Monday, January 16, 2023
Elder of Ziyon
An independent report was released last week looking at allegations of pervasive antisemitism at the National Union of Students (NUS) in the United Kingdom.
Just as in the UK today, the objects of attack are all Jews - Jews assumed to be guilty by association with Zionism. It is obvious antisemitism.
The antisemitism is closely linked with anti-Zionism, where Jewish students are lightning rods for students' hate against Israel.
As Spiked Online summarizes the report:
Written by barrister Rebecca Tuck, the report depicts an NUS that views anti-Semitism as a second-order problem, the scale of which is exaggerated by Jewish students. Too many NUS leaders seem to believe that anti-Semitism is far less important than other forms of discrimination.Tuck’s report is damning. ‘For at least the last decade’, she argues, ‘Jewish students have not felt welcome or included in NUS spaces or elected roles’. Indeed, many Jewish students feel that the NUS treats them as pariahs. In numerous instances, leading NUS members have consciously downplayed the significance of instances of anti-Jewish hate.Typically, complaints of racism are taken very seriously by the NUS, and in higher education more broadly. The mere hint of racial harassment on campus causes universities to denounce themselves as ‘institutionally racist’. That is, unless the complaint is about an incident of anti-Semitism. Often, the report shows, Jewish students were told that what they saw as anti-Semitism was merely legitimate criticism of Israel. When Jewish students pointed out, to the contrary, that they had been vilified for being Jewish, not their political beliefs, their complaints were downplayed or dismissed.As Tuck persuasively argues, the NUS has persistently deflected these complaints because of its pro-Palestine stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Indeed, in recent years, it has seemed that some leaders of the NUS hold Jewish students answerable for the actions of Israel. This has resulted in an environment that is deeply hostile to Jews.
The offenders always argue back that they are simply pro-Palestinian, not antisemitic (and the Jews should stop being so touchy.)
Once again, history provides us with the answer to that charge.
75 years ago, on January 15, 1948, the Palestine Post had these three small articles on page 3 out of 4.
Yet also just as in the UK today, all of these episodes would have been dismissed by the anti-Zionists of the time as a normal reaction to the evils of Zionism and having nothing to do with Jews as Jews.
From the perspective of 75 years later, no one can seriously argue that the episodes in Mexico, Syria and Beirut were not pure antisemitism. The attackers at the time didn't even to pretend to distinguish Zionists from Jews - only their apologists did that.
But can anyone doubt that the "anti-Zionist" aggression we see today on campus and elsewhere doesn't have the exact same sources, the same motivations and the same mental processes behind them as those in these three articles?
The only thing that has changed in 75 years is that the modern antisemites try to be more careful in their language to avoid explicitly saying that Jews are their target. (The Soviets turned that into a science.) But the vitriol is the same, the boycotts and marginalization are the same, the threats are the same, and the hysterical hate against a minority is the same.
Sadly, the reactions from the authorities in charge (the President of AUB willing to discuss the demands of antisemites as if they had validity) are the same, too.
