The nefarious, prejudicial and deeply-flawed IHRA ‘definition’ of anti-semitism – Part 3
What is the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance?
According to its own website, “the IHRA is a complex intergovernmental organization with five main levels: Political, Expert, Partner, Grant, and Executive.” It has been designed as an international network of experts and policymakers, enabling them to better work together.
Member countries include: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel (obviously!), Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and the United States of America.
In other words, it is a framework adopted by the EU, NATO and the 5-eyes nations. It is a mechanism of political suppression intended to limit the political speech and action of the Western imperialist world.
Utility of the IHRA
The UK has appointed an ambassador to liaise with the IHRA, highlighting its level of integration into NATO as a propaganda and political tool. Member nations publish action plans and statistics, specifically geared to promote the idea of Jewish exceptionalism – i.e., that the holocaust committed against the Jews by the Europeans is the only holocaust, the only genocide, and the adoption of the settler colonial state of Israel into the imperialist firmament and political order means that the other manifold crimes of imperialism – and Israel – notably the holocaust against the Palestinians and the people of the Middle East, of DR Congo, of Ukraine and Russia in NATO’s war, and the death toll of global poverty due to capitalist imperialist exploitation are not classified or thought of as such.
By constantly talking and drawing the mindset of the global population to the horrors of NAZISM – but only noting the latter’s crimes against Jews and Roma – not against the Soviet Union, Russians, Slavs, Poles, Chinese, communists, trade unionists, socialists, organised workers, the colonial peoples, and the poorest exploited workers of all nations – all of whom were the principal targets of Nazism, as well as the victims of British, French, US and Japanese imperialism, the past crimes of German fascism are used not only to distract from, but as positive propaganda to advocate for the current and ongoing holocaust committed by the finance capitalists – including the Zionist foot-soldiers of NATO imperialism – against the peoples of the world
Depth of penetration of the IHRA into the fabric of Western imperial society
The scope of the activities included under the report of the UK to the IHRA show the level at which these polices have been adopted and go a long way toward explaining many of the attacks we are seeing on the British working people – and in particular the Palestine Solidarity movement:
“The number of antisemitic incidents in the UK remains a cause for concern. The Community Security Trust (CST), the leading Jewish communal organisation monitoring and tackling antisemitism, recorded 2,255 incidents in 2021, the highest total ever reported in a single calendar year”.
And according to government statistics Official Statistics, ‘Hate crime, England and Wales, 2020 to 2021’, published on 12 October 2021: “In the year ending March 2021 there were 124,091 hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales; of which there were 92,052 race hate crimes, 6,377 religious hate crimes, 18,596 sexual orientation hate crimes, 9,943 disability hate crimes and 2,799 transgender hate crimes. Jewish people were targeted in 22 per cent of religious hate crimes (1,288 offences)…”These proportions were similar to the previous year”.
The IHRA website continues: “While some of this increase will reflect increased confidence in reporting, we are well aware that these figures reflect an overall increase in the number of incidents. The UK is currently working on a revised Hate Crime Action Plan which includes addressing antisemitism.
“The Cross-Government Working Group to Tackle Antisemitism, which brings together civil servants from across government and Jewish communal representatives, ensures that we are alive to concerns of the Jewish community and can respond quickly. Its way of working has been cited as best practice across Europe and the Americas.
“A key role is also played by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) against Antisemitism, which has more than 200 members amongst MPs and peers and receives administrative support from the Antisemitism Policy Trust. Lord John Mann, the former chair of the APPG against Antisemitism, is the independent antisemitism advisor to the UK Government.
“In 2016, the UK became one of the first countries to formally adopt the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism. The definition, although legally non-binding, is an important tool for criminal justice agencies, and other public bodies to understand how antisemitism manifests itself in the twenty-first century. It has now been adopted by many public bodies in the UK.
“Government policy on countering distortion is primarily focused on support and funding for education and remembrance of the Holocaust. The UK National Holocaust Memorial will play a significant role, confronting the responses of the British state and society to the Holocaust honestly. The Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR) and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities have begun an initiative to compile and improve online access to video testimonies from survivors and refugees from Nazi oppression” [that is to the crimes of a power that no longer exists, committed 80 years ago. But what of NATO oppression since WW2 like the genocides in Vietnam and Korea? What of the genocides committed by the UK in its colonies throughout that dark chapter of Victorian holocausts? And those of today? What of the genocide in Palestine or in Ukraine or in the Democratic Republic of Congo… committed by NATO TODAY?] “who settled in the UK. This central repository will feature the AJR’s Refugee Voices archive, testimonies collected by the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation and those from several other museums and institutions. It is hoped that this will play an important role in preserving the historical facts of the Holocaust and in doing so countering denial and distortion.”
In order to seem ‘balanced’, the IHRA tacks on the persecution of the Roma alone, ignoring most studiously, the question of anti-Islamic, anti-black African and Caribbean, anti-Pakistani, anti-Indian, anti-Chinese racism… “Anti-gypsism is not recorded separately but would fall under the category of race hate crime. We are aware that Gypsy, Traveller and Roma communities under-report hate crime, which is why we have worked with the police to create a separate reporting page for Gypsies, Roma and Travellers on their hate crime reporting portal, True Vision. The UK funds projects that encourage the reporting of hate crime for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, such as OperationReportHate run by the Traveller Movement”.
Wes Streeting’s promise to the Zionist lobby
A prominent group of British Zionists met with Wes Streeting in December 2024 to ask him to take concreate action to promote their cause, and roll out stricter repressive measures against pro-Palestinian healthcare workers.
They claimed, based upon data gathered by the CST (the Community Security Trust, a British charity that supposedly seeks to protect the Jewish community from antisemitism) that in the 12 months after October 7, more than 5,500 antisemitic incidents were recorded in Britain, a threefold increase on the previous year.
Rising antisemitism?
It is interesting to note that the original reason for the writing and promotion of the IHRA definition was the finding that in fact antisemitism on a global scale was receding. However, the very reason for funding of the CST by parliament was to generate data on alleged antisemitism, and as we have seen the IHRA definition is designed to conflate criticism of Israel and label it falsely as ‘antisemitic’. From Israel’s perspective, and the Zionist movement’s point of view, the claim of necessity for a Jewish state and justification of the crimes committed by that state rests upon the idea that Jews are not and can never be safe in larger ‘gentile’ society.
“According to Antony Lerman, the founder of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, Kenneth Stern (of the CST) was directly given the idea of writing his definition of anti-Semitism (now the IHRA definition) by Dina Porat in her capacity as head of the Project on Antisemitism at Tel Aviv University. What’s more that project had Mossad funding.
“In the 1990s, Lerman led the Institute of Jewish Affairs, the research arm of the World Jewish Congress, which published a yearly country-by-country survey of anti-Semitism.
“Lerman writes that as soon as the Institute for Jewish Affairs began publishing the annual anti-Semitism report, ‘there was intense pressure on it to collaborate with a new, Mossad-funded Project for the Study of Antisemitism at Tel Aviv University in the production of a joint report.’
“Lerman asserts that his organisation tried to resist this pressure, ‘doubting the objectivity of this kind of Israeli involvement and concerned that the report could be used to further the state’s Zionist objectives’.
“But other Israel lobby groups, including the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League, had no such qualms and eagerly teamed up with the Mossad-funded initiative.
“Lerman reveals that the enmity he and his organisation earned from the Mossad-backed project and its Israel lobby partners was linked to his group’s assessment in the mid-1990s that global anti-Semitism was actually falling. This was completely at odds with the notion of the ‘new anti-Semitism‘ being promoted by Israel and its lobby” (See Ali Abunimah, ‘The Mossad roots of the bogus IHRA anti-Semitism definition’, The Electronic Intifada, 8 June 2023).
Demands of the Zionist lobby
According to the CST (that receives hundreds of millions of pounds of state funding granted by Labour and Conservative parties in government), 78 antisemitic incidents were reported in the health sector over a period of 14 months.
Of these, 42 were allegedly perpetrated by healthcare professionals. During this period, the Jewish Medical Association submitted 28 complaints to the General Medical Council (GMC), which regulates the conduct of doctors. In the 12 months before October 7, it submitted one. This, it is alleged is the basis upon which they urged Streeting to take action (see Harry Yorke, ‘Jewish doctors face rising antisemitism from NHS colleagues’, Sunday Times, 8 December 2024).
The antisemitism in question? “A junior doctor wearing a lanyard with the Palestinian flag and a necklace shaped as a Palestinian state.” In other words – no antisemitism at all.
Yet on this basis, Streeting responded: “There is no place for antisemitism in the NHS and I will not stand anyone being subjected to abuse or intimidation. We have a zero-tolerance policy and NHS organisations have a responsibility to protect staff and patients.
“I expect employers and regulators like the General Medical Council, to take action against anyone working in the health service who promotes hatred against Jewish people” (ibid).
Dr Fiona Sim, a member of the Jewish Medical Association (JMA) and a former chairwoman of the Royal Society for Public Health, said that in the past 12 months she had been made aware of more than 100 cases of antisemitism (yet this was the strongest example quoted!?), 28 of which — the “really serious ones” — had led to the JMA submitting formal complaints to the GMC.
However, Sim and her fellow Zionists at the JMA were concerned that no strong action had been taken.
The exact same wording was then reproduced in another article, apparently by another author, the following day, demonstrating the relationship between the JMA and The Times (Jawad Iqbal, ‘It will take action as well as words to stem NHS antisemitism’, 9 December 2024) as well as the Telegraph. These articles are approvingly reproduced as examples of the work of the JMA, which has taken upon itself the role of official censor of anti-genocide campaigners and all anti-Zionists within the NHS and medical profession, just as its sister Zionist organisation UK Lawyers for Israel has done in the legal profession and wider society.
Of all the complaints submitted to the GMC since 7 October, Sim said that JMA was aware of only one — involving Dr Asif Munaf, a former contestant on the BBC’s The Apprentice, who was said to have made antisemitic remarks online — that had resulted in an interim suspension (note: one other suspension, that of Dr Rehiana Ali, was reported on 20 December 2024).
The demands made by these Zionist groups and taken up with alacrity by Streeting were.
1. To force NHS England, NHS trusts, and pressure the Police, GMC and the Medical Practitioner Tribunal Service (MPTS) to take stronger action against pro-Palestine and anti-genocide doctors. The cases mentioned above were specifically discussed by Streeting. And that disproportionate and indeed unlawful action has been taken against them has been clearly demonstrated. Their cases and their defence are ongoing.
2. They demanded that the IHRA must be explicitly rolled out across the NHS. Streeting indicated his assent to this, and in September 2025 went further and announced that NHS England and the Integrated Care Boards had been instructed to implement it and all NHS trusts asked to do likewise.
3. The Zionists demanded that for data monitoring purposes, that Judaism be recognised as an ethnicity as well as religion. Again, Streeting agreed to their request.
Right to Protest, a limited company directed by members of the CPGB-ML, has taken up the legal case to instigate a judicial review of the NHS adoption of the IHRA definition.
The enthusiasm of the British ruling class and imperial state for the IHRA is closely connected to its 400 years of exploitation of wage-labour by capital, and an accompanying global colonial repression. Hand in hand with empire, Britain has nurtured an ideology of racism (from Rudyard Kipling to Enoch Powell) that justified its insatiable capitalist greed. Yet in the last decade, our ruling class would have us believe that they have made an abrupt U-turn – and become a veritable crusader against anti-Jewish racism. Should we take them at face value?
Since the bogus charge of ‘antisemitism’ was used to oust Jeremy Corbyn from the leadership of the Labour Party, defeating him at the polls in 2019, delivering the party back to Blairite leadership, and returning Labour unequivocally to its core social-democratic and pro-capitalist values and to its central role in the ‘safe and responsible’ administration of British imperialism, our ruling class has increasingly taken hold of the ‘antisemitism’ allegation as a convenient excuse to repress all criticism of Israel within British society – and by extension sanctioning all criticism of the ongoing British and US imperialist support for genocide in the Middle East. This is simply the wider application to domestic British society of the tactic long used by Israel itself. But why now?
It is important to realise that the pro-genocide, pro-war, pro-militarist, anti-worker stance of the current Labour administration (whether under Starmer or Burnham) is not an aberration, but represents the true Labour Party ethos, typified by virtually all its long line of leaders and MPs, from Henderson, Barnes, McDonald and Clynes through its post WW2 leaders Attlee, Wilson, Callaghan, Smith and Kinnock. to its modern-day social chauvinists Blair, Brown, Campbell, Straw, Robertson, Blunkett, Prescott, Miliband, Starmer, Lammy, Cooper, etc., and now Burnham.
For those doubting Labour’s long-standing commitment to the Zionist project, we would ask them to cast their minds back to the MacDonald letter of 13 February 1931, known to Palestinians as the ‘Black Letter’ (Al-Warqa al-Sawda), written by the first ‘Labour’ Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald to Chaim Weizmann. It effectively pledged to ignore any restrictions to Zionist colonisation implied by the wording of the 1930 Passfield White Paper, which seemed to restrict Jewish immigration and land purchase in Palestine. Macdonald pledged his and Britain’s ongoing support for Zionist aims and encouraging Jewish labour organisations to apply apartheid socially and in employment rights.
“…the words [of the Passfield Act] are not to be read as implying that existing economic conditions in Palestine should be crystallised. On the contrary, the obligation to facilitate Jewish immigration and to encourage close settlement by Jews on the land remains a positive obligation of the mandate and it can be fulfilled without prejudice to the rights and position of other sections of the population of Palestine [!]… Further, the statement of policy of his Majesty’s Government did not imply a prohibition of acquisition of additional lands by Jews. It contains no such prohibition, nor is any such intended.
“…The principle of preferential, and indeed exclusive, employment of Jewish labour by Jewish organisations is a principle which the Jewish Agency are entitled to affirm.”
The bogus charge of ‘antisemitism’ has thus become the favoured tool with which to police the working class and anti-imperialist movements, and the Palestine solidarity movement in particular, taken up with alacrity by this Labour administration, as it was by the previous Tory government.
We covered the sad case of Corbyn contemporaneously, and for those who have not realised just how harmful Corbyn’s pusillanimous response to those attacks was, I recommend they read of a copy of our party’s pamphlet The Rise and Fall of Project Corbyn, to which I contributed.
Epstein-Mandelson – Labour Party connections: Labour a party of imperialism
On 30 January 2026 the US Department of Justice released more than three million (heavily redacted) pages of documents exposing the extraordinary breadth of Jeffrey Epstein’s social and financial circle, which included some of the world’s most powerful people. As the files are trawled, revelations relating to the New York financier, billionaire banker and agent of the Rothschilds, shed further light on his organic and intimate connections to the US and European political and financial ruling class – including the British royal family – and their amoral and frankly inhuman culture of perversion and exploitation.
Epstein died under ‘mysterious circumstances’ (in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York with the cameras switched off) in 2019, while being investigated for his serial paedophile and sex trafficking crimes – no doubt in order to ‘protect’ his powerful connections, once his reputation was irreparably damaged. It is clear that he was, among other things, connected to the Central Intelligence Agency and Mossad, the Israeli secret service, having close personal ties to Israeli Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Netanyahu as well as a long line of US presidents including Bush, Clinton, Obama, Biden and Trump (see ‘Netanyahu, Bush, Obama in new Epstein files dump; shocking letter by Congman sparks political storm’, Times of India, 15 February 2026) – but also, the billionaire elite including Bill Gates and Elon Musk.
It transpires, such notable ‘left intellectuals’ as Noam Chomsky – well known anti-communist darling of the US and European academic ‘Marxist’ and Trotskyite ‘left’ was also a close confidant (see Ramon Antonio Vargas, ‘Newly released files shed new light on Chomsky and Epstein relationship’, The Guardian, 3 February 2026).
Epstein, Mandelson and Starmer
Notable among the latest revelations are Epstein’s close personal ties to Labour grandee Peter Mandelson, appointed by then Labour Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, as Britain’s ambassador to the USA (but subsequently forced to retire). Mandelson was at the heart of Labour Party power. He was close to both former Labour Prime Ministers and war criminals Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, serving in their cabinets (as Business Secretary and Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, among other portfolios) and has been a long-standing EU commissioner. He is intimately linked to the ruling class and moreover has been shown via his protegé Morgan McSweeney (who had to resign as Keir Starmer’s chief of staff) to have played a key role in navigating Starmer to Labour leadership and Prime Ministerial office (see ‘UK PM’s top aide quits over Mandelson’s links to Epstein’, Al Jazeera, 8 February 2026).
Mandelson is linked to much of this corrupt Labour cabinet and has been instrumental in steering tens and perhaps hundreds of MPs into office. Mandelson is also closely tied to Israeli lobbyist Trevor Chin and has used his lobbying group ‘Blue Labour’ to funnel millions toward funding (buying) Labour MPs. Of course, this is simply ‘business as usual’ for Labour, and British parliamentary politics, which is linked by a thousand threads to finance capital.
Photos and emails show that Peter Mandelson was not only a frequent visitor to Epstein’s New York mansion and Caribbean island (dating back at least to his visit to Little St James in 2003), but that he maintained a continuous and voluminous correspondence with Epstein, sharing ‘secret’ governmental, cabinet, committee, political and state financial information that would have been of great value to Epstein and his financial circle – to the detriment of the UK exchequer. It is impossible to believe that Mandelson and his Labour circle would not have been fully conversant with the sex-trafficking paedophilia and other inhuman crimes prevalent among this exploitative clique since they were being carried on under his nose. Rather it shows Mandelson and the top ‘Labour’ leadership to be fully integrated into and comfortable among the Anglo-American imperialist and Zionist elite, and fully wedded thereby to the project of Israeli settler colonialism (among others), as a means of controlling the Middle East and its vast strategic resources.
Of note to this article (see Part 2) is the intimate relationship between Starmer’s Health Minister – Wes Streeting, a key player in the events unfolding in Britain, on the one hand, and Mandelson on the other. Streeting is among the protégés of Mandelson who can be said to have been personally groomed by him over the length of his career.
Moreover, sensing that Keir Starmer was likely to be dragged down by this scandal, and in a desperate bid to distance himself from it and save his bid to be Britain’s next prime minister, Wes Streeting took the extraordinary step of publishing some of his texts with Mandelson – in a vain attempt to show he was not tainted by the relationship! It has had rather the opposite effect, however: not only do we clearly remain ignorant of the texts he HAS NOT published, but rather it serves as an admission of their close relationship and of Streeting’s guilt.
Wes Streeting’s admission of Israeli war crimes
Streeting published the following message from his conversations with Mandelson:
[Streeting to Mandelson]: “I have met with our own medics out there [in Gaza] who describe the most chilling and distressing scenes of calculated brutality against women and children.
“Israel is committing war crimes before our eyes. Their government talks the language of ethnic cleansing … This is rogue state behaviour.”
So we have ‘from his own mouth’ an admission that Streeting has been fully aware of the extent of Israel’s genocide in Palestine these last years. And yet over the last two years, when NHS doctors and healthcare workers have publicly expressed such sentiments, Streeting has led the charge to denounce them in the media as ‘antisemites’ and racists, and sought to have them censured, publicly hounded, harassed by police, sacked from their employment and struck off the medical register.
What emerges is a tale of great immorality and hypocrisy, and of our former Health Minister and entire Labour government’s complicity in genocide – all in the service of their own careerism, which they see as inseparably bound up with the profits of the finance capitalists of the City of London and Wall Street.