Last Friday, District Judge John Zani convicted Alison Chabloz over her long social media campaign blaming Jews for the world’s every ill. She seemed to particularly enjoy baiting the Jewish community by claiming that Jews deserve persecution, that Auschwitz was a “theme park”, and naming individual Holocaust survivors who she said had fabricated their accounts.

Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) made complaints to the police about Ms Chabloz but we were by no means the first. Dozens of people had gone before us, to no avail. Indeed Ms Chabloz complained to her local force that Jews were harassing her on social media and for a time they treated her as a victim.

When Ms Chabloz posted one of her more repulsive videos, (((Survivors))), on YouTube and Twitter, CAA again complained, only this time we were ready to enforce the law ourselves.

Our pro bono lawyers, led by the renowned Jonathan Goldberg QC, made preparations so that as the six-month deadline for prosecuting the offence closed in with no signs of the authorities taking action, we launched a private prosecution. Eventually, fearing embarrassment, the CPS decided to take it over (to their credit, assigning an outstanding legal team to the case).

From the authorities initially claiming that no crime had been committed, District Judge Zani ruled that Ms Chabloz was guilty “by some considerable margin”.

Importantly, through this case, we have been able to secure judicial backing for the internationally-accepted definition of antisemitism, and an extremely detailed ruling that Holocaust denial, when intended to wound, is “grossly offensive” and therefore likely to be a criminal offence in most contexts.

Perhaps even more importantly though, we have highlighted the authorities’ gross dereliction of duty when it comes to prosecuting antisemites. The conviction of Ms Chabloz is part of a series of legal battles between CAA and the state.

A week before, another antisemite, Jeremy Bedford-Turner, was sentenced to a year in prison over an antisemitic speech. To bring him to justice, CAA’s lawyers had had to battle the CPS in court for thirteen months.

We constantly receive reports of new crimes from the community and we will keep fighting for justice in court, and winning. But the real question here is why, left to the state, these antisemites would go unpunished.

Gideon Falter is chair of CAA