I tweeted that Jews were not discriminated against. I was denounced for this by key sections of the Left, as I discussed in part one of this series of articles. In this article, I discuss the evidence on which I depended. First, I look at the context of the post I made on Twitter/X, and then I go on to discuss the evidence on Jewish privilege. At the end of this article, I ask why it matters and examine how this issue affected the judgment in my tribunal case.

The Context

The context of my posts on X was that I was responding to several posts from Hen Mazzig - a full time member of a regime co-ordinated troll network - in his attempts to intimidate non-Jews from taking on the anti-Semitsm smear campaign. The goal of this Zionist strategy is to hector Gentiles into accepting that only Jews can define Judeophobia based on their experience. This of course leaves the field open to Zionists to simply invent or cosplay feelings of hurt or lived experiences of discrimination based on their adherence to and desire to pursue the interests of a racist and genocidal ideology. Such fabrications have become much more visible as a result of the opposition to genocide in the period since the launch of Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7 last year -  from fabrications about "hissing" being anti-Jewish to the fabrication about being "poked in the eye with a Palestinian flag" and many others.

Racism in my analysis is a matter of material fact and it is susceptible to being researched and understood by human beings on the basis of empirical evidence and not just on feelings or perceptions. When one does that, one finds that Jews are not the downtrodden oppressed class that the Zionists claim. They are, in fact - on aggregate - privileged to a significant degree. So I posted a four Tweet thread addressing these points which is below.

As can be seen, the first three Tweets dealt with the issue about how to conceive of racism. It was the fourth one that got all the attention and typically none of the context was considered. Nevertheless, I later posted a long thread with the evidence underlying the claims I had made.

The evidence

What is the evidence I was depending on? It Is worth re-emphasising that not a single one of my critics ever referred to this evidence or even admitted that I had published it. I should note that the thread I discuss below was published on August 9, 2023, some week before the criticisms from the SWP and BRICUP discussed in part one of this series. The JVL article was first Tweeted by them at 6.57pm on the 9th, which, to be fair, was just over one hour before my thread was posted at 8.18pm. They have not, however, updated their statement or added anything to acknowledge the arguments and data.

Are Jews discriminated against in British society? To answer this, we must understand what is meant by ‘discrimination’, which is different to ‘hate crime’.

Types of discrimination, according to the British government include: At work, in education, as a consumer, when using public services, when buying or renting property and/or as a member or guest of a private club or association.

Hate crime by contrast, according to the Metropolitan Police is any criminal offence perceived (by either the victim or a witness) to be motivated by a person’s "race or perceived race, religion or perceived religion" etc. (I deal with the question of Hate Crime against the Jews in later parts of this series).

There’s lots of data on the status of Jews in society (with distinctions within and between groups, as I pointed out in the thread).

Let’s start with Norman Finkelstein, in an article which is titled: The chimera of British anti-Semitism. On the prevalence of anti-Semitism he notes that:

The degree of anti-Semitism infecting British society has been the subject of numerous polls over a sustained period of time. These surveys have uniformly, consistently, and unambiguously concluded that anti-Semitism (1) has long been a marginal phenomenon in British society, infecting under 10 percent of the population, (2) is far less salient than hostility to other British minorities, and (3) is less pronounced in the UK than almost anywhere else in Europe.

In summary on the status of Jews, he says: "British Jews are in the aggregate disproportionately wealthy, educated, and professionally successful." But perhaps it is worth quoting some of his data since the findings are so marked:

The three richest Brits in 2016 were Jewish. Jews comprise only 0.5 percent of the population but fully 20 percent of the 100 richest Brits.  Relative both to the general population and to other ethno-religious groups, British Jews are in the aggregate disproportionately wealthy, educated, and professionally successful.

 

These data track closely with the picture elsewhere. Jews comprise only 2 percent of the US population but fully 30 percent of the 100 richest Americans, while Jews enjoy the highest household income among religious groups. Jews comprise less than 0.2 percent of the world’s population but, of the world’s 200 richest people, fully 20 percent are Jewish. Jews are incomparably organized as they have created a plethora of interlocking, overlapping, and mutually reinforcing communal and defense organizations that operate in both the domestic and international arenas.

 

In many countries, not least the US and the UK, Jews occupy strategic positions in the entertainment industry, the arts, publishing, journals of opinion, the academy, the legal profession, and government. "Jews are represented in Britain in numbers that are many times their proportion of the population," British-Israeli journalist Anshel Pfeffer notes, "in both Houses of Parliament, on the Sunday Times Rich List, in media, academia, professions, and just about every walk of public life."

 

The wonder would be if these raw data didn’t translate into outsized Jewish political power. The Israel-based Jewish People Policy Planning Institute rhapsodizes that "The Jewish People today is at a historical zenith of wealth creation" and "has never been as powerful as now." It is certainly legitimate to query the amplitude of this political power and whether it has been exaggerated, but it cannot be right to deny (or suppress) critical socioeconomic facts.

Finkelstein is surely correct in this last sentence. In the same piece, he dismisses the idea that anti-Semitism is a major problem in the UK today:

Making the rounds of the British talk show circuit, self-anointed authority Barnaby Raine grimaces that "there’s a very, very serious problem of antisemitism across British society." (Except for the fact that he is a "proud British Jew" and was once called a "kike," it’s hard to make out the basis for his confident pronunciamentos.) Bertrand Russell once wrote of Trotsky, "He is very good-looking, with admirable wavy hair; one feels he would be irresistible to women." Something similar can be said, more or less, of Barnaby the Bolshevik—or, at any rate, of the ideal to which he aspires. The question then comes down to this: Would he prefer to be ugly and bald or to be Jewish in Britain today? It’s not a trivial or tongue-in-cheek query. The fact is, personally as well as professionally, these physical stigmata are ten thousand times heavier a cross to bear than to be born a Jew. If the nonproblem of anti-Semitism ranks a "very, very serious problem" in the UK, then the British people are most fortunate.

Finkelstein uses the word "disproportionate" there. It’s correct. It does not homogenize Jews or say all Jews are "disproportionately" wealthy. But it does say that they are "in the aggregate". Failing to understand this distinction is something that would be penalised in a first year social science assignment at any university in the UK.

Next, here is Finkelstein’s colleague/comrade Jamie Stern-Weiner. Here he is writing for Jewish Voice for Labour in 2019 on the "myth" of the Labour antisemitism crisis.:

‘antisemitic attitudes ... in British society do not appear to translate into socioeconomic discrimination. Most British Jews recognise that being Jewish closes few if any doors in contemporary Britain." 

To support this latter statement he noted: In a 2017 survey, 63 percent of British Jews agreed that "Non-White people don’t have the same opportunities and chances in life as White people, as they are held back by prejudice and discrimination." Only 16 percent endorsed the equivalent statement for ‘Jewish people in Britain’. And he goes on to give a number of references to back up his (factually based) view.

He also gives a caveat that "These aggregates conceal significant intra-communal disparities" and points to evidence of poverty amongst some elements of the Jewish community. 

Finkelstein and Stern-Weiner are both Jewish, although their analysis would be correct even if they weren’t. It’s no more anti-Semitic for me or anyone else to report facts about prejudice and privilege than it is for Jewish people.

Racism isn’t about subjective feelings or one’s ‘standpoint’ conferred by social location. It’s about the material reality of discrimination and violence which are susceptible to empirical verification or falsification.

The best evidence on discrimination in this area is in social science studies. For example, a 2010 report from the National Equality Panel provided data on hourly wages broken down by gender and religion:

This shows a dramatic advantage for both women and men who are Jewish, in excess of Christans and indeed all other groups. It also shows a marked disadvantage for both women and men who are Muslim. A 2012 study for the Policy Commission on the Distribution of Wealth provided a ranking of median net wealth of households.

Is it not remarkable to compare the "Median net wealth" for Jews (£422,000) with that for Muslims (£42,000)  - one tenth of the figure for Jews?

One of the most comprehensive studies was carried out in 2008 for the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the UK ‘equalities’ watchdog. It found that: "[T]he pay advantage of Jewish men can be observed at all levels of the pay distribution. This is not simply a question of the average advantage being influenced by high earners. Similarly, the disadvantage associated with being Muslim also covers the whole of the income distribution, though it appears more pronounced among low earners."

The data is very clear on pay gaps between Jewish and Muslim men, and on predicted pay, as these tables from an Equality and Human Rights Commission study show.

In case you are thinking that the reasons Jewish people do so well (on aggregate) is because they are so ‘clever’, ‘bright’ or ‘intelligent’, or – in a slightly less prejudiced formulation – more ‘educated’,, the EHRC data appears not to support that view.

Do Jews face institutional racism from the state, the police, the counter-terrorism apparatus? Are they racially profiled? Are they regularly (or ever) stopped under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act?

To ask the question is to answer it. Jews face no such threats. Muslims do.

Why is this important?

Are Jewish people returning to Britain from occupied Palestine – after being radicalized into joining the Israel Occupation Forces and terrorizing Palestinians – routinely detained by counter-terrorism forces? No. Should they be? Absolutely.

Jews as a whole, on average, on aggregate – on every metric examined above – are not discriminated against. Jews are the most privileged minority group - more privileged on average than "white" people, of which they (mostly) form a subsection in the UK. They’re proportionally over-represented in all areas of British public life - especially at senior levels. With that privilege, given the starkly hierarchical nature of UK society, comes the power to make economic, political, and cultural decisions. This does not mean that there is such a thing as "Jewish power" or that one subscribes to the idea that "Jewish citizens [are]  more loyal … to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations" (as the IHRA working definition puts it). Instead what we are pointing to is the disproportionate power of Zionists since Zionists make up an overwhelming majority of British Jews, and since those with anti-Zionist views, as appears to be the case, are largely excluded from elite positions.

This, we suggest, affords the ability to make decisions that favour Zionist interests over the general (and certainly the Muslim) interest. For example, in the civil service, there is an officially sponsored network for Jewish staff. All the evidence of its activities suggests a strong attachment to Zionism. Zionism, lest we forget, is an intrinsically racist ideology which sees Jews as superior to non Jews and which is fanatical and ideological in protecting its perceived interests.

On Palestine, this translates into disproportionate power to support the ongoing genocide in Gaza through donations from British Zionist Jews to Zionist organisations that are stealing Palestinian land and also directly to the occupation forces, as I have reported on a number of occasions. In addition, it is clearly consequential for the ability of Zionists to influence government policy in alliance with the foreign policy networks of the Zionist regime, that a majority of Jews regard themselves as Zionist or connected to the country in some way. Between 63% and 80% of British Jews, (depending on your source data) identify as "Zionist". Even higher numbers say that they feel "very or somewhat attached to the country" (73%) or  "personally connected" to "Israel" (97%).

Is it an empirical fact that the Zionist movement is coordinated and directed? I am afraid it is. The Zionist entity actually passed a law - the Jewish Agency Status Law - to this effect in the 1950s. It regulates the specific functions allocated to the Zionist movement by the government of the settler colony.

Is it also the case that Zionist assumptions have worked their way into counter terrorism policy in the UK, US, France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, the EU, and many other places. Yes, I am afraid that is correct. To cite only the most recent example, that of Michael Gove's 2024 policy on extremism, this is more or less the same policy that would have been introduced if Netanyahu was in charge instead of Michael Gove.

Coda

In the judgment in my Tribunal case, it was stated that because of these Tweets, there was a 30% likelihood that I would have been sacked legitimately. The judgment says that I "accepted that" it "was wrong" to say "Jews are not discriminated against". It also says that "instead of saying that Jews were ‘well represented’ in positions of cultural, economic and political power", I "wrote that they were ‘overrepresented’". The judgment then says it is accordingly "highly likely" that this will be interpreted as "having negative connotations".

Against this, one might challenge the points about overrepresentation and about discrimination. In relation to the latter, I submit the transcript of my exchange with the judge that led to the conclusion that parts of what was tweeted were "simply wrong". Here is the transcript of the relevant part of those exchanges

Transcript of the Tribunal hearings. P.52 and 54

Obviously, hate crime does involve discriminatory actions, but as I was at pains to point out, and as I continue to believe, I was using the term not in its common sense but specifically in relation to the government's own definition which clearly distinguishes it from hate crime as cited above.

Hate crime, as will become clear, appears to be an anomaly in relation to the more general pattern of Jewish privilege in the UK and other places too. It will take further articles in this series to deal with the question of hate crime and the Jews and whether it is in fact anomalous.

Finally, on the question of "overrepresentation", it does not take much analysis of what I wrote in the long thread above to conclude that I think that the overrepresentation of Jews in positions of power is a problem. I literally said it in the conclusion to the thread. I wrote that "With that privilege comes the power to make economic, political and cultural decisions." I then stated that, "On Palestine, this translates into power to colonize through donations from British Jews to Zionist organizations that are stealing Palestinian land." So, to conclude, yes Jews are overrepresented per head of population and the consequence of that - given that most Jews are Zionists -  is that it makes it easier to make decisions which in fact are significantly harmful to the Palestinians and indeed to others too - such as Muslims.

In the next part of this series, I will begin to look at the apparently anomalous area of "hate crime".