Safeguarding Zionist fragility on British campuses
An antisemitism awareness training session organized by the Union of Jewish Students
Shaida Nabi reports in Mondoweiss:
In the context of mounting protests for a ceasefire across British campuses, we have seen a growing media and establishment discourse that correlates Palestinian protest, slogans, and symbols with risks to Jewish safety. On campuses, it has become salient, upheld, and projected by a Zionist cohort that centers its fears of intimidation, where Zionist discomfort is substituted for antisemitism if not a prelude to antisemitism and referenced interchangeably as one and the same. Likewise, governmental officials have iterated that UJS students (Union of Jewish Students) are being “made to feel unsafe on campus because of their faith.”
The perversity of the present genocidal moment is such that whilst words/motifs have become the source of angst for Zionists in Britain, in Palestine, and for those bearing witness, their trauma is the loss of limbs, parents, mass executions, displacement, white phosphorous, homelessness, and starvation. It is a genocide that has targeted all of Gaza’s four universities (90) and left numerous leading academics and students dead. For perspective, as Professor Awartani, president of the Palestine Academy for Science and Technology, put it, “The priority isn’t science — the priority is staying alive.” That was in early November. One of the last standing universities in Gaza was obliterated today.
Nonetheless, amplified calls for the “safety and protection of Jews,” notably Zionist groups on campuses, have been matched with unprecedented action from the establishment, including the Prime Minister himself. The British Department for Education’s website, for example, published a five-point plan on how it was “protecting Jewish students on campus,” noting disciplinary measures and a multi-million-pound pledge to tackle antisemitism.