Mick Hartley

Following on from the US students in Tablet on their campus experiences since Oct 7th, here are some testimonies from the UK collected by Eliana Silver in the JC:

Anonymous, University of Leeds:

“It began very shortly after October 7. The most notable incident was the ‘Free Palestine’ graffiti that appeared on the Hillel campus building. A friend of mine had a swastika projected on his car.

“The Jewish chaplain returning from IDF service was forced into hiding due to death threats made toward him and his family. I was told countless times that October 7 was justified.

“When a group of us set up a stall outside the uni with Israeli flags promoting Jewish identity, a pair of girls approached the stall and yanked the flag, scattering our equipment across the floor.

“More recently the words ‘Israel harvests Palestinian organs’ were written in chalk across the ground on campus, an obvious lie and libel against the world's only Jewish state. There are continuous calls for intifada revolution on campus.”

​​​​​​Anonymous, Goldsmiths, University of London:

“There are no safe spaces on campus. Even the cafés are occupied. One of the galleries was donated by a Jewish donor and they covered his name up.

“My supervisors have posted antisemitic tweets and when I mentioned that I felt unsafe, my supervisor brushed it off and told me to read the work of a US academic known for their strong anti-Israel views.

“There is no breathing room or escape. Only one narrative is acceptable.”

Anonymous, University of Exeter:

"It’s been very difficult. A member of staff said during a webinar that Israeli women weren’t raped on October 7 because they were inherently the oppressor so could not be a victim. I was also denied the right to write in our campus paper about October 7, despite pro-Palestinian pieces being on the front page every week.

“Me and other students were surrounded and harassed by hundreds of people at our stall on campus. They claimed we were responsible for their families dying and that we weren’t real Jews. The university took no action.” 

Harry, University of Oxford:

“My great-uncles were tied to train tracks in Egypt before being expelled. Israel was their only sanctuary. My great-grandmother was born in Jerusalem. Yet there’s no room for narratives like these in Oxford. Rather, the myopic focus is on Israel as a uniquely European project.

“Even soon after October 7, I heard people say, ‘We only let them [Jews/Israelis] get away with it because of what happened during the war, meaning the Holocaust.’

“The mentality of the encampment is to sideline opposing views as mere political disagreements. For them, the allegation of genocide is enough for it to be real. For me, my lived experience of antisemitism is erased.”

The number of students unwilling to give their names tells its own story.