Europe

The UK government’s review of antisemitism in schools has come under fire from critics who note that its author has relied on flawed evidence, ideological bias and a controversial definition that conflates antisemitism with criticism of Israel. The British Education Secretary Lucy Powell has decided to adopt all 27 recommendations contained in Sir David Bell's review of alleged antisemitism in schools that was commissioned by her predecessor Bridget Philipson.

Both Powell and Philipson are members of Labour Friends of Israel. The contents of Sir David's review are summarized herein: This month, the government accepted all 27 recommendations of Sir David Bell's review of antisemitism in England's schools and colleges. The Education Secretary Lucy Powell called it a generational moment. But on page 30, the review tells a different story. Anti-Jewish attitudes, it says, are typically less prevalent and have remained more stable, whereas anti-Israel sentiments are more prevalent and have been increasing.

Its main example is a YouGov poll. In 2025, 45% of British adults agreed that Israel treats the Palestinians like the Nazis treated the Jews. The review says beliefs like that could be regarded as antisemitic under the IHRA definition, the definition it recommends schools adopt. The poll's published tables show it was commissioned by the Campaign Against Antisemitism. They put that figure at 33% in August 2024, so it rose 12 points in the year of a war in Gaza.

Answers about Jews themselves barely moved. The review does cite other evidence, including a study that found both kinds of attitudes have grown since 2020. And the chart on the next page is labeled 2025, but credited a report from 2017. The definition was settled early. In March, the terms of reference said the review would use IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance). The call for evidence opened at the end of April. The headline finding was that almost 3 in 5 young Jewish people had experienced or witnessed antisemitism.

The review warns its survey is not representative; its evidence annex shows 70 Jewish respondents answered the question. 29 said they had experienced it themselves. In the call for evidence, nearly 9 in 10 respondents said they were confident they could tell antisemitism apart from criticism of Israel. That answer is missing from the review's narrative; 158 responses used a template criticizing the review. It quotes none of them. When it does answer critics, the review misquotes the definition.

The IHRA text protects criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country. The review's version says any other democratic country. The National Education Union's General Secretary, Daniel Kebede, says IHRA's contested framing risks blurring the line between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of the Israeli government and the genocide in Gaza. The terms of reference say the reviewer has no conflict of interests; they do not mention that a charity, the Academic Study Group on Israel and the Middle East, lists Sir David on its National Council.

Its only firm policy, it says, is opposing BDS, the boycott campaign. The review has now been accepted in full. In a year, Sir David Bell will assess how well his own recommendations are being implemented. This article is based on an episode of the Press TV show, Palestine Declassified, hosted by former British Labour MP, Chris Williamson, featuring Broadcast Journalist Basil Valentine; and, Academic David Miller. Taking into account the summary of Sir David's review, what was written on page 30 suggests he was “speaking with forked tongue”.

According to David Miller “what was on page 30 was the indication that he accepted that there was no increase in antisemitism in the country that it was at a low level, as everyone knows, how low is an open question, and that the only thing which had changed in the past few years was a huge increase in anti-Israel sentiment.” “So it kind of undermined the whole thrust of his report. His report was set up to endorse a Zionist interpretation of what antisemitism is, to abide by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism.”

“And then on page 30, he more or less blew the gaff and said, actually, there's nothing to see here. There is no antisemitism. There's no rising antisemitism. There's no indication that it is rising as a result of the genocide in Gaza, because most people understand the difference between hating Jews as Jews and despising the genocide in Gaza.” “But, of course, that was not the full story. I mean, that's a great gotcha for saying the report is a joke, which, of course, it is, but the other element of it that we have to understand is that because he'd been asked to use the IHRA and because he himself is a Zionist, he had used the evidence of an upsurge in anti-Israel sentiment as evidence of an increase in antisemitism, which kind of contradicted what he said on page 30.”

“ So because the IHRA has one of the examples which may in certain circumstances, depending on the context, be thought to be antisemitic, i.e. the idea of comparing the Zionists with the Nazis, he said that because that's increased because of the genocide, that's an indication of the increase in antisemitism.” “So the report is, first of all, ideologically loaded, biased from the beginning and, of course, also intellectually shoddy and incoherent.”

“And that's what you get from just reading the report.” Chris Williamson views this as “the new antisemitism that is beloved of the likes of the Community Security Trust and the rest of the Zionist lobby, who exaggerate the level of antisemitism, of course, the reality is that real antisemitism is all but non-existent.” David Miller states “I don't believe there is any such thing as antisemitism really anymore. I mean, conceived of as a form of racism, for it to be racism, there has to be some kind of institutional or embedded kind of discrimination against the Jews.

It simply doesn't exist.” “Now, you might have people who say things which would be traditionally regarded as being antisemitic, if they condemn someone for being a Jew, for example, but there's hardly any of that. Almost all of it comes from the far right where it does exist.” “And, of course, most of the sentiment which is out there is against the genocide so the whole thing is nonsense.” “Of course, there are organizations like the CST who push this nonsense onto the government, who are themselves funded by the government.”

“But it's been a generation's long process. The Zionists started to use this term back in the 1970s.” “And the most famous example, of course, at the start of this is Abba Eban, the former foreign minister in 1973, making a speech in the US where he talked about the new antisemitism, where he meant, of course, not traditional far right antisemitism, i.e. actual antisemitism, but a new form of antisemitism which he identified with the new left and, of course, with the Muslims, the Arabs and the Palestinians.”

“So, of course, it's been an attempt that's been a long time in the works and it's now coming to fruition and beginning to reach its apotheosis.” Chris Williamson contends that in his research, David Miller “identified the fact empirically that the Jewish people are not discriminated against in the UK and in fact, statistically speaking, are actually doing quite well.” “And as far as the bigotry … is concerned, it tends to be on the far right.

And yet we saw, didn't we, how the likes of Luciana Berger joined the heights of the antisemitism scam in the Labour Party, where she claimed that she'd been subjected to antisemitic abuse and implied that it was from Labour Party members. But it turns out it was from far right individuals didn’t it?” David Miller affirms that “that's what they want to do. They want to suggest that there's a real problem and that all the state's resources should go to it.”

“So, of course, more state resources go to a non-existent problem of racism against the Jews and hardly any resources, by comparison, go to the actual main problem of racism in the country, which is against Muslims. And that's just the way in which these things operate.” “That is an indication of the penetration and infiltration of Jewish supremacist ideas into government, not just amongst Zionists and those people who are Gentile Zionists who side up to the cause, but amongst the kind of the ruling assumptions of how policy is made such that it's very, very difficult in any public institution to stand out against that.”

Chris Williamson assesses that “this is yet another example of that, but, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism has been largely discredited, yet it's still being pushed by politicians like Lucy Powell.” “Some critics have said her adoption of the Bell Review is about brainwashing youngsters to whitewash Israel's crimes against humanity.” Basil Valentine is adamant that “after three years of genocide, the IHRA definition is completely discredited.”

“And most importantly, schools should be teaching about what's happening in the real world and not avoiding challenging subjects because of a biased definition.” “ Schools should be looking objectively, for example, at the UN Commission, which just on Monday of this week issued a report stating that the Israeli authorities are still committing genocidal acts with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinians in Gaza, and that the situation had also continued to deteriorate in the West Bank, where, of course, this week we've seen British lawmakers refused entry by the occupation authorities because they don't want our MPs to see the ethnic cleansing that's going on in the West Bank.”

“One of the so-called examples of antisemitism in the IHRA definition is singling out Israel for criticism. But if, as the UN says it is, Israel is committing genocidal acts, then of course it has to be singled out.” “And that means dumping this definition, which is really just an obstacle to a mature understanding of the situation.” Chris Williamson points out that Basil Valentine “mentioned MPs and trying to shield them from the reality, but they must be aware of the reality, though, surely, who couldn't be aware of the reality of the Zionist atrocities being perpetrated against the Palestinians, certainly over last three years or so?

But of course, this goes back nearly 80 years, maybe even longer than that, actually.” Basil Valentine clarifies that “whether it's massacring journalists en masse in Gaza or refusing entry to elected officials to the West Bank, Israel likes to carry out its crimes in the dark.” “ It doesn't want, never has wanted, people to know the details of what's going on because any normal human being visiting the West Bank, let alone Gaza, where, of course, no international journalists are still allowed in after three years of genocide, any fair minded individual is absolutely aghast.”

“And that should translate into much, much stronger sanctions against Israel for what's happening, but because people don't see it, it stays buried in the national consciousness, unfortunately.” Why does it matters who commissioned the YouGov poll that was cited in the in the Bell Review? David Miller expounds that “when you start to pick this report apart, you find that there are all sorts of undeclared biases in there, undeclared conflicts of interest.”

“And one of those, of course, is the fact that you can't quote results from an opinion poll carried out by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism as if they are simply social scientific opinion polling data. They are, of course, highly ideological.” “And, you know, the reason that the CAA (Campaign Against Anti-Semitism) produces such reports is to make sure that Jewish supremacist ideas are not challenged anywhere, and anyone who is critical of Jewish supremacism is disciplined or marginalized or stopped from standing for election or taken away from their jobs, etc. So