An extraordinary war of words broke out on social media this week between two Jewish organizations. It began when the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) released research of a year-long study conducted by YouGov that suggested one in every three Jews had considered leaving Britain in the past two years and 37% of British Jews conceal their Judaism in public.

The research polled 10,567 people and although they found British attitudes towards Jewish people were more positive than in previous years, nevertheless British Jews were concerned about Islamist, far-left and far right anti-Semitism in that precise order.

The survey attracted national press attention and the CAA Chairman, Gideon Falter was seen and heard on a number of TV and radio news networks discussing the findings. During his numerous interviews, Mr. Falter pointed out that four in five British Jews have witnessed anti-Semitism disguised as a political comment about Israel or Zionism and more than four in five Jews believe that the Labour Party is harbouring anti-Semites.

However, the chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council, Simon Johnson, questioned the findings and claimed it was scare mongering. In a two-minute video posted on Facebook this week, Mr Johnson suggested that the survey results were a way of attaining national publicity. Mr Falter responded by telling Simon Johnson to “apologise or resign” after posting what he described as an “ill-advised attack” on his organisation.

The video by Mr Johnson was taken down after it attracted a huge amount of comments.
Facebook user Mark Haringman responded by writing: “Why are two UK Jewish organisations having a public battle on Facebook?

The Jewish Leadership Council published a video over last weekend that publicly rebuked The CAA. The said video was published on the JLC Facebook page that is open to public views. Mysteriously the said video was removed 24 hours later. The JLC have refused to make any comment on the videos content or its removal.

Mark Haringman then wrote that copies of the video were available through him.