25 October Statement from British Society for Middle East Studies (BRISMES) & others

From the BRISMES website, briefing prepared in consultation with ELSC, BRISMES Campaigns and London Region UCU representatives for employees in higher education in England and Wales – Defending your advocacy on Palestine in the Higher Education Context, “[ . . .] ‘While the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) ‘definition’ is not part of our law (at most it is a statement of policy), the right of free expression is. The Human Rights Act enacts article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, guaranteeing the right of free expression and qualifying it only where proportionate restrictions – for instance on hate speech – are imposed to protect the rights of others. This is why, whatever criticism the IHRA’s examples may seek to suppress, both Jews and non-Jews in the UK are entitled, without being stigmatised as anti-Semites, to contend that a state that by law denies Palestinians any right of self-determination is a racist state, or to ask whether there is some moral equivalence between shooting down defenceless Jews in eastern Europe and unarmed Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza”. click here.