The Board of Deputies has confirmed that the chair of Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) has launched a costly right of access request to learn how many times his name has been mentioned by the communal organisation.
The JC understands that the Board received the Subject Access Request (SAR) — which will cost an estimated £10,000 to respond to — from Gideon Falter.
It is believed to relate to concerns the CAA chief executive has over his involvement in future engagements.
The Board's executive committee report on Wedneaday November 11 confirmed they had received a SAR from Mr Falter.
It added that while he had a legal right to do so "responding to these requests is onerous and costly" adding £10,000 had been set aside "for legal and other costs."
Details of the request emerged as the leading QC Jonathan Goldberg, an honorary patron of CAA, told of “my broiges” over what he claimed was the failure of the Board, the Jewish Leadership Council (JLC) and the Community Security Trust to properly credit Mr Falter for his work.
In comments that later attracted some criticism from those watching, Mr Goldberg told an online event last week that “any student of history of course knows that broigeses in the German Jewish community made life so easy for Hitler in combating us.”
The QC made his remarks as he attempted to ask a question to the Board President at the JW3 Abraham Presentations event on November 13.
In responding to Mr Goldberg, Mrs van der Zyl felt it correct to reveal that the CAA had submitted the SAR, leaving her own organisation with “a great deal of work and expense”, and also meaning she needed to be careful with her response.
Mr Goldberg also claimed that the CAA “get all the credit in the EHRC report” and that despite issuing a statement after the report’s publication, the Board, the JLC and the CST had “nothing to do with this wonderful and illuminating” investigation into Labour.
Mrs van Zyl said she needed to correct the QC over this point because she did not “want your facts to be incorrect.” She said the Board had been asked to submit evidence to the EHRC and was in fact mentioned in the report on six occasions.
Mr Goldberg insisted that the EHRC “came about because... the CAA is led by a young man called Gideon Falter who is in my view an absolute Judas Maccabeus of our community.”
The Board President pointed out that CAA had done good work, and that she herself had given evidence in support of the organisation at a previous hearing.
Mark Lewis, the solicitor for Mr Falter, said: “It is extraordinary that the BoD consider that it will cost £10,000 to comply with a lawful request. All they need to do is search two words on a computer and press ‘print’. You have to ask how they come up with such a figure. If there is nothing to hide then why make such a fuss.”
Asked about his comments at the meeting, Mr Goldberg told the JC: “Beyond having acted pro bono for the CAA in a number of their private prosecutions of anti-semites, I have no other interest than a deep sense of unfairness and sadness that each of the three established communal institutions saw fit to issue a disingenuous press statement falsely claiming credit for the success before the EHRC in exposing Corbyn, which rightly belonged to the CAA alone.
“This is all too reminiscent of German history, where the Nazis exploited similar divisions within the Jewish community. For too long these other bodies have tried to push the admirable work of the CAA into the cold. ”
