Mick Hartley

From the Sunday Times [£] today:

The student union at York University has become the first in the country to make a public apology and offer a four-figure sum to a Jewish student who complained of anti-semitism.

Zachary Confino, 21, a law student, suffered stress and narrowly missed a first-class degree, after two years of battling with anti-Israeli students at York University.

This week, after the intervention of the universities minister, Jo Johnson, he will accept a written apology from the university’s student union over his treatment.

The apology, brokered by the university’s registrar, will be published online and Confino will receive a sum understood to be at least £1,000.

Ephraim Mirvis, the chief rabbi, who warned earlier this year that “British universities are turning a blind eye to Jew hatred” and that the Labour party had a “severe problem” with anti-semitism, said he hoped the apology would send a strong message to other universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, where Jewish students have allegedly been made to feel uncomfortable.

“This apology is most welcome, not only in the context of the case of Zachary Confino but also for the clear message that it sends to other universities that there must be absolutely no place for anti-semitism on our campuses,” said his spokesman.

Confino was trolled on the social media app Yik Yak, where one anonymous user wrote: “Hitler was onto something”. He was called “a Jewish prick” and an “Israeli twat”. When he tried to oppose a student union motion to boycott Israeli goods he was told that it was his own fault that he was getting anti-semitic abuse because he supported Israel.

While leafleting against the staging of the play Seven Jewish Children at the university by the Palestine Solidarity Society, he says he was confronted by three members of the society, including Tom Corbyn, son of the Labour leader, an engineering student. Tom Corbyn has not commented.

Ha! A chip off the old block.

In an apology to Confino to be made public this week, the student union accepts he suffered “very distressing experiences” and said it wanted to learn lessons “in terms of sensitivity to anti-semitism”.

The university said it was committed “to preserving the right to freedom of expression while also combating anti-semitism, Islamophobia and any other form of race hate. To this end, we have signed joint statements with both the Jewish Society and the Islamic Society on campus.”

It's strange that they should include "Islamophobia" here – as though they're unable simply to denounce anti-semitism on its own. As though the Jews can't be seen to be the only victims. That would never do.

It's just like the Labour Party inquiry under Shami Chakrabarti, which was originally set up to look at anti-semitism, but then had its remit widened to include racism in general:

The inquiry, which will report in two months [this is dated end of April], will set out "clear and transparent" rules on how the party should deal with allegations of racism and anti-Semitism and propose training programmes for parliamentary candidates, MPs and councillors….

Mr Corbyn said Labour was an anti-racist party "to its core", and the Jewish community had been at the heart of the Labour party and progressive politics in Britain for more than 100 years.

"There is no place for anti-Semitism or any form of racism in the Labour party, or anywhere in society, and we will make sure that our party is a welcoming home to members of all communities," he said.

Formulating it like that makes it easy to deny that there's any problem, because of course we're all against racism here: as though anti-semitism was just one among many variants of racism. It's not, though: it's a completely different beast. In fact, as John-Paul Pagano argues, it's almost 180 degrees off from what's normally construed as racism – which is why so many on the left are able to dismiss claims of anti-semitism so glibly: because of "white privilege", the Palestinians, etc. etc..

All of which suggests that they – the York Student Union, and the Labour Party – still don't really get it. 

But yes, it's something, this apology. It's a start.