The David Miller ruling runs the risk of protecting antisemites
▶ FOR THOSE familiar with David Miller’s record of spouting about Israel and Jews, the tribunal’s central funding was stunning.
The tribunal found that his “antiZionist beliefs qualified… as a protected characteristic”, were “worthy of respect in a democratic society”, were not “incompatible with human dignity” and did “not conflict with the fundamental rights of others”.
Let’s take a closer look at his antiZionism. Miller has stated that: “To dismantle the regime, every single Zionist organisation, the world over, needs to be ended. Every. Single. One.”
To “dismantle the regime” means to dismantle the state of Israel. That means to dismantle the Jewish capacity for self-defence in Israel; to dismantle Israel’s ability to prevent more attacks like the one on October 7.
Dismantling Israel without the consent of Israelis could only mean military conquest, of the kind that has been tried by the Arab League three times before.
Nevertheless, the tribunal appears to have been rather open to Miller’s claim that he thinks his anti-Zionism can be achieved without violence: “The claimant also made clear, when crossexamined, and we accept, that he is not and was not supportive or ‘open to’ violence as a means of opposing Zionism.”
However the judgment found there was a 30 per cent chance that Miller would have been dismissed because of comments he made on social media in 2023, including the tweet “Judeophobia barely exists these days”. Miller’s later comments were “of a different order” to those he made in 2021, the ruling understood.
Much of Miller’s public writing since October 7 has supported what he calls “the resistance”, while denying that what “the resistance” actually did on that day was to murder and rape hundreds of Jews.
The Zionist organisations Miller wants “ended”, if he means what he says, include Maccabi sports clubs, the Jewish schools, the JC, the Jewish Labour movement, the Union of Jewish Students (UJS), the Jewish Labour Movement, The Holocaust Education Trust, the Chief Rabbi’s Office, the CST and the Board of Deputies.
Jewish organisations have been ended before. They were ended in England (1290), in Spain (1478), in Germany (1938), and in the USSR
(1918); they were ended in a number of states in the Middle East that defined themselves as “Arab” or as “Muslim”. They were also ended in Gaza, in 2005.
Miller said that Jewish students in UJS and in their JSocs, including those at Bristol who he himself taught, were used “as political pawns by a violent, racist foreign regime”. By calling them “assets of Israel” he encouraged people to think of students who go to their JSocs as unpatriotic traitors. And as racists: “Lobbying for Israel is a threat to the safety of Arab and Muslim students… and all critics of Israel.” Remember that in Miller’s anti-Zionism, fighting antisemitism is considered to be “lobbying for Israel”.
But who was in court to make the opposite case? Which brave and learned advocates against antisemitism were there to stand up for Jews? Nobody. Which Jewish communal organisation was there to oppose Miller? None. That courtroom was a prototype of the world of Miller’s fantasy of a world in which “Zionism” had already been “ended” and in which Jews had no collective voice.
This was a fight between Bristol University and David Miller, whom it had honoured with a professorship. It had stood by him, and the conspiracy fantasy he passed off as academic sociology, for years while taking a cut of his research money, much of it from public funds.
Bristol had, for years, trusted Miller with the power to shape his teaching curricula and to assess students’ work. The tribunal was critical of the university’s sudden change of mind, for steadfastly refusing to criticise or censure Miller at all for years, but then suddenly veering straight to dismissal for conduct that it had until then defended.
Well, one might have thought that it should have been obvious to the tribunal that Miller’s anti-Zionism is antisemitic. But the tribunal refused even to consider the question – and Bristol did not submit that it was antisemitic.
Tribunal found that his ‘antiZionist beliefs’ were ‘worthy of respect’
If his conduct was not antisemitic, if it was not a violation of the Equality Act, then why was he fired? Bristol said that the problem with Miller was not with his beliefs in the abstract but with his explicit identification of his own Jewish students as Zionists and therefore racists.
The university also said that Miller’s anti-Zionism was “inflammatory and unnecessarily aggressive”, but what was inflammatory or aggressive about them if they were not antisemitic?
Why was Bristol University fatally afraid of accusing Miller of antisemitism? It had commissioned two internal reports from a barrister, Aileen McColgan, who had reported back that nothing that Miller had said was antisemitic. Having accepted these reports, Bristol found it difficult subsequently to say that he in fact was antisemitic, or that his threat to students, to whom he had a duty of care, was antisemitic.
Since his sacking, David Miller has made a whole stream of antisemitic programmes for the Iranian propaganda station, Press TV. Former MP Chris Williamson plays Watson to Miller’s Holmes as they spin conspiracy fantasies about one Jewish institution after another.
By determining that anti-Zionism is protected, but without considering the issue of antisemitism, the tribunal risks protecting antisemites against Jews.
The tribunal might have accepted that political anti-Zionism, in the abstract, was protected, but what they actually did was worse; they said that Miller’s specific anti-Zionism was protected. It is worse because Miller’s antiZionism is significantly more clearly antisemitic than many other more mainstream forms of anti-Zionism.
Since October 7, British Jews, as Anthony Julius has said, have been painfully aware of “a partial failure by state institutions – the BBC, the police, the universities, the Crown Prosecution Service – to meet the challenge of this antisemitic moment”. This week many will add to that list Bristol University and the Employment Tribunal.
Since October 7, he has supported what he calls ‘the resistance’