Laura Stuart considers the use of defamation and disinformation by the Board of Deputies of British Jews – Britain’s leading Israel lobby group – as tools in its rear-guard defence of Zionism and the apartheid state of Israel.

An article in the Jewish Chronicle last week trumpets a great victory by the Board of Deputies of British Jews over the envoy of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in the UK, Manuel Hassassian. The Board of Deputies boasts of the pressure they brought on Hassassian which caused him to remove links to an article written by Gilad Atzmon on Israelis who were caught organ trafficking.

Defamation in the service of Zionism

The article in question is hardly an unsubstantiated or new story about Israeli involvement in organ trafficking. In fact, Atzmon provided a link in his article to the Israeli news website Ynet, which also reported the story. Anyone who wishes to investigate further the involvement of Israelis in organ trafficking need only search the words “Israelis” and “organ trafficking" on a search engine to find a wealth of reports about various cases in the Middle East and America.

So, why the outrage by the Board of Deputies of British Jews for what is an established fact? Well, the Jewish Chronicle article provides us with the views of the Board’s senior vice-president, Jonathon Arkush, on Gilad Atzmon, defaming him as an "anti-Semite" and a "deeply controversial and distasteful figure".

Here we are again, a perfect example of the “anti-Semite” label being used against someone who some Jews hate rather than someone who hates Jews. As is well known, Atzmon, who is a renowned International jazz musician, has Jewish members in his jazz band. Furthermore, I hardly think that Gilad Atzmon's recent book The Wandering Who? a study of Jewish identity politics, would have been endorsed by leading academics and humanists if there was any “anti-Semitism” in it.

Disinformation in the service of Zionism