Another day, another addition to the roll call of antisemitic shame. But this one is rich in irony, with Bostjan Zupancic — exposed for a series of deeply antisemitic social media posts — having been the longest serving judge on the European Court of Human Rights. It is almost beyond satire.
Zupancic shared posts saying that Jews are “the central enemies of Western civilization”, as well as hook-nosed caricatures. This is the same Zupancic who was part of the ECHR’s judicial panel in cases of key concern to Jewish communities.
He ruled on issues such as kosher abattoirs in France, the restitution of property stolen by the Nazis from German Jews, adverts comparing the treatment of animals to that of Jews by the Nazis and whether the French antisemite Dieudonné M’Bala should be allowed to express antisemitic views on stage. The ECHR might as well have had David Irving or Jean-Marie Le Pen on its panels.
But for all the anger that this rightly prompts, we have to wonder how many are still surprised by another revelation of antisemitism in a place where racism of any sort should be inconceivable or by the fact that he was not called out earlier by the think tank where he was a fellow until this week.
David Miller, after all, was able to work as a professor at Bristol University without any of his colleagues seeming to be at all bothered by his views, which were widely disseminated and criticised by anti-racist campaigners.
It should go without saying that the ECHR must examine all the cases in which Zupancic was involved in which the Jewish community had an interest. But given the context, and the fact that Zupancic sat on ECHR panels for 17 years without anyone being bothered by him, nothing can be taken for granted.
The European Court of Human Rights must now do the right thing
The ECHR must examine all the cases in which antisemite judge Bostjan Zupancic was involved in where the Jewish community had an interest
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A picture taken on November 27, 2013 shows the Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg. AFP PHOTO/FREDERICK FLORIN (Photo credit should read FREDERICK FLORIN/AFP via Getty Images)
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