Video criticising Campaign Against Antisemitism pulled by JLC

The Jewish Leadership Council has removed a video of its chief executive slamming a survey by grassroots group Campaign Against Anti-Semitism “a”.

The spat revolves around CAA-commission YouGov poll, which Simon Johnson criticised as scaremongering and unrepresentative, because it claimed that a third of British Jews were thinking of leaving the UK over fears of anti-Semitism.

But after voicing his thoughts on his week video blog, Johnson invited a bitter online backlash, with some accusing his criticism as “shameful”. This week a JLC spokesman said: “The JLC’s position on the report has not changed. However, the video was removed in the interest of communal relations.”

The CAA said it polled a “nationally representative sample of British Jews” and that it had taken more than 10,000 responses over three years, but the data for 2017 comes from 2,025 responses in July and August, representing less than one percent of the Jewish population of Britain.

The CAA said that almost one in three British Jews were considering emigrating “due to failures to stop anti-Semitic crime and anti-Semitism in politics”. It also said that a third of British Jews were concealing their Judaism in public.