Mick Hartley

Joan Smith at UnHerd:

Students at the London School of Economics (LSE) have tried to cancel a private meeting to discuss sexual violence committed by Hamas during the October 7 attacks of 2023. The event went ahead last night with a heavy police presence as pro-Palestinian protesters chanted anti-Israel slogans outside the building. Inside, an Israeli lawyer spoke about the problem of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) in several countries where women have been targeted by mass rape and other kinds of sexual assault.

Notably, one of the organisations calling for the meeting to be cancelled was a feminist society at the university. In an “open letter to LSE management”, they demanded that the “egregious” event shouldn’t be allowed to go ahead, claiming that it ignored “concerns expressed by experts and LSE staff”.

A feminist society protesting a meeting about mass rape? Remarkable. Egregious, even. But the women raped were Jews, and the men doing the raping were Palestinians. That makes all the difference for our brave LSE feminists.

When it became clear that the meeting would take place as scheduled, an “emergency rally” was planned outside the venue. “Zionists off our campus,” a flyer proclaimed. “No platform for genocide apologists”. This is not a one-off: women with legitimate and long-standing concerns about sexual violence are suddenly finding themselves labelled as supporting “genocide” for demanding justice for victims who happen to be Israeli.

“Absolutely horrifying to see this attempt to shut down an event at LSE about 7th October sexual violence,” Professor Alice Sullivan of UCL responded on X. “I can only imagine how Jewish colleagues and students must feel about the unhinged levels of antisemitism we are seeing on campus.”

We’ve seen some horrendous antisemitism across UK universities over the past couple of years since October 7th, but still, this is something else.

Rape denial is common, but trying to prevent students in the UK attending a private discussion of sexual violence in conflict is a new low. Such behaviour is a travesty of the universal ideals of feminism.