Follow the links. Make a judgment about whether and why and how the Palestine Solidarity Campaign tolerates antisemitism. Debates on defining antisemitism should begin with a detailed look at the phenomenon being defined.
UPDATE: More from Norwich PSC
PSC hosted repeater of blood libel
The SPSC hosted Gilad Atzmon.
The SPSC commemorated Holocaust Remembrance Day by blaming “Zionists” for the Holocaust.
A leading member of the SPSC, John Wight, wrote an article in the Morning Star a year later claiming that the Palestinians “hold a unique place as the Holocaust’s forgotten victims”. He defended this article by reference to a neo-Nazi website and by blaming “international Jewry” for Zionism “against which is arrayed the forces of human progress.”
My union, the UCU, is affiliated to the PSC. But then, we know that my union has a problem with institutional antisemitism.
How about your union? Is your union funelling money and support into the PSC?
How about your MP?
Engage 
September 12, 2011 at 11:13 am
It is more widespread than you might think.
I scanned a few PSC sites and these are just a few examples:
1. Many PSC sites are uninteresting, but Richmond PSC’s lurid colours suggested otherwise and lo and be hold, Atzmon popped into the frame:
http://richkingpsc.org.uk/index.html
Linked to Alex Seymour’s youtube channel who I think was a crank involved in anti-Ahava campaigning
2. Reading PSC seem to think that the racist site, redress was publishing note worthy stuff in 2009
http://readingpsc.org.uk/2009/12/british-pro-israel-jewish-newspaper-launches-attack-on-middle-east-news-website/
Not forgetting that they still think Redress is a good news feed:
http://readingpsc.org.uk/directory/
Which contain Stuart Littlewood’s filth.
3. Leeds PSC has a featured video on their site (http://www.leedspsc.org.uk/?p=5915) to this youtube, http://www.youtube.com/user/91177info run by an individual, who says:
Basically, off his/her trolley, which in turn promotes, http://www.youtube.com/user/StopFundingIsrael and http://how911wasdone.com/ the latter blames Mossad and Jews for 9/11.
It isn’t difficult to find racism when you scratch the surface of the PSC.
[I apologises for linking directly to this nonsense and racism, but it is necessary to demonstrate the points.]
September 13, 2011 at 11:50 am
So, he’s convinced that 9/11 and 7/7 were staged, and can’t find any evidence of this, and then decides that total absence of any evidence that they were staged is actually conclusive proof that they were staged because everyone knows that “They”* control the media. I can understand why he feels “hopeless and frustrated”, I just don’t think he really does yet.
Even so, I’m starting to get the feeling that I’m on the wrong team here – if people like Gilad Atzmon and the talentless Tintin-tracing airhead “Fips” wannabe Carlos Latuff can manage to get what seems to be pretty constant work out of this stuff, maybe I should switch sides for the benefit of my bank balance. After all the time I’ve spent observing “anti-Zionists”, I could probably do it better than they can themselves. I could make a fortune.
(* = Jews, Freemasons, Vampires, Jellyfish Aliens from Saturn – whoever’s trying to steal his thoughts today)
September 13, 2011 at 9:17 pm
Thomas, not to blow my own trumpet or anything (but, yes I am, of course), the answer to this conundrum is to be found in my article:
https://engageonline.wordpress.com/2009/12/03/brian-godlfarb-on-conspiracy-theory/
In it, there is also reference to David Aaronovitch’s book “Voodoo History”, but not to Michael Shermer’s book “Why Clever People Believe Weird Things” (or something close to that).
I.e., conspiracy theory reigns.
September 12, 2011 at 5:45 pm
Just to let you know that last week’s JC carried a letter from a PSC member stating categorically that he or she has never once seen or heard any antisemitism by either the members or leaders of the PSC. (The letters are not available online).
Perhaps someone could let him/her and other JC readers know the facts.
And, talking of letters, here is one that as I was reading it, I was convinced it was from lonney on the US right, what with its crude attacks on Obama and the resort to antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Turned out I was wrong. It was from Gerald Kaufman……..makes you think!
“President Abbas is to be congratulated on persisting in applying for Palestinian statehood at the UN (Report, 9 September), despite all the pressure and blackmail trying to force him not to. The quartet has never done anything meaningful to give the Palestinians their independence. If the US uses its veto at the security council, this will prove the smug windbag Obama to be the puppet of Aipac. The hypocrisy of those countries which vote against or abstain at the general assembly will similarly be exposed. This brave Palestinian move will change the entire environment of the Middle East and tell the Israelis that they must negotiate meaningfully if they wish to be one of the states in a two-state solution.
Gerald Kaufman MP
Lab, Manchester Gorton”
September 12, 2011 at 5:46 pm
Sorry, meant to say the latter was in today’s Guardian.
September 12, 2011 at 8:30 pm
Is Gerald Kaufman all right? His tone in his letter to the Guardian and especially the references to Pres. Obama should give rise for concern. I suppose that’s what happens when you ally yourself with that Liberal Democrat baroness.
September 13, 2011 at 11:31 am
Evidence is “emerging” that there’s anti-Semitism in various PSC groups? Really? What shocking revelations are going to follow on from this – that the EDL don’t like Muslims very much?
That said, I’m eagerly anticipating certain people claiming that this is an example of the “Zionist lobby” trying to “stifle criticism” after you’ve bent over backwards to an almost humourous degree in order to be even-handed and non-judgemental.
September 13, 2011 at 12:29 pm
Emerging? Tolerates? Too tepid.
September 13, 2011 at 1:58 pm
On the other hand, was it not SPSC a year or so ago that prevented Ismael Khaldi from speaking to the J Soc at Edinburgh U on the basis that allowing a Bedouin Israeli who is serving as Israel’s Consul General to Caifornia and the Pacific Northwest would be akin to giving a platform to the Klu Klux Clan?
It seems that, when it comes to the BDSers, you just can’t make this stuff up.
September 13, 2011 at 4:14 pm
Reading this post and the ways in which the PSC tolerate antisemitism, I was reminded of the words of the Sheriff in the recent case in Scotland
“Presiding Sheriff Charles Macnair said it was “perfectly legitimate” to have a view on Israel, and perfectly legitimate to carry out political protest, but Donnachie’s behaviour had done nothing to help his point of view, and had only harmed it.”
And, on that case, it is evident that the BBC’s depiction of it as “flag racism” is a misnomer;
The Sheriff said: “The part of your behaviour which I find most serious was that you described Mr Reitbalt as a terrorist………It is equivalent to saying all Muslims are terrorists, and that’s wholly unacceptable.” (And, of course, Reitbalt is not an Israeli but would normally be referred to by that well-known euphemism, “supporter of Israel”.)
September 13, 2011 at 5:19 pm
I always ask such people whether they can give examples of genuine anti-semitism. Because if they can’t, they have no right to claim they are being wrongly accused of it.
I have never seen anyone thus accused able to answer the question with any real integrity.
If you can’t spot the real thing, you have no basis upon which to claim you are being wrongly accused.
September 14, 2011 at 12:48 am
OH! but a lot of them do give examples. All of them caricatures of the worse that antisemitism has to offer. It’s the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (but do stop talking about how Hamas still cites it because that’s really just ancient history, and it’s fake but accurate anyway, just no one has the guts to admit it). It’s about holocaust denial (but we really do need serious scholarship on how the Jews have inflated the numbers of the people who didn’t really die in The Shoah and how it is used to justify those zionazi’s). Like my own H/D training seminars that provided clever subtle and realistic examples of discrimination for everyone else, it’s about the office douche putting a nativity sean on the Jew’s desk because he thinks he got the christmas party canceled because he’s cheap (but constantly leaning on a jewish staffer to say what you think are the right things about Israel and retaliating against him/her when the script isn’t adhered to is in no way pervasively creating a hostile work environment). And let’s not forget it’s about linking to unquestionably racist websites that would flunk most people’s reasonable person test (but sweet caesar’s ghost, enough about the Delich Affair already!)
It’s no different than saying that racism is burning a cross on the lawn, sexism is chasing the secretary around the desk, etc. Its redefining racism by putting your prejudice on a pedestal where instead of not being able to reach it, it’s always right at your finger tips (for your convenience of course).
November 3, 2011 at 1:20 pm
[…] provide details of the PSC’s problems with racism in their post, Evidence is emerging that the PSC tolerates antisemitism: “Follow the links. Make a judgment about whether and why and how the Palestine Solidarity […]
November 5, 2011 at 10:55 pm
Off topic – but have people seen this?
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=418018
May 6, 2016 at 3:15 pm
[…] spoken at events organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, many of whose branches appear to tolerate anti-Semitism […]