A speaker at an anti-racism session organised for Green Party members said that “international law protects armed resistance” and bemoaned British laws that she claimed prevented her from speaking “freely” about Hamas.
Dr Zahira Jaser, an academic at the University of Sussex, was speaking at a members’ only session for Green members on anti-Palestinian racism. The JC has heard a recording of the meeting on September 10.
Though she did not in any way indicate support for the proscribed terrorist organisation, Dr Jaser told the online gathering: “International law protects armed resistance. So that’s a fact. You know, I, as an academic, I am against violence as a person… That’s my way of being, right? Do I understand that oppressed people at some point explode in armed resistance. That is a logical consequence of oppression.
“You know, like you’ve seen it again and again and again. You see it in Algeria. You’ve seen it in all the settler colonial states that have been fighting from the native [sic] in order not to be wiped out.”
She went on to suggest British law stopped her from speaking freely about Hamas, saying: “Now Hamas has become a particularly contested term in this country because it has been deemed a terroristic organisation.
“So, when we speak about Hamas, we are in the same conundrum when we speak about Palestine Action because there is a law that prevents us to speak freely about Hamas and about Palestine Action, and therefore I am also prevented here from speaking freely in a relaxed manner.”
She later cited comments by Israel’s finance minister Bezalel Smotrich who described Hamas as an “asset” in contrast to the Palestinian Authority. She commented that “Hamas allows Israel to perpetuate war” against the Palestinians.
Dr Jaser went on to speak about widely publicised reports that Benjamin Netanyahu was warned before October 7 “something was going to happen” but ignored them, something vehemently denied by Israel’s premier. She also told the meeting there was “a lot of evidence that Hamas had said on October 7 already that they wanted to return the hostages and was ready to negotiate and it was ignored”.
Brett McGurk, a senior official in the Biden administration, has dismissed the idea that Hamas was ready to release all Israeli hostages as “complete bulls**t”, in an interview held two weeks after the session.
Also in the session, Dr Jaser described the widely accepted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism as “particularly pernicious in continuing to deplatform Palestinians and anyone that criticises Israel as an antisemite. And it’s really a form of erasing the Palestinian voice.”
In correspondence with the JC, she said she based criticism of the IHRA on that of many scholars, including Jewish ones, who share her analysis.
At another point in the near two-hour session, Dr Jaser equated Zionism with racism and described it as a “race-making” ideology.
She said it was “at best an anachronistic ideology” and at worst similar to “a form of torture for the Palestinians”.
Although she recognised that “many Jewish people” saw Zionism as “a shield, not just as a sword”, she said that “there are a lot of people among Jewish communities that are attached to Zionism nostalgically as something that can save them from persecution.
“They do not see that Zionism is actually an ideology which is destroying an entire indigenous people.”
Later, referring to Palestinian academic Edward Said’s book On the Question of Palestine, she described Zionism – seen from the point of view of Palestinians – as “an ideology of colonisation and of dispossession and of oppression and of ethnic cleansing and of apartheid”. She also described Zionism as “race making”, saying: “It makes races. It exists only by creating racism and racialisation. Because it would put someone on top of the other.”
Dr Jaser continued: “It exists only by creating racism and racialisation. Because it would put someone on top of the other. So, it’s not absolutely based on equality … And it also makes … Zionism makes the Jewish people into a race, you know, the Jewish race.”
Responding to the JC, Dr Jaser said that “the debates about Zionism as a discriminatory ideology, are so wide that there is an entire academic journal dedicated to the critical study of Zionism”, adding her explanations were based on a “rich literature review that explores the ideas of Zionism construction of the Jewish people into a race”.
Her remarks uncovered by the JC were criticised by Jewish communal organisations.
Mark Gardner MBE, chief executive of the Community Security Trust, said the positions in the session “about IHRA and about Zionism show, again, that the Green Party is riddled with hatred and discrimination against mainstream Jewish communal life”.
Danny Stone MBE, chief executive of the Antisemitism Policy Trust (APT), was also scathing in his criticism of Dr Jaser.
He told the JC: “The way the IHRA definition of antisemitism was presented in this session was so wrong as to be laughable. It is, in my view, irresponsible, inaccurate and misleading.”
Referring to his organisation not being allowed to exhibit at the party’s annual conference this year, he also said: “Party members would have had the chance to better understand that definition had our organisation not effectively been banned from the Green’s conference.”
Stone added: “Hamas is an ideologically driven, antisemitic terrorist organisation and should not be described as anything but, especially in an apparent anti-racism session.
“The Green Party has a lot of explaining to do – clearly the Equality and Human Rights Commission has its work cut out.”
Reacting to Gardener and Stone’s comments, Dr Jaser said: “There is extensive scholarship by Palestinian and Jewish scholars (which I referenced during the training and expanded in my response to the Jewish Chronicle) on the racist nature of Zionism, on the controversial IHRA definition and its use to silence Palestinians as they are subjected to genocide, and on the concept of resistance in settler-colonialism.
“I am surprised that anyone who works in this space ignores this evidence and scholarship. It is time to stop censoring Palestinian voices.”
Commenting on her involvement with the Green Party, she said: “I provided a workshop as an expert in the matter of anti-Palestinian racism, as part of the Green Party’s broader anti-racist training.
“I believe that the Green Party has engaged experts to deliver training on different forms of discrimination and racism, including, for example, Islamophobia and antisemitism.”
A Green Party spokesperson told the JC: “These comments are part of a lengthy training delivered by Dr Zahira Jaser where she was expressly asked her opinion.
“Her response reflects her own views and not those of the Green Party. The Green Party is committed to dismantling systemic racism, including against Palestinians.
“We support training that helps us debate and consider how we can meet this commitment within our party.”
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