Lipstadt slams Starmer for welcoming activist who praised killing Zionists

Lipstadt, an American historian best known for defeating Holocaust- denier David Irving in a landmark libel trial and who served as US special envoy against antisemitism from 2022 to early 2025, was speaking in conversation with Rabbi Raphael Zarum, dean of the London School of Jewish Studies, at a widely billed session on contemporary antisemitism.

“[With] the failure to call out radical Islam,” she said, “the people we are throwing under the bus, literally, are Jews and moderate Muslims.”

She described this as “identity politics gone rotten”.

Lipstadt said she was “terrified” by antisemitism, which she said had become increasingly difficult for intelligence agencies to track.

Referring to the Bondi Beach attack, in which 15 Jews were killed, she described it as “a pogrom”, prompting a comment from Zarum, who argued that pogroms were historically “a national or citywide plan”.

But Lipstadt suggested the Australian government were partly to blame for the attack.

“Pogrom often has government sponsorship, and I could argue that this didn’t have government sponsorship, but it had government acquiescence, in looking the other way.”

She condemned Australia’s Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, saying he remained “so wishy-washy” on antisemitism.

Deborah Lipstadt at a previous event (Photo: Getty)[Missing Credit]

Calling for greater clarity from global leaders to condemn Jew-hate, Lipstadt said that while the current situation was not comparable to the 1930s, when governments enacted antisemitic policies, there was nonetheless a dangerous vacuum of leadership to combat anti-Jewish extremism.

“I look at your country, I look at my country, I look at Australia, I look at France,” she said. “There’s got to be a message from the top, and it has got to not just trickle but stream down that this is unacceptable.”

She said that antisemitism posed a threat to liberal democracy, and the language from leaders on antisemitism must be unequivocal.

“This is unacceptable. This is wrong. This is wrong to our national values; this is wrong to our democratic values; the people who do this are not representing us [and] don’t belong in this country, wherever they were born; and we are going to prosecute them, do everything the law will allow.

“That message has to come from the top, and, so far, I have seen few leaders doing what they need to do.”

While extolling diversity, she said this was not as important as shared values.

“We believe in diversity in our country, but we also have other beliefs. And diversity is not our major strength. Diversity is important. Jews know that – look at the difference in this country or my country since Jews came – but there are shared values.

“What is going on here [antisemitism] is antithetical – not because we care about our Jewish neighbours – because it is antithetical to what a democratic liberal country stands for.”

She described antisemitism as “multi-level”.

“First and foremost, as an attack on Jews, Jewish institutions and those associated with them,” she said.

“Were that the sole threat, it would be something for a government to take seriously. But it’s not solely that. It is also a threat to democracy,” she went on.

She said anyone who believed in antisemitic conspiracy theories had “given up on democracy”.

She acknowledged serious failures in universities which have seen antisemitism on campus. “Was there a problem in the universities? Yes. Was there a failure to really aggressively address it? In many cases, yes.”

She said it was insufficient merely to allow international students who broke protest rules to be suspended and thus retain their visas and avoid deportation.

Lipstadt questioned the effectiveness of banning certain slogans, including ‘Globalise the intifada’, which has affectively been banned at protests in London and Manchester

But when asked if there was a danger that the far right was weaponising antisemitism, she said there “absolutely” was.

“In my country, we’ve seen the cutoff of Alzheimer’s research and cancer research,” she said, referring to cuts to research budgets for universities like Harvard and Colombia, which, Trump said, had failed to adequately address antisemitism.

“The response [to antisemitism] has to fall within the limits of the law. Antisemitism is too serious an issue to weaponise either by the right or by the left, and I think both have done that.”

Lipstadt went on to question the effectiveness of banning certain slogans, including “Globalise the intifada,” which has affectively been banned at protests in London and Manchester.

“I don’t think outlawing it is going to do a damn bit of good because they will just change the wording a little bit. And ‘from the river to the sea’ – half of those people don’t know which river and which sea,” she said.

She added that attempts to conflate antisemitism with other hatreds were unhelpful. “This other thing that drives me nuts is every time you mention antisemitism, you have ‘antisemitism and’. Sometimes it’s a dozen things, and sometimes it is antisemitism and Islamophobia.”

“I am not for Islamophobia. I think it is a terrible thing. [But] the two are separate and apart and don’t compare.”

Our mistake might have been to think that teaching about the Holocaust is a magical bullet to make Jews feel more Jewish or to make non-Jews feel more kindly about the Jews

She defended the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which has been the subject of criticism, particularly by some pro-Palestinian campaigners, saying: “IHRA is an excellent definition and does not close down free speech. I see no problem with closing down antisemitic speech on campuses.”

Asked whether too much emphasis had been placed on Holocaust education, Lipstadt said teaching about the Shoah remained essential but cautioned against overestimating its impact.

“Our mistake might have been to think that teaching about the Holocaust is a magical bullet to make Jews feel more Jewish or to make non-Jews feel more kindly about the Jews.

“Teaching about the Holocaust is important for a number of reasons,” she said. “First of all, to those six million people who were murdered... their murder should not be forgotten, [and] as a demonstration to the world that what started with words can lead to dangerous actions.”

When asked about El-Fattah’s arrival in the UK over the weekend, a Foreign Office spokesperson told reporters: “Mr El-Fattah is a British citizen. It has been a long-standing priority under successive governments to work for his release from detention, and to see him reunited with his family in the UK.

"The government condemns Mr El-Fattah's historic tweets and considers them to be abhorrent."

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