Mick Hartley

We heard yesterday about the new NUS president and her history of antisemitism. According to Jake Wallis Simons it's not just a problem in universities: it's there in schools too:

My children have never felt the need to hide their Jewishness. That’s the heart of it, I suppose. A few months ago, a boy picked up his books and declared, 'I’m not sitting next to the Jewish girl', before moving to another seat.

When she told me about it, my daughter, who is 14, said the kid had just been seeking attention. It was a one-off, she said. She didn’t want me to contact the school. So I decided to let it go; the lesson for her, perhaps, was that this stuff happens in life.

Thinking about it, it had happened once before, a few years ago. It was Chanukah, and my son had decided to wear his kippah to school. He was only seven or eight at the time. In the playground, a kid had said: 'You’re a Jew. I hate Jews.'

It was alarming at the time. But I had thought that they were isolated incidents. My kids brushed them off. Last night, however, in a conversation with my son, I was shocked to discover that they were only the tip of the iceberg.

These days, apparently, a favourite school trick is to ask my 12-year-old son if he’s 'a Jew'. When he nods, the kids reply, 'heil Hitler'. It happens about three times a week, my son told me. Sometimes they simply ask, 'is your sister a Jew?' and laugh. Or they hoot, 'Jew, Jew, Jew,' when they see my kids in the corridor.

The school has a problem with swastikas. People think it’s funny to scratch them into tables and walls, and the teachers don’t do anything about it. There was a craze recently to draw a swastika on your hand in chalk and slap somebody on the back, so the imprint is left on their blazer.

Now, this isn’t an inner city comprehensive. It’s a state school in Hampshire that is consistently praised by Ofsted and gets good results. The behaviour is generally good, and the children are largely middle-class. These days, you couldn’t hope for a better education without paying for it.

Which is partly why it came as such a surprise. My children seem to think it’s more about idiocy than malice. When my son objects to the taunts, the other kids respond, 'relax, it’s only dark humour'. They just think it’s all a bit of a laugh. Maybe they needed an assembly, I said. Some education. Maybe a visit from a Holocaust survivor. My son smiled ruefully and shook his head….

Latest figures reveal that anti-Semitism is soaring in Britain. February’s Community Security Trust (CST) report shows that anti-Jewish hate crime hit an all-time high last year. The total level of incidents rose by 34 per cent to 2,255, the highest ever recorded. Jew-hate incidents were reported to every single police force bar one.

The problem is particularly bad in education. Perhaps it is the dominance of 'woke' ideology, which seems to carry a dim view of Jews. Latest statistics from the CST disclose that anti-Semitism on campus rose by 59 per cent last year, reaching record levels….

When speaking to my son, I asked him if the kids behaved this way towards other minorities at school. Black children, for example. His eyes widened. 'Of course not,' he said, a note of irony in his voice. 'That would be racist.'

Yep. Jews don't count.