On the 7th of October, there were more Jews slaughtered in cold blood in one day than any day since the Holocaust. Palestinian terrorists and their supporters kidnapped Jewish babies, burnt them alive, ripped them from their mother’s wombs, and cooked one in an oven. After women were raped, entire families were murdered in their homes while terrorists burnt their houses to the ground, Hamas emphatically promised to repeat these crimes. Shockingly, not only has there been little condemnation of these acts internationally, but many have either called for these atrocities to continue or denied them outright.
Since the attack, antisemitic hate crimes in the UK have recorded the highest increases. The radicalism of pro-Palestinian rhetoric has created a dangerous campus environment which is indicative of broader institutional failure within UK higher education. Universities have become arenas for people to spew antisemitic hatred under the guise of academic freedom or “moral” virtue without consequence. It is undeniable that Jewish students are routinely targeted in universities.
The double standards exercised towards Jewish students, considering this vicious terror attack, present the underlying antisemitism that exists within academic institutions across the UK. This has created an increasingly hostile environment on our campuses, which has subjected Jewish and Zionist students to fear, exclusion, and expressions of antisemitism.
The moral hypocrisy of caring for Muslim lives only when Jews can be accused of murdering them is represented in many of the wars that have been ongoing in the Arab and Muslim states globally.
When hundreds of thousands of Muslims are murdered en masse in countries like Syria, Yemen and Myanmar, campuses across London were empty. There is only one explanation for this, and that is antisemitism.
When Russia went to war with Ukraine, my university – Exeter – did not hesitate to release three strongly worded statements declaring their support for Ukrainian students. They did not consider the feelings of any of the hundreds of Russian students studying on their campuses. And yet, two months after the massacre of Jews, as of writing this piece, my school’s administration has not published a single statement acknowledging the suffering of their Jewish or Zionist students or a gesture of solidarity for the pain of the Jewish community, let alone one that condemns Hamas for their brutality. Considering that Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK, this shouldn’t have been difficult to do.
Instead, Exeter has allowed antisemitic students to spread social media posts openly supporting the perpetrators of the attack. This is not surprising since an academic at the university can openly state that he doesn’t think Hamas is a terrorist organisation without consequence. As a reminder, the Al-Qassam Brigades, a military wing of the terror group Hamas, were one of the groups responsible for slaughtering over 1400 Jews.
As Jewish students witness calls for a global “intifada,” academics across the political spectrum, including disgraced historian Ilan Pappe, are actively suggesting that Hamas is not a terrorist organisation. Slogans such as “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free,” – an explicit call for another exclusionary Arab ethno-state in place of the world’s only Jewish state. Had such unwavering calls of violence and hate been chanted for any other community in 21st-century London, the UK would be outraged.
Universities across the UK are debating whether it would be damaging to condemn a terrorist organisation. This is outrageous. My friends and I are scared to express our beliefs in fear of being attacked. Our bigoted peers have been allowed to chant blood libels and death threats at Jewish students. While Exeter has promised its Jewish students that they will increase protection and monitoring on campus, the need for such initiatives in 2023 is absolutely shocking.
Recently, I was denied the so-called “equal” opportunity to speak in my campus paper. Apparently, publishing pro-Israel content conflicts with their desire to appear “neutral”, but letters calling for a ceasefire and articles that uncritically quote Al Jazeera – the Qatari state-owned, pro-Hamas media organisation – are perfectly acceptable. It seems that equality is only a right upheld for those who do not hold pro-Israel views.
One way that these immoral beliefs have gained credibility is through tokenism. This is when anti-Israel activists attempt to justify their hate for Israel and their antisemitic double standards by suggesting that a small minority of Jews who agree with them are legitimate representatives of the Jewish community. To them, everyone else (the majority of Jews in the world) is not only wrong but is evil.
This is done to try and weaken the widely accepted claim that a deep connection to Israel is inherent to Jewish identity. Prime examples of this are when these activists support fringe groups like Independent Jewish Voices (UK) and U.S-based Jewish Voice for Peace, who recite the Jewish mourning prayers for Hamas, or the extremist Neturei Karta, who attend events promoting Holocaust denial in Iran.
Hannah Arendt described this political mechanism as the “ticket of admission” into society, and it is correctly identified as an expression of bigotry when used in relation to every other vulnerable minority. It’s been 70 years since Arendt wrote this, and yet Jews still have to ensure that we don’t “disappoint” the society that stubbornly continues to label us as inherently evil.
It is only a matter of time before things escalate into antisemitic violence across Britain.
We are already witnessing this. In a report dated 20th October 2023, the Metropolitan Police noted a 1,350 percent increase in antisemitic incidents following the October 7th Hamas massacre and Israel’s response to defend its citizens from those who promise to commit an attack worse than October 7th.
The fear among British Jews in every aspect of society, including work and university, presents that Jews no longer feel protected within society; if nothing is done, then violence and antisemitism will only increase, getting much more brutal. Those who have been silent when Jews once again had atrocious attacks perpetrated against them lead me to wonder which vulnerable minority will be victimised next.
For those who think that only Jews are in danger, these same activists raise black flags with Islamic scripture in our streets. These not only signify the recent events of Hamas but also glorify the many atrocities committed against other minorities in the name of Islamic Jihad. It should go without saying that the hordes supporting ISIS and their genocide of the Kurdish Yazidi people or the Hizb ut-Tahrir, who exploit the pain of their own communities to impose hate ideology, pose a very real danger to all UK citizens.
Is it not disgraceful that Jewish students across the UK have endured calls for violence and justifications of terrorism? Is it not disgraceful that they are encouraged to hide their identity in fear of their safety?
Members of the generation that survived the atrocities of the Nazis have now been kidnapped and taken into Gaza by Palestinian terrorists. Is this what the world meant by never again?
Ultimately, the Jewish community knows that those who take to the streets every Saturday are not the majority in this country- but in the words of Ellie Wiesel, neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Unfortunately, it seems as though a significant portion of Britain has chosen to do exactly that.
An abridged version of this article was published in the Algemeiner.