Campaign Against Antisemitism
Campaign Against Antisemitism is a British non-governmental organisation established in August 2014 by members of the Anglo-Jewish community.
It publishes research, organises rallies and petitions and conducts ligitation.
History
The CAA was set up in early August 2014, after an increase in antisemitic incidents that accompanied the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict.A grassroots campaign, it grew largely out of social media activity among those who felt more should be done to promote the Jewish community's concerns after a meeting to discuss responses where a campaigner had her concerns dismissed by Board of Deputies president Vivian Wineman.
In January 2015, the then UK Home Secretary, Theresa May, praised CAA for its work and undertook to ensure that the law against antisemitism is "robustly enforced".
It was registered as a charitable incorporated organisation on 1 October 2015.
Its chair is Gideon Falter and its first director of communications was Jonathan Sacerdoti.
Publications
CAA publishes primary and secondary research based on polling and freedom of information requests.CAA's National Antisemitic Crime Audit collects and analyses antisemitic crime data from all police forces in the UK. CAA uses the report to assess trends in antisemitic crime and to make recommendations to the British government.
Criticism
The All-Party Parliamentary Group against Antisemitism wrote in 2015 that
We were somewhat disappointed to note that not all of the messages from that group have been in line with CST’s stated approach of seeking to avoid undue panic and alarm. We encourage Jewish communal leaders and others when speaking on antisemitism to follow CST’s example and to be reassuring and responsible in their language, taking into account the activity which as we have outlined had been undertaken before the summer and during it. So too, it is important that the leadership do not conflate concerns about activity legitimately protesting Israel’s actions with antisemitism, as we have seen has been the case on some occasions.
In January 2015, the Institute for Jewish Policy Research said that a CAA survey about antisemitism was "littered with flaws", and "may even be rather irresponsible".
In July 2018, the Labour MP Margaret Hodge became one of a number of honorary patrons of CAA. In the run up to the 2019 United Kingdom general election, CAA asked her to resign as a patron because she was standing as a Labour Party candidate; she did so but described their request as "both astonishing and wounding", showing a lack of respect and impugning her integrity.
In February 2020, the Morning Star reported that Shahrar Ali, the Home Affairs spokesman of the Green Party of England and Wales, had made a formal complaint to the Charity Commission for England and Wales that the CAA had failed to be independent of party politics - a legal requirement for charities - which the Commission was assessing. The CAA had previously described a 2009 speech by Ali as anti-semitic and an "offensive rant".
Rallies and petitions
Their first demonstration was against the Tricycle Theatre in London which, in August 2014, had refused to participate in that November's UK Jewish Film Festival due to the contemporaneous conflict in Gaza, unless the festival rejected funding from parties involved, notably a £1400 sponsorship from the Israeli embassy, which the Tricycle Theatre offered to replace. Later in August, following discussions with the festival organizers, the Tricycle withdrew its condition.In August 2018, CAA organised a demonstration outside Labour's headquarters to protest against the handling of antisemitism in the UK Labour Party, and to condemn Jeremy Corbyn.
Also in August 2018 the organisation launched a change.org petition titled "Jeremy Corbyn is an antisemite and must go", the petition featuring a Labour slogan modified to read "For the many not the Jew", was signed by over 30,000 by 30 August 2018. A counter petition against the CAA with the title "To Get the Charity Commission to Deregister the Zionist Campaign Against Anti-Semitism" was signed by almost 7,500 and sent to the Charity Commission, which said in response that it was "assessing concerns raised about the Campaign Against Antisemitism’s campaigning activities". In October 2018, the Charity Commission noted that charities must be independent of party politics and insisted that the CAA reword its petition.
In November 2018, the CAA asked the Equality and Human Rights Commission to investigate the Labour Party. In May 2019, following complaints submitted by the Jewish Labour Movement and the CAA, the EHRC launched a formal investigation into whether Labour had "unlawfully discriminated against, harassed or victimised people because they are Jewish".
Litigation
CAA has used the process of judicial review to scrutinise and reverse decisions made by the British government and authorities. In March 2017, CAA forced the CPS to quash a decision not to prosecute an alleged far-right leader over a speech in which he issued a call to "free England from Jewish control".In December 2017 the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to prosecute an Islamic Human Rights Commission director who was one of the organisers of a Quds Day rally, who, during the rally, allegedly stated that Zionists were responsible for the Grenfell Tower fire, called for Israel's destruction, and that he was fed up with Zionists, their rabbis, synagogues, and supporters. The CAA attempted to begin a private prosecution for inciting racial or religious hatred, however this was blocked by the CPS, as they had determined there was no "realistic prospect of conviction".
In early 2018, CAA brought a successful private prosecution against Alison Chabloz, a holocaust denier who released three YouTube videos of self-written antisemitic songs characterising Auschwitz as a "theme park" and the Holocaust as the "Holohoax". Chabloz was subsequently imprisoned for breaking the conditions of her suspended sentence.
In July 2018, Gilad Atzmon was forced to apologise to CAA chairman Gideon Falter, and pay costs and damages, after being sued for libel. Atzmon acknowledged that he had falsely stated that Falter had personally profited from fabricating antisemitic incidents.
In 2019, the CAA was sued by Tony Greenstein for libel in relation to what is or is not antisemitism following five articles it had published about him. In 2017, Greenstein had launched a petition asking the Charity Commission to deregister the organisation, claiming its purpose was to limit freedom of speech by calling opponents of Israel antisemitic.