On Friday, March 3rd, 2023, “Liberate KCL”, a far-left group at the King’s College, London called for a disturbance of a discussion hosted by the KCL Israel Society featuring two members of parliament. The event titled Israel and the House of Commons: Bipartisan Q&A was to take place on campus on March 7th, 2022.
Liberate KCL’s social media posts also openly conflated Zionism with apartheid, a common antisemitic trope.
Aviva Rosenschein, director of community engagement for CAMERA’s Israel office and campus director for Israel and the UK weighs in on the actions of Liberate KCL:
Liberate KCL’s calls to disrupt Israel & the House of Commons: Bipartisan Q&A, an event sponsored by Israel societies at Kings College London, City, University of London, and University College of London featuring MP Steve McCabe and MP Stephen Crabb is an unmistakable attempt to silence Zionist voices and inhibit intellectual discourse. It is shameful that a group would invoke such a libelous trope to condemn an openly bipartisan discussion.
Furthermore, efforts by Liberate KCL, a far-left student group sanctioned by Kings College London to publicly conflate Zionism; the Jewish right to self-determination with white supremacy is further evidence that antisemitism remains a widespread problem in colleges and universities.
Not only is this claim entirely false, but attempts to associate Jews with contemporary evil date back centuries.
This canard was a cornerstone of Nazi and Soviet propaganda that incited societal hostility toward Jews and justified atrocities committed against Jewish people across Europe.