A libel case brought against the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) by anti-Zionist activist Tony Greenstein will not go to full trial, the High Court has ruled. 

Mr Greenstein sought damages from the CAA for defamation, misuse of private information and breaches of data protection.

The CAA published five online articles between 2017 and 2018 that described Mr Greenstein as a “notorious antisemite”.

One article said Mr Greenstein had lied to the Guardian by claiming the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)  definition of antisemitism prevented criticism of Israel. 

The piece also claimed Mr Greenstein had lied to the Charity Commission by asserting the CAA was a right-wing political Zionist organisation unconcerned with fascist Holocaust deniers. 

Mr Greenstein’s counsel, David Mitchell, had argued the CAA had misused the IHRA definition to attack Mr Greenstein for political reasons and that the case should go to full trial.

But  Mrs Justice Tipples found the “issue is whether an honest person could believe the claimant to be an antisemite” and the claimant’s arguments in relation to the IHRA definition “irrelevant.”

The judge struck out the claimant’s plea that the defendant did not believe Mr Greenstein was an antisemite and was instead acting in retaliation or out of spite.

She cited several tweets written by Mr Greenstein between 2014 and 2017 referring to “Jewish Nazis”, “Zios” and Nazi collaboration.

“The claimant accepts he wrote all of these tweets, but seeks to rely on context to defend them,” she said. 

“That is no answer and, on any objective assessment, an honest person could form the view that these tweets [...] were antisemitic statements he made.”

But she struck out CAA’s applications for the dismissal of claims of misuse of private information and breach of data protection for mentioning Mr Greenstein’s previous convictions. 

The judge called for submissions on whether the remaining parts of the case should be transferred to a lower court.