{"id":1221,"date":"2017-05-08T04:46:47","date_gmt":"2017-05-08T08:46:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cameraoncampus.org\/blog\/?p=9358"},"modified":"2017-12-06T14:05:02","modified_gmt":"2017-12-06T14:05:02","slug":"opportunities-for-change-at-nus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cameraoncampus.org\/he\/blog\/opportunities-for-change-at-nus\/","title":{"rendered":"Opportunities for Change at NUS"},"content":{"rendered":"
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CAMERA Fellow Shlomo Roiter<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The National Union of Students (NUS) has received protracted criticism for its approach towards antisemitism. This issue reared its head once again last month, when tweets from Ali Milani, the NUS\u2019s newly elected vice president, surfaced. From 2012 and 2013, these tweets are overtly antisemitic in nature.<\/p>\n

In one post, he criticises a person for being stingy, writing: \u201cNah u won\u2019t mate. It\u2019ll cost you a pound”, ending with the hashtag “#jew”.<\/p>\n

In a tweet to Piers Morgan, he wrote, \u201cU are a zionist and a corperate [sic] jackass.\u201d In an additional string of tweets about Israeli-US relations and the Israel-Palestine conflict, Mr Milani commented: \u201cIsrael has no right to exist\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mr Milani, the president of the Brunel University student union, is a big supporter of former NUS president Malia Bouattia, who has similarly been accused of making antisemitic statements,<\/a> suggesting that the University of Birmingham was \u201csomething of a Zionist outpost\u201d and negatively commenting about \u201cZionist-led media outlets\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Malia Bouattia has made some outrageous comments about Jews and Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This story directly follows a troubling internal report<\/a> commissioned by the NUS, released in February of this year, which found that Ms Bouattia should face no disciplinary action, although her statements \u201ccould be reasonably capable of being interpreted as antisemitic\u201d.<\/p>\n

In an environment where statistics have shown a doubling of campus antisemitic incidents, one would expect the body tasked with representing students to take the issue of antisemitic statements made by candidates for its leadership positions a little bit more seriously.<\/p>\n

The fact that they were even allowed to vie for these prestigious positions is beyond comprehension. When, according to recent statistics gathered in an NUS survey<\/a>, 65 per cent of Jewish students do not believe that the NUS would \u201crespond appropriately\u201d to allegations of antisemitism, one would think that the NUS would be interested in both finding out why this is the case as well as how this can be remedied.<\/p>\n

This is especially concerning when the NUS\u2019 own report indicates that fewer than half (49 per cent) of Jewish students said they would feel comfortable attending union events.<\/p>\n

These statistics should not surprise anyone when an organisation purporting to represent all students allows individuals such as Ms Bouattia and Mr Milani to hold or even run for leadership positions\u200b.<\/p>\n

The defeat of Ms Bouattia in the recent NUS election<\/a> is a welcome development, signalling what many Jewish students hope is a change in the institutional approach to antisemitism.<\/p>\n

Her defeat should be seen as an important unequivocal message by NUS student delegates to the union leadership that antisemitism in indeed an unacceptable phenomenon which they refuse to stand for.<\/p>\n

The NUS report on the experience of Jewish students on campus refused to draw a direct line between the anti-Zionist bigotry of the far left and antisemitic incidents such as the riot at Kings College London in January 2016.<\/a><\/p>\n