UK government facing legal challenge over IHRA antisemitism definition in schools
Oscar Rickett reports in Middle East Eye on 4 November 2026:
The British government is being challenged legally over its recommendation for schools to adopt the contested IHRA definition of antisemitism.
The Good Law Project launched a legal challenge against the government on Monday. The group’s executive director Jo Maugham told Middle East Eye he was worried that “rules which conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism… could be among the drivers of antisemitism”.
“Antisemitism and the rise of antisemitism in Britain and around the world are very real things, and I want to say to British Jews who are at the sharp end, I hear your pain,” Maugham said. “But I also worry – and it’s a point I’ve made many times – that rules which conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism, and that unjustifiably constrain the freedom properly and vigorously to criticise Israel, could be amongst the drivers of antisemitism.”
The UK Department of Education’s move to encourage schools to adopt the IHRA definition follows the recommendation made in British education official and academic David Bell’s recently published report on antisemitism in the country’s schools and colleges.
The Bell report has been questioned for misrepresenting its findings, equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism, and surveying small numbers of students from a narrow age bracket.
The controversy surrounding the IHRA’s working definition of antisemitism, which was originally formulated in 2004 as a non-legally binding tool to assist in monitoring antisemitism, comes mainly from the fact that seven of its 11 “illustrations” of antisemitism include references to Israel.
The definition’s lead author, Kenneth Stern, has warned against its use as a disciplinary or legal instrument, arguing that it may risk restricting legitimate political expression.
In 2018, leading human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson issued a legal opinion stating that the definition is “likely in practice to chill free speech” by encouraging complaints against legitimate criticism of Israel.
The British Jewish group Na’amod, which also opposes the imposition of the IHRA definition, told MEE: “Jewish pupils should be safe at school, and antisemitism has to be taken seriously. The IHRA definition doesn’t do that job.” “Its examples run criticism of Israel together with hatred of Jews, and in universities it has overwhelmingly been used to censor speech about Israel rather than to protect Jews,” a spokesperson for the group added.
“In schools, that leaves teachers policing children who talk about Gaza or the Nakba, instead of tackling real anti-Jewish racism. It also fails Jewish pupils, many of whom don’t tie their Jewishness to support for the Israeli state.”
The Bell review
The IHRA definition has been formally adopted by 47 countries. Its adoption in British schools was one of 27 recommendations made in the Bell review. Following its publication on 21 October, it was widely reported that “three in five” Jewish students had experienced antisemitism in English schools.
This figure came from a survey of 5,000 students, 92 of whom were Jews, aged between 16 and 18. Seventy of those students responded to a question about whether they had personally experienced or witnessed antisemitism, with 29 of them – 41 percent, or around “two in five” rather than “three in five” – saying they had.