Judgment Approved by the court for handing down.
[2025] EWHC 1170 (Admin)
AC-2024-LON-001310
HUSAIN v SRA
unobjectionable and useful. They serve to illustrate some of the ways in which hatred or
hostility towards Jews has historically been expressed. However, particular care is
required in the application of the seventh and eighth examples because they relate to
speech which is critical of the historic or contemporary conduct of the State of Israel;
and, as I said in Ali, such speech in principle attracts the highest level of protection
under Article 10 ECHR.
103.
At [61] in Ali, I noted that it may be highly controversial whether a particular criticism
involves “[a]pplying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behaviour not expected
or demanded of any other democratic nation”. Answering that question is likely to
involve making judgments on contested factual and normative matters. In general,
Article 10 accords broad protection to such judgments. Courts and tribunals should be
wary of entering this difficult terrain, save where they are applying a legal framework
that makes it impossible to avoid doing so. In consequence, they should in my view be
cautious in accepting that a statement is antisemitic on the basis that it employs an
alleged double standard of this kind.
104.
For similar reasons, caution is also required when considering speech that is said to
“[deny] the Jewish people their right to self-determination”. One way of reading these
words is that—while criticism of this or that contemporary Israeli policy is legitimate—
criticism of the founding circumstances or principles of the State of Israel is not. If that
were so, it would presumably follow that advocating the abolition of the State of Israel
and its replacement with a unitary state comprising both Jewish and Palestinian citizens
(the so-called “one-state solution”, which has historically had some support among
Israelis as well as Palestinians) would necessarily be antisemitic. In oral argument, Mr
Solomon for the SRA defended this position. I do not accept it. Whatever might be said
about the desirability of a “one-state solution” or its feasibility in current circumstances,
there is no good reason to regard its proponents as automatically or even presumptively
antisemitic.
105.
Nor, in my judgment, can it be regarded as axiomatically antisemitic to claim that “the
existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour”. Criticisms of this sort have been
levelled against Israel since the events leading to its establishment in 1948. There is no
doubt that those events included the displacement of Palestinians from their homes and
land in what is now Israel (referred to by Palestinians as Al-Nakba or “the
catastrophe”). The view that this was a form of ethnic cleansing or a species of
colonialism is vigorously disputed, not only because many Jews regard Israel as their
ancestral homeland, but also because of the displacement of Jews from their homes and
land in majority Arab countries at about the same time. But this does not render such a
view off-limits in a democratic society which values the right to freedom of expression.
106.
The claim that Israel is an “apartheid State”, though one which is liable to offend many
Jews, also lies in principle within the area protected by Article 10. At the time when the
Tribunal was making its decision in the present case, such claims had been made in
express terms in proceedings before the ICJ. That court has now given its Advisory
Opinion in Legal Consequences Arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the
Occupied Palestinians Territories, including East Jerusalem (19 July 2024, General
List No. 186), finding that those policies and practices gave rise to a breach of Articles
2 and 3 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
(Article 3 condemns “racial segregation and apartheid” and requires contracting states