The Shami Chakrabarti enquiry was a formal investigation into allegations of anti-Semitism in the Labour party, instigated by Leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, in April 2016. ICAHD UK, as a long-standing critical Israeli-founded human rights NGO with Jewish roots, felt it important to add our voice to the submissions. Our main suggestions are summarised in the outline below, but you can also find a link to the full document prepared below. The full report was published on the 30th June 2016.
We made three main points in our evidence to the Chakrabarti inquiry:
First: that any new definition of anti-Semitism should not include legitimate criticism of Israel, advocacy of a one-state solution in Israel/Palestine, support for BDS, or distinguishing Judaism from Zionism.
Second: that training in anti-Semitism should not be in the hands of anyone who is politically committed: we suggested an independent source for advice on this.
Third: that any incident which is claimed by a participant to be racist should be investigated as such, but not that the result of the investigation should be prejudged.