Rabbis receive anti-terror training after sacked professor repeats ‘extremism’ slur

Chabad rabbis have been given security training in the wake of “disgraceful slurs” republished online by former Bristol university professor David Miller.

The political sociology professor, who was sacked from Bristol University amid claims he incited hatred against Jewish students, has republished on Twitter segments of a show aired on Iranian Press TV that calls Chabad a “supremacist organisation at the extreme end of the settler movement”.

The segment also claimed that Russian Chabadniks in 1777 were the original Zionist settlers.

The programme, Palestine Declassified, was launched in February and exists to “investigate the Israeli regime’s global war against solidarity with the illegally occupied people of Palestine”.

Miller works as a producer on the show, and has featured on the programme alongside its host, the former Labour MP Chris Williamson who was suspended from the party over accusations of antisemitism, and Electronic Intifada blogger Asa Winstanley.

In an early Palestine Declassified episode, it was claimed Chabad runs a children’s group called the Army Of Hashem, which “is dedicated to waging war against non-Judaism”.

The Community Security Trust called the comments about Chabad “disgraceful slurs” and has run security briefings for the movement’s rabbis in the UK.

Dave Rich, CST’s director of policy, said: “The episode of Palestine Declassified that focused on Chabad was full of disgraceful slurs and we felt it risked encouraging antisemitism or other hostile attention towards Chabad, so we held a tailored session for Chabad rabbis regarding their own security and that of their communities.

“This is something we often do for a range of communal bodies on a precautionary basis and was not based on any specific threat to Chabad.”