Jews face real racism, but activists are blind to it

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I spent part of the last week at a conference organized by The Equiano Project, named after 18th-century freed slave Olaudah Equiano. The conference focused on the state of racism and anti-racism in Britain and the United States. The speakers, mostly African American, British West Indian and Afro-British, were excellent and the discussion was enlightening.

Jews were noticeably absent from conference themes and panels. In a sense, a conference on race, and the continuation of what has become a counterproductive and often actively harmful anti-racist movement, need not be about Jews. Given that elite interest in ending anti-Semitism is limited, it is perhaps unsurprising that Jews fall outside the scope of the conference’s core jurisdiction.

In fact, what is clear is that anti-Semitism enjoys surprisingly weak opposition in the places most determined to eradicate racism: universities. A landmark survey of anti-Semitism within the National Union of Students (NUS) released last week, the eighth since 2005, found the NUS to be a downright hostile environment for Jews.

Rebecca Tuck KC offered extensive testimonials from Jewish students who said they were treated as outcasts at NUS events responsible for Israel, tasked with exposing all anti-Semitism, seen as representing every Jew in the student body, and stripped of all another feature.

The anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian biases in the NUS mean that while far-right anti-Semitism attracts attention, there is a deliberate refusal to engage in the tsunami of anti-Jewish language coming from the left that is the predominant form currently on campus.

This latest report was announced last year following anti-Semitic posts by former NUS Chairman Shaima Dallali and the then-NUS Chairman’s helpful suggestion that if they did not like, Jewish students could walk away from a performance by rapper Lowkey, who defines Zionism as ethnic cleansing and colonialism.

Anti-black racism rightly receives a lot of attention. But perhaps it’s time to understand where Jews fit into the picture because, as the Tuck Report makes clear, our struggles are just as real as those faced by other minorities.

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