An academic from London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) has labelled Israel a “Western virus”.

Dr Haim Bresheeth, Professorial Research Associate at SOAS's Centre of Global Media and Communication, also claimed the Holocaust was the “clincher argument” in Israel’s “presumed right over Palestine”.

During a debate held earlier this month on the “normalisation” of Israel, Dr Marwa Osma, a Lebanese commentator who has appeared on Iranian-backed Press TV, also called for support for “armed resistance” coupled with “international pressure” against what she said was “Zionist aggression.”

The two-hour long discussion was organised by the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) and included a contribution from the controversial charity’s chair Massoud Shadjareh.

He said there was “huge concern the way that there has been a policy of the Zionists to normalise themselves in all different arenas” – focusing particularly on inter-faith initiatives between the Jewish and Muslim community.

Condemning attempts to “normalise” Israel, Mr Shadareh said “the institution of interfaith was used as one of the tools for this and you know, you could ask yourself, you could look into it, why is it that all the Jewish organisations who are involved in interfaith are actually Zionists while we know there is a huge number of anti-Zionists, non-Zionists in the Jewish community and none of them are represented. “

Meanwhile Mick Napier, the former leader of the Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, claimed Israel was the world’s number one pariah state – and the mass media, including the BBC, were involved in a cover-up of its crimes.

Dr Bresheeth, an associate member of the SOAS Centre for Palestinian Studies, suggested Zionism was "riding on the latent Islamophobia inherent in Christian society since the Crusades”.

He argued: “This form of Islamophobia has never disappeared from the West and explains the great centrality of Zionism to Western regimes”.

"Israeli presumed rights over Palestine are seen as, within Zionism, as exclusive and religious-based with the Holocaust deals at the clincher argument. This is very useful because no one seems to be able to say anything about this combination of, you know, Judeo-Christian and Holocaust arguments."

Arguing that Zionism was the creation of Western Christians at the end of the nineteenth century, who used it to exert control over the Middle East, Dr Bresheeth said: "The West had conceived of Zionism as the bulwark of Western capitalism against Islam and the Arab world and used it to open the Middle East for western interests, and this is continuing.

“Exactly along the lines developed by Herzl over a century ago.

“In this way Israel became the Western virus in the region during the Cold War,  developing its political outlook as a Western/US outpost in the near east - an agenda gradually adopted by the US, UK, Canada, Australia, apartheid South Africa, and most importantly the EU.”

In her speech to the IHRC event focussing on the normalisation showed to Israel by the UAE and Bahrain, Dr Osman said: ”So it's very vital to understand that also supporting the local armed resistance against this aggression, the Zionist aggression, is that the people of the West Asian area is vital with international pressure. They need to be together.

“And it's vital for the international community as well to help us, the communities who are resisting, who are at the front line against Israel, to help us from stopping the sanctions imposed by the US, the UK and their European allies, to stop demonising the resistance, to stop also demonising the allies of the resistance. We all saw two days ago when Allies of the resistance in Lebanon were sanctioned, they were not even part of Hezbollah, they were sanctioned because they are allies of Hezbollah and Lebanon.

“So also this kind of international pressure against the Empire and its allies also helps us a lot.”

Mr Napier, who is standing down as the leader of the SPSC, told the September 12 event it had been “Israeli policy for normalisation...to suppress opposition.”

He said: ”There's no choice they have to do that and we see this in Britain we see the defeat of Jeremy Corbyn and Corbynism for the moment through an alliance of vested interests: Conservative Party, right wing Labour, major corporations and led by publicly, led by the Zionist bodies in the UK smearing Jeremy Corbyn not as having some passion for justice for the Palestinians, but waking up in the morning and hating Jews as Jews!”

After the IHRC debate was loaded onto the organisation’s YouTube channel, they included the statement: ”All views are the speakers' own and do not necessarily reflect the views of IHRC.”

SOAS has long faced allegations from Jewish groups in the UK that staff and student organisations have frequently displayed open hostility to Israel – with numerous claims of incidents of antisemitism.

Three years ago the university issued a statement saying: "SOAS is extremely concerned about any allegations of antisemitism at our school.

"Diversity is key to the SOAS mission and we want all our students to feel welcome and supported in their studies. That is why we are actively taking steps to address recent concerns that have been raised by some of our Jewish students.”

After being approached by the JC for comment on Dr Bresheeth's remarks at the IHRC event SOAS said: "One of SOAS's core values is Freedom of Speech and we encourage the SOAS community to express themselves openly, with mutual tolerance and intellectual freedom. 

"However, freedom of expression may not be exercised as hate speech or to threaten the safety or freedom of expression of others. 

"We have a clear and explicit zero-tolerance policy in relation to antisemitism and all forms of racism.

"This particular event was not a SOAS organised event and we are not responsible for its content. Views that are expressed at such events by individuals are not views expressed on behalf of SOAS itself."

Dr Bresheeth later contacted the JC with a statement: "Lee Harpin  implies that to criticise Israel’s behaviour and positioning is antisemitic, which is total nonsense. As the son of Auschwitz survivors parents, I take great exception to such libellous and defamatory accusations. Many of us, anti-Zionist and non-Zionist Jews, feel the urgent need to criticise Israel war crimes.  Such crimes do not have our support and are not committed in our name! The uses and abuses of the Holocaust in the service of Israeli policies had been widely commented about, especially by Norman Finkelstein, and are hardly news. As the son of survivors whose entire families were exterminated, I feel strongly about such misuse of the deaths six million dead Jews. I suggest to you that the Jewish Chronicle, procalaiming to express a Jewish voice,  should share such sentiments rather than excoriate them.

"Antisemitism is the hatred and maltreatment of Jews as Jews and has nothing to do with opposition to the state of Israel; Such opposition is based on the actions of the Israeli state alone and is not connected to the claim of this state to be “Jewish” – we do not accept that Israel is the state of all Jews. Ironically, amongst Israel’s leading “friends” and partners in Europe and elsewhere are many political leaders who combine support for Israel with antisemitic and racist policies. Make of that what you will.

"You claim that I argued “that Zionism was the creation of Western Christians at the end of the nineteenth century, who used it to exert control over the Middle East”. This is a twisting of my words. I said, and can prove it, that Christian Zionism evolved earlier than Jewish political Zionism – this is an important historical fact. Christian Zionism was driven by religious arguments (mainly based on a particular reading of the of book of Revelation) and combined British and other imperial and colonial interests in the near East. Jewish political Zionism, by contrast, developed some decades later and was driven by European antisemitism. It is a fact that Theodor Herzl used the notion of Zionism as a western bulwark in order to gain support from the many European potentates whom he met, and a reading of his (complete, English version) diaries will easily persuade those who have been unaware of this position."