemitism in bad faith in order to silence criticism of Israel. It was a difficult time. We would try to explain what the problem was with the accusations that we supported the genocide of the Palestinians, or that we were racists, or that we were Nazis, and people would respond, immediately, relentlessly and in writing before hundreds of our union colleagues, that we only raised the issue of antisemitism in order to stifle their criticisms of Israel.
We appealed to the moderator of the list. We said that this was a union space and that it should not be possible to bully us out of it with antisemitic rhetoric. But the moderator acted as the referee in a tough rugby match between Israel and Palestine, rather than a union official making sure that the union was a safe place for Jewish members here in the UK. One academic who had been particularly active at that time told the tribunal that he had nearly had a nervous breakdown because of the way he was treated on the activist list.
One strategy I was minded to adopt at that time was to publish some of the antisemitic material from the list on the Engage website. There was a closed culture within the union in which antisemitism was never recognized and was never thought to be a problem. Institutional racism requires a heavy policing of the institutional boundaries to make sure that the values of the external world cannot intrude and the norms of the internal world cannot be seen.
In August 2007, I wrote an email on the activists’ list expressing concern at the antisemitic consequences of the campaign to boycott Israel and arguing that we should be aware that it is usual for antisemitic arguments to be positioned as one side in a legitimate democratic debate. I was warned by the list moderator for the crime of saying this and told to ‘be more careful in my choice of language’ or otherwise I would be excluded from the discussion. I was also told not to publish anything which appeared on the list. I responded by saying that I would make no undertaking whatsoever not to publish antisemitic material from the list. The tribunal tells this story in its judgment, but it chooses to delete the word ‘antisemitic’. In paragraph ninety-three of the judgment, it reports: ‘Dr Hirsh responded, stating that he would “make no undertaking whatsoever” not to publish material from the List.’ I and other critics of antisemitism were indeed excluded from the list, while nobody was ever excluded from the list for writing antisemitic things. Indeed, nothing that happened inside the union was ever judged to be antisemitic. The tribunal judge himself asked me whether I broke the rules. I told him that, as a whistleblower, I thought there were two conflicting principles. The tribunal chooses not even to consider or to describe this dilemma in its judgment.
The old Romanian Communist Party used to win elections with 100 per cent of the vote. Just this fact is enough to tell us that the process could not have been fair. The University and College Union, and now the tribunal, judged that nothing that ever happened in the union was antisemitic. Not one thing. Given the history of antisemitism in Europe and on the left, and given the hostility to Israel and to Israeli policy within the union, it is hardly plausible that hostility to Israel was never expressed in an antisemitic way. An antiracist union has a responsibility to educate against antisemitism and to guard against it. A tribunal has the responsibility to recognize antisemitism when it occurs and to protect those who are bullied by it. We live in a time and in a place where it is possible for a union and a tribunal to fail to see antisemitism, even when it is shown to them in detail and even when its significance is explained to them.
1Claimant’s skeleton argument, Fraser v UCU.
2Witness statement of David Hirsh, Fraser v UCU.
3Available: https://engageonline.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/antisemitism-who-gets-to-judge/.