The pro-Israel lobby is colonising British academia with one smear campaign after another
Students campaigning for Manchester to divest from Caterpillar in 2018
Anjuman Rahman writes in Middle East Monitor:
Pro-Israel groups and lawmakers are orchestrating a politically motivated smear campaign against the recently elected President of the National Union of Students (NUS), Shaima Dallali. As part of this campaign, aggressive Zionist groups, including the Union of Jewish Students (UJS), published an open letter expressing concern about a social media post that the 26 year old wrote more than ten years ago. It has been seen as a desperate attempt to prevent Dallali from remaining in office.
The post in question made reference to a battle that took place in the early 7th century between Muslims and the Jewish inhabitants of Khaybar, an oasis in the Arabian Peninsula. It suggested that the “army of Muhammad” will return to Gaza.
Such a campaign against anyone remotely pro-Palestinian is nothing new. Dallali is simply the latest victim in a decades-long effort by the Israeli state to harass, smear and threaten pro-Palestinian academics and officials. Similar tactics, for example, were used to unseat the first black Muslim female NUS President, Malia Bouattia, a long-time vocal supporter of Palestinian rights.
The UJS covers 64 Jewish societies at British universities. The union was exposed by Al Jazeera’s ‘Investigative Unit’ for not only receiving money from the Israeli Embassy in London, but also attempting to influence the NUS presidency election to remove Bouattia for her solidarity with the Palestinians and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.