A Jewish pro-Palestinian group has been forced to relaunch its social media efforts after a supporter promoted a series of articles questioning aspects of the Holocaust and rising antisemitism in Britain.
Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JfJfP), which lobbies for a boycotts and sanctions against Israel, said it had reacted to complaints about the offensive articles.
The posts were made by the administrator of its website and Facebook page.
One article, uploaded on Holocaust Memorial Day in January, questioned the findings of a survey on antisemitism and appeared to suggest Jew-hatred was a direct result of Zionism.
It stated: “To actually question the dogma around antisemitism itself is one of the ultimate taboos. It’s at the very foundations of the Zionist enterprise. You know at this rate, we European Jews will all be going to the gas soon. Yawn.”
A week later an article written by the same supporter was published on a different anti-Zionist website. It questioned the “fraudulent rise” of antisemitism in Britain and the Community Security Trust’s annual count of the number of Jew-hatred incidents.
JfJfP relaunched its Facebook presence a fortnight ago after admitting defeat in its attempts to regain control of the original page.
A statement on the new page states that the former administrator had come “increasingly to act on his own. Several attempts to negotiate a solution came to nothing”.
Speaking on behalf of JfJfP’s executive, former chair Dan Judelson said the articles were “absolutely not the sort of thing we felt appropriate to be on the page.
“It was important to make clear that the page was the collective responsibility of the organisation and not of one person.
“We have around 1,200 likes on the new page and a good engagement rate. JfJfP is an accepted part of the Jewish fabric in this country now and the Facebook page shows that.”