The European Court of Human Rights is facing demands to reexamine cases involving Jewish individuals after its longest-serving judge was revealed to have
shared extreme antisemitic content on social media.
Bostjan Zupancic, who worked at the court for 17 years until 2016, has distributed claims that label Jews as “the central enemies of Western civilization”, along with the familiar hook-nosed caricatures frequently found in neo-Nazi propaganda.
The former ECHR judge presided over numerous hearings that directly impacted Jewish communities, including cases concerning kosher abattoirs and the restitution of property owned by German Jews.
Zupancic, who also held the position of Vice President of the UN Committee Against Torture, posted claims asserting that Jews were responsible for “introducing… various sexual perversions… sadism, masochism, and extensive homosexuality” before the Nazis came to power. He also shared a link to a YouTube video that purportedly exposed the “rise of the Rothschild banking mafia”.
Additionally, he propagated the notion that the “Jewish war on white people is the reason behind the Western world’s arson, and unless we acknowledge Jewish power as the cancer, there is no hope for the white race”.
Lord Carlile KC, former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, stated: “It’s deeply regrettable that this judge has abandoned the human rights principles he must have deemed significant. I urge the current court and member states such as the UK to disassociate from Zupancic’s statements. Furthermore, I suggest a review of the cases he was involved in to ensure that his current expressions of opinion did not influence his judgments.”
Jonathan Turner, Chief Executive of UK Lawyers for Israel, echoed these sentiments, stating that his organization was examining “whether any judgments of the European Court of Human Rights in which Bostjan Zupancic participated should be reconsidered”.
Following his departure from the ECHR in 2016, Zupancic joined the European Centre of Law and Justice (ECLJ), a prominent conservative human rights think tank. It holds a special status that permits it to submit reports to the UN and the ECHR.
This week, the ECLJ announced his removal from his position in light of the revelations.
On Tuesday, Zupancic was temporarily suspended from his account on the social media platform X, previously known as Twitter, due to his posts allegedly violating their rules on hateful conduct.
Zupancic has also shared criticism of Covid-19 vaccines, expressed support for Vladimir Putin, and disseminated statements made by the Russian president’s chief ideologue, Aleksandr Dugin.
His recent antisemitic posts, shared on both X and LinkedIn, were uncovered by the GnasherJew digital investigative team.
In August of the previous year, he posted an article titled “Khazarian Mafia’s system of cartels to subjugate the entire planet”. The claim that Europe’s Jewish population descended from Khazar Cossacks is a well-known antisemitic trope.
Zupancic’s frequency and extremity of antisemitic posts increased in 2023. His posts included claims that the “Jewish Chabad” devised a plan in 1994 to “exterminate Slavs” through a Russo-Ukraine war. He also shared an article that declared “Jews are the central enemies of Western civilization, but far too many self-proclaimed defenders of the West are still blind to the enemy within the gates”.
Even prior to his tenure at the ECHR, Zupancic, aged 76, had a distinguished career. Educated in Slovenia and at Harvard Law School, he began as an academic lawyer, initially as a research scholar and later at institutions such as Montreal, Zagreb, and Cambridge.
He has lectured at universities worldwide and authored numerous books and academic articles.
Cases related to Jewish matters at the human rights court in Strasbourg, which Zupancic was involved in as a judge, included considerations of kosher abattoirs in France, property restitution for German Jews, an advertising campaign by the Peta animal rights group that likened their treatment to that of Jews under the Nazis, and whether French comedian Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala had the right to express antisemitic views on stage.
Reportedly, Zupancic acquired dual French citizenship in 2014 and became an associate fellow of the ECLJ in 2020. Photo by Institute for Cultural Diplomacy, Wikimedia commons.