Dozens of leading supporters of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign have engaged in antisemitic activity online, a new report into the group claims.
A 79-page dossier published on Wednesday reveals an antisemitic mind-set is prevalent among senior PSC members according to evidence collected over two years by David Collier, a Jewish blogger and activist.
Mr Collier attended events run by local branches of the group and said he had discovered hundreds of links between prominent PSC members and antisemites.
Jew-hatred had been “present consistently”, he said. Among the examples Mr Collier collected were cases of Holocaust denial, suggestions of a global Jewish conspiracy, and claims Mossad carried out the July 7 terror attacks in London.
Mr Collier, a British activist who lived in Israel for 19 years, worked independently to collate the evidence and said the research suggested Jew-hate “is the fuel that primes the PSC engine”.
The PSC is Britain’s main pro-Palestinian group and is chaired by Hugh Lanning, a former Labour parliamentary candidate and ex-trade union director. Its patrons include academic Ilan Pappe, film director Ken Loach, Baroness Tonge, and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. There is no suggestion in the report that any of the patrons were personally involved in antisemitic activity.
There are dozens of active PSC branches across the country, with local members running speaker events, fundraising initiatives and urging companies and institutions to adopt a boycott of Israeli goods.
Mr Collier’s dossier shows hundreds of examples of PSC supporters and campaigners engaging in antisemitic activity. He said members “frequently cross the line between legitimate criticism of Israel and accusations that can be identified with classic antisemitic tropes”.
In one branch he found PSC supporters claiming Israel was harvesting Palestinian organs and suggesting Mossad had attacked Paris. One activist posted an online link to a video claiming the Holocaust was “the greatest lie ever told”.
On social media, thousands of articles promoted by pro-Palestinian supporters related to Jews orchestrating global terror attacks and encouraging paedophilia.
Mr Collier concludes: “The people found during this research sit on the top table of the PSC. They are the chairs of PSC branches, they stand next to the branch chair at the demo, they man the PSC stalls in the high street, they sit in the front row of the PSC events…If these people are not the PSC, then who are?
“The PSC clearly only pay lip service to fighting racism within their ranks. They play a game which visibly laughs in the face of antisemitism, relying on a tiny minority of Jewish supporters to provide cover for blatant and rabid global conspiracy theory, Holocaust denial and other antisemitic ideologies.”
Mr Collier called on trade unions to end their support for the group, and questioned Mr Corbyn’s ongoing patronage of the organisation.
When asked to respond to Mr Collier’s claims, a PSC spokesperson told the JC:
“The Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s work is fundamentally underpinned by a vigorous opposition to antisemitism and racism of all types. As an organisation we are very clear - antisemitism has no place anywhere in our campaign for Palestinian human rights.
"The Palestine Solidarity Campaign takes credible accusations of antisemitism seriously and has procedures in place to address such allegations when they are brought to the organisation’s attention.”
