| Campaign Against Antisemitism | |
| Logo Alt: | Campaign Against Antisemitism logo |
| Formation: | August 2014 |
| Headquarters: | London, UK |
| Region Served: | United Kingdom |
| Registration Id: | 1163790 |
| Leader Title: | Chief Executive |
| Leader Name: | Gideon Falter |
Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) is a British non-governmental organisation established in August 2014 by members of the Anglo-Jewish community.[1] [2] [3] It conducts litigation, runs awareness-raising campaigns, organises rallies and petitions, provides education on antisemitism and publishes research.
CAA was set up in early August 2014, after an increase in antisemitic incidents that accompanied the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict.[4] [5] A grassroots campaign, it grew largely out of social media activity among those who felt more should be done to promote the Jewish community's concerns after a meeting to discuss responses where a campaigner had her concerns dismissed by Board of Deputies of British Jews president Vivian Wineman.[6]
In January 2015, the then-UK Home Secretary, Theresa May, praised CAA for its work and undertook to ensure that the law against antisemitism is "robustly enforced".[7] On 1 October 2015, it was registered as a charitable incorporated organisation (CIO). Its chief executive is Gideon Falter and its first director of communications was Jonathan Sacerdoti.[8]
CAA publishes primary and secondary research based on opinion polling and Freedom of Information Act 2000 requests. CAA's annual Barometer measures antisemitic sentiment in the UK and also surveys the effect of antisemitism on the Jewish community.[9] Further, its National Antisemitic Crime Audit collects and analyses antisemitic crime data from all police forces in the United Kingdom. CAA uses the report to assess trends in antisemitic crime and to make recommendations to the British government.[10] [11] CAA also monitors antisemitism in political parties[12] and the adoption of the IHRA definition by universities and local authorities in the UK.[13]
CAA's first demonstration was in 2014 against the Tricycle Theatre in London, which had cancelled its hosting of that November's UK Jewish Film Festival due to the contemporaneous conflict in Gaza, unless the festival rejected funding from parties involved in the conflict, specifically a £1,400 sponsorship from the Israeli embassy, which the Tricycle Theatre offered to replace.[14] In August 2014, following discussions with the festival organizers, the Tricycle withdrew its condition.[15]
Later that same summer, CAA led a demonstration outside the Royal Courts of Justice, attracting an estimated 5,000 people in the largest protest against antisemitism in a generation following a spike in antisemitic incidents. Attendees heard from Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, representatives from the Board of Deputies and others.[16]
In August 2018, CAA organised a demonstration outside Labour Party's headquarters to protest against the handling of antisemitism in the Labour Party, and to condemn the-then party leader, Jeremy Corbyn.[17] That same month, the organisation launched a Change.org petition titled "Jeremy Corbyn is an antisemite and must go";[18] it featured a Labour slogan modified to read "For the many not the Jew", which was signed by over 30,000 by 30 August 2018.[19] A counter-petition against CAA with the title "To Get the Charity Commission to Deregister the Zionist Campaign Against Anti-Semitism" was signed by almost 7,500 and sent to the Charity Commission for England and Wales, which said in response that it was "assessing concerns raised about the Campaign Against Antisemitism's campaigning activities".[20] In October 2018, the Charity Commission said that charities must be independent of party politics and insisted that CAA reword its petition.[21]
In November 2018, CAA asked the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to investigate the Labour Party.[22] In May 2019, following complaints submitted by CAA, the EHRC launched a formal investigation into whether Labour had "unlawfully discriminated against, harassed or victimised people because they are Jewish".[23] Following the referral to the EHRC by CAA, the Jewish Labour Movement and Labour Against Antisemitism Ltd also made submissions in support of the referral. The investigation ultimately found that the Labour Party had committed unlawful acts of discrimination against Jews under Jeremy Corbyn.[24] Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party, responded to the findings when they were published in October 2020, saying at a press conference that it was a “day of shame” for the Labour Party.[25]
In December 2019, CAA held a demonstration outside Parliament under its subsidiary brand Together Against Antisemitism.[26] 3,200 attendees heard from speakers such as Tom Holland and Robert Rinder.[27]
On 26 November 2023, following several pro-Palestinian marches in London during the Israel–Hamas war, the CAA organised the March Against Antisemitism, starting at the Royal Courts of Justice. Estimates from police indicate that between 50,000[28] and 100,000 people attended the march; it was claimed by the organisation to be "the largest gathering of its kind since the Battle of Cable Street".[29] One month prior, CAA held a smaller demonstration outside the Scotland Yard Headquarters, to protest against what they deemed police inaction in the face of an uptick in antisemitic hate crimes.[30]
CAA regularly conducts polling on both the Jewish community and wider British population. They produce an annual Antisemitism Barometer surveying both, which has regularly produced notable findings including, for instance, that 84% of British Jews considered Jeremy Corbyn to be a threat to the Jewish community in 2019.[31] The 2019 survey is believed to be the first survey ever to suggest that antisemitism on the far-left had overtaken that on the far-right.[32]
CAA were among those calling for organisations to be proscribed under the Terrorism Act 2000, including the neo-Nazi National Action and Islamist groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir, which are both now proscribed.[33] [34]
CAA has used the process of judicial review in English law to scrutinise and reverse decisions made by the government and authorities. For example, in March 2017, CAA forced the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to quash a decision not to prosecute an alleged far-right leader over a speech in which he issued a call to "free England from Jewish control".[35] [36] [37] Whereas the CPS was sceptical that a crime had been committed, once the case reached a jury the defendant was found guilty and given a one-year custodial sentence.[38]
In 2021, Tahra Ahmed, a prominent Grenfell Tower volunteer aid worker, was exposed by The Times as having claimed that the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire were “burnt alive in a Jewish sacrifice” and that the inferno profited Goldman Sachs.[39] Further investigations by CAA revealed that she was propagating a multitude of antisemitic conspiracy theories to her thousands of Facebook followers, and reported her to the police. In January 2022 she was found guilty on two counts of publishing written material in order to stir up racial hatred, and was sentenced to eleven months in prison.[40]
In early 2018, CAA brought a successful private prosecution against Alison Chabloz,[41] [42] a Holocaust denier who released three YouTube videos of self-written antisemitic songs characterising Auschwitz as a "theme park" and the Holocaust as the "Holohoax".[43] [44] [45] [46] Chabloz was subsequently imprisoned for breaking the conditions of her suspended sentence.[47]
In July 2018, Gilad Atzmon was forced to apologise to CAA chairman Gideon Falter and pay costs and damages after being sued for libel. Atzmon acknowledged that he had falsely stated that Falter had personally profited from fabricating antisemitic incidents.[48] [49] [50]
In 2019, the CAA was sued by Tony Greenstein for libel in relation to CAA having published articles about him calling him a "notorious antisemite". In 2017, Greenstein had launched a petition asking the Charity Commission to deregister the organisation, claiming its purpose was to limit freedom of speech by calling opponents of Israel antisemitic.[51] Greenstein's libel claim was dismissed.[52]
In 2022, the Charity Commission confirmed that it had opened an investigation into the National Union of Students’ (NUS) charitable arm, following a letter calling on the regulator to do so from Robert Halfon, then the Chair of the Education Select Committee, and CAA.[53] CAA also contributed to a separate investigation into NUS that found that the union had tolerated a “hostile environment" for Jewish students.[54]
A February 2017 letter to The Guardian, which was signed by 250 academics,[55] stated that CAA cites the Working Definition of Antisemitism in asking its supporters to "record, film, photograph and get witness evidence" about Israeli Apartheid Week events, and CAA "will help you to take it up with the university, students' union or even the police." The signatories said: "These are outrageous interferences with free expression, and are direct attacks on academic freedom ... . It is with disbelief that we witness explicit political interference in university affairs in the interests of Israel under the thin disguise of concern about antisemitism."[56] [57] [58]
In August 2019, CAA asked Goldsmiths, University of London, to cancel a booking made by the Communist Party of Great Britain because they objected to some of the speakers who they said "have a history of baiting Jews or outright antisemitism". The university in response referenced their commitment to free speech and that hiring event space to legal organisations was a common practice amongst universities.[59]
In January 2015, the All-Party Parliamentary Group against Antisemitism wrote: "We were somewhat disappointed to note that not all of the messages from that group [CAA] have been in line with CST's stated approach of seeking to avoid undue panic and alarm." They added "it is important that the leadership do not conflate concerns about activity legitimately protesting Israel's actions with antisemitism, as we have seen has been the case on some occasions."[60] That same month, the Institute for Jewish Policy Research said that a CAA survey about antisemitism was "littered with flaws", and "may even be rather irresponsible".[61] However, in years since, the surveys have not received public criticism.
After criticism by CAA of Shami Chakrabarti over her 2016 report into antisemitism in the UK Labour Party, a number of British Jews wrote to The Guardian dissociating themselves from the Chief Rabbi, the Board of Deputies, and what they described as "the pro-Israel lobbyists of the Campaign Against Antisemitism".[62]
In July 2018, the Labour MP Margaret Hodge became one of a number of honorary patrons of CAA. In the run up to the 2019 United Kingdom general election, CAA asked her to resign as a patron because she was standing as a Labour Party candidate; she did so but described their request as "both astonishing and wounding", showing a lack of respect and impugning her integrity.[63] By contrast, several Labour MPs had resigned from the party during the Corbyn years during the Labour antisemitism crisis that had engulfed the party.[64] [65] [66] In February 2020, the Morning Star reported that Shahrar Ali, the Home Affairs spokesman of the Green Party of England and Wales, had made a formal complaint to the Charity Commission that the CAA had failed to be independent of party politics, which is a legal requirement for charities, and that the commission was assessing.[67] CAA had previously described a 2009 speech by Ali, who described Tony Blair, George W. Bush, and Ehud Olmert, as "warmongers",[68] as antisemitic and an "offensive rant".[69] [70]
In 2023, following the CAA-led March Against Antisemitism, the British Jewish organisation Na'amod released a statement about their decision not to attend the CAA-led demonstration, stating: "we know this march is not just about antisemitism. It’s clear from the event description that CAA has organised this march in response to huge weekly ceasefire demonstrations in London."[71] Na'amod publicly denied CAA's characterisations of the prior ceasefire marches as antisemitic, saying "This could not be further from the truth. Pitting Jewish safety against Palestinian freedom doesn’t make Jews safer; it makes fighting antisemitism harder." The event was supported by mainstream Jewish organisations and figures, including the Chief Rabbi and the Jewish Leadership Council.[72] [73] It was later reported that some members of Naamod regretted boycotting the march.[74]