CFI’s Parliamentary Chairman (Lords) and UK’s Special Envoy for post-Holocaust Issues, Rt. Hon. The Lord Pickles declared “I am a proud and unapologetic Zionist”, at the Abraham Global Peace Initiative (AGPI) State of Antisemitism Conference last week.
The one-day conference included hundreds of attendees spread out over ten nations and speakers from around the world. Lord Pickles recounted that this year, British Jews suffered unprecedented levels of Antisemitism with 1,308 incidents, the highest number ever recorded since 1984 when the study began.
The peak of Antisemitic incidents occurred during “Hamas’ aggression” against Israel this past spring with 639 Antisemitic incidents, of which 89 were violent.
In his speech, Lord Pickles emphasised: “Language is important, when we talk about antisemitism no more so than when we analyse the language used in antisemitic incidents over the first six months of the year – most referenced the conflict in the Middle East, demonstrated anti-Zionist political motivation, or both”.
He added: “Incidents directly compared Israel with Nazi Germany, while the terms ‘Zionism’ or ‘Zionist’ were used as euphemisms for ‘Jewishness’ and ‘Jew’. For those of us who have challenged Antisemitism for decades – this is no surprise”.
Lord Pickles explained that “there are things we can do” to combat Antisemitism, and spoke about the success story in encouraging countries around the world to adopt the IRHA definition of Antisemitism, as well as putting pressure on social media platforms.
