Judgment Approved by the court for handing down. [2025] EWHC 1170 (Admin) AC-2024-LON-001310 HUSAIN v SRA should “ascertain how a typical (i.e. an ordinary reasonable) reader would interpret the message”, bearing in mind that their reaction is likely to be “impressionistic and fleeting”. He endorsed the reaction of Nicklin J in another case to complex arguments about meaning: “these points only emerge as a result of close analysis, or someone pointing them out. An ordinary reasonable reader will not have someone by his/her side making points like this.” It follows from this approach that it would be wrong to admit evidence of any kind (whether factual or expert) on the meaning of a social media post: see (again in the defamation context) Koutsogiannis v Random House Group Ltd [2019] EWHC 48 (QB), [2020] 4 WLR 25, [12(x)]. 112. In Diggins, Warby J applied the approach in Stocker to the meaning of the tweet in issue there. However, at [82], he emphasised that “Stocker has nothing to say about whether a social media post can or cannot be treated as having a seriously defamatory, or seriously offensive, tendency”. This is because the ordinary and natural meaning of a tweet is distinct from the question whether, in that meaning, the tweet satisfies a given legal standard (seriously defamatory in the context of a claim for libel, antisemitic in the present context). There is no reason why a court or tribunal should apply the same approach to both questions. 113. There is a particular danger in applying a pure “ordinary reasonable reader” approach to the question whether a statement is antisemitic, especially if one applies the further gloss that the judgment should be impressionistic and should eschew close analysis. Some instances of antisemitism use coded language or images, which make conscious or unconscious reference to tropes, false allegations or conspiracy theories about Jews. Some, such as those portraying Jews as sinister controllers of global finance and media, date back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some, such as the blood libel that Jews make matzos from the blood of Christian children, go back much further. The important point, however, is that knowledge about antisemitism as a historical and cultural phenomenon is not universal. An “ordinary reasonable reader” might not have it and so might not appreciate the cultural significance of (say) a cartoon containing a hook-nosed caricature of a banker, an octopus, a vampire or a puppetmaster. Once the historical significance of these things is understood, however, the image can be identified as antisemitic—and unequivocally so. 114. The most natural way of addressing this is to ask whether the statement or conduct in question would be regarded as antisemitic to an observer with a reasonable understanding of the main historical and cultural manifestations of antisemitism. In this respect, reference to the IHRA’s working definition and examples may help, subject to the caveats set out earlier in this judgment. Reference to case law interpreting the IHRA working definition or commenting on the examples may also assist. In most instances, this is likely to be sufficient for a court or tribunal to decide whether a particular meaning (identified using the approach in Stocker) is antisemitic. 115. In this case, however, the panel had just one previous decision (of the Tribunal in Mahmood) to assist it on the proper way to approach the question whether a statement is antisemitic. It had before it a respondent who was contesting both the allegation that what he had said was antisemitic and also the appropriateness of the IHRA definition. The Tribunal understandably considered that it needed to inform itself about antisemitism as a historical and cultural phenomenon. It therefore decided that expert evidence was “necessary for the proper consideration of an issue or issues in the case”