The Jewish academics living in fear of anti-Semitic hate mobs Pro-Palestine activists are forcing staff to hide in their homes – and the silence from university authorities is deafening
Rosa Freedman, professor of law at Reading University, says campus attitudes to October 7 mark a disturbing new reality – Jeff Gilbert
The atmosphere on the cold autumn night was febrile.
The noise could be heard from around the corner. Around 100 students – most wearing keffiyehs and masks – were angrily chanting “Zionists off our campus!”. The hatred crackled in the air outside one of the UK’s most prestigious universities.
The London School of Economics (LSE) event on October 16 – a discussion about sexual violence committed during the October 7 attacks (and other wars), led by Israeli academic Ruth Halperin-Kaddari – was the source of the fury. Within minutes of the venue being announced – for safety reasons, just a few hours before the talk began – an online call for an “emergency rally” spread rapidly across the university. Even the Feminist Society joined in the push.
The peace plan between Israel and Hamas had been signed a week earlier, yet the protests continued – as they have at universities across the capital and the country – targeting both Jewish students and academics, many of whom say they no longer feel able to take part in university life.
LSE students held an ‘emergency rally’ demanding ‘Zionists off our campus’ before an Israeli academic’s lecture
At City St George’s, part of the University of London, Michael Ben-Gad, an Israeli economics professor, has been targeted for having once served in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), a conscript army. The activist group City Action for Palestine described him as a terrorist and declared that it “will not allow evil to roam free on our campus”. Last week, activists stormed his lecture theatre, with one protester allegedly threatening to behead him.
Also in London, Samuel Williams, a final-year politics, philosophy and economics student at Oxford, was arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred after chanting “Put the Zios in the ground”. His words have since been adopted by other activists. Pro-Palestine organisations at Leeds, Cardiff and Queen Mary universities shared digital posters using the same slogan, several of which included images of guns, on Instagram.
Representatives of Jewish students and academics say that the tolerance of anti-Israel protests since the October 7 attacks has emboldened activists, some of whom have marked the recent two-year anniversary with celebrations.
“No matter what people think of Guantanamo Bay or the ‘war on terror’, you would not have seen 9/11 celebrations on campuses around the country two years after the event,” says Rosa Freedman, professor of law at the University of Reading and director of the Jewish academic staff network, the Intra-Communal Professorial Group (ICPG).
Hannah Holtschneider, a professor of contemporary Jewish cultural history at the University of Edinburgh, claims the university “is making no effort whatsoever to create a safe space for Jews. There are always reasons not to act, reasons that demonstrate that there is, in fact, no understanding of the violence of the experience of being Jewish at this time. Calls to violence such as ‘Join the student intifada’ are consistently downplayed as not meaning what they clearly and literally mean.”
Holtschneider says she has not been targeted by her own students but describes a lack of support from both colleagues and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) officers. She adds that while EDI officers regularly circulate greetings for Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Sikh festivals, Jewish festivals are ignored. When she asked for them to be included, she says, “I was told that Jews could only be mentioned when marking a religious festival that makes no reference to the land of Israel – which possibly leaves one, a minor festival called Purim. They love to go on about how inclusive they are but they are not inclusive when it comes to Jews.”
A University of Edinburgh spokesperson said: “The School of Divinity has a strong EDI commitment to support all religious traditions, including Judaism. In a learning community, education is always about overcoming discrimination and raising awareness together to build a fully inclusive community. We support the diversity of religious traditions, faiths and non-faiths. The School has a long-standing tradition of supporting Jewish studies alongside the teaching of all other religious beliefs.”
Meanwhile, at Newcastle University, colleagues from the University and College Union (UCU) led a demonstration celebrating October 7, according to an Israeli academic at the university.
“There was a large event organised by Newcastle UCU,” she says. “I just stayed home that day. I didn’t want to see my colleagues in keffiyehs. They completely ignored the ceasefire – they’re obsessed with this idea of the ‘liberation of Palestine’. When I complained about the [pro-Palestine] encampments last year, I was told I was free not to come in, but then I feel like I’m hiding from it.
“My grandparents were Holocaust survivors, and I feel an element of what they must have felt – that anti-Semitism has become normalised, institutionalised. I moved to the UK from Israel 12 years ago because I felt it was a safe country, that I would be protected. But now I’m called ‘baby killer’ and I don’t feel safe. The people I would turn to to keep me safe – such as my union – are the ones I feel most in danger from. When I complain to the university, they say they don’t know who is responsible. But it’s not difficult to identify them.”
At the University of Glasgow, a group of activists from the Glasgow University Justice for Palestine Society (GUJPS) last month launched a magazine called The Gaza Guardian, that told its readers “it is time to join the student intifada” and featured an article entitled “The necessity of armed resistance”.
The group said its event on October 7 was held to “honour our beloved resistance and martyrs”, adding: “We celebrate the glorious Al-Aqsa Flood” – the name used by Hamas for its October 7 attack. The GUJPS did not respond to The Telegraph’s request for comment.
One Glasgow University academic says life has become increasingly difficult for Jewish staff and students on campus, particularly because of the activities of GUJPS.
“We don’t know who they are or who their leaders are. They are normally masked and chant slogans like ‘Zionists off campus’. On the whole, it has created an atmosphere in which it is difficult to be openly Jewish. It shouldn’t simply be accepted that our Jewish students need security just to hold a bagel lunch.
“I am openly Jewish and have not been targeted, but when people are holding placards and shouting ‘Zionists off our campus’, you can’t help but feel they mean you. While I do have some sympathy for the administration, given how difficult this is to manage, for many of us it is clearly anti-Semitism.”
Pro-Palestine groups at several universities shared posts saying ‘Put the Zios in the ground’, some featuring images of guns
Glasgow University said it had written to the unaffiliated student group demanding that it remove its social media posts, and had issued a statement condemning such celebrations of violence. “We will do everything we can to ensure that all members of the community are protected and will not hesitate to take action against identified individuals who break the Student Code of Conduct,” the university said.
Freedman says: “The activists see the silence surrounding what they are doing as support for it. There is silence because there is fear – no one wants to be the next target of this horror mob.”
After she attended the LSE talk, she says, her employer received dozens of complaints and comments such as: “How dare this arch Zio be teaching our children?”
Prof David Hirsh, a sociologist at Goldsmiths, University of London, and founder of the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, says that the current tolerance of anti-Semitism is part of a deeper process of delegitimising Western values that pervades academia.
“We have these students from all over the world coming to study in Europe and America, and the first thing they are taught is that democracy is fake – a sham put on by imperialist countries,” he says. “If they come to university with certain views about Jews, they are reinforced in those views because if Jews are committing a genocide then they are Nazis. And who wants to have Nazis on their campuses?”
The Department for Education said: “The Government is stamping out anti-Semitism in all education settings and has provided £7m in funding for this purpose. Within weeks, the Union of Jewish Students will begin delivering 600 Government-funded training sessions to help university staff support students, identify harassment and hate and facilitate open, respectful debate.”
A University of Edinburgh spokesperson said: “The welfare of our community is an utmost priority and we continue to listen to our students to identify ways to improve the Edinburgh experience for everyone. We condemn any harassment in our community in the strongest terms and encourage anyone who has experienced this to report it to the university. Intimidation and discrimination have no place here, and reports are taken extremely seriously.”
A Newcastle University spokesperson said: “We will not tolerate harassment or abuse, and where individuals are identified as having breached our policies or codes of conduct, we will take appropriate action in line with our disciplinary procedures.”
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