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THE HANDSTAND |
AUGUST 2003 |
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Speech delivered by Ben Young, Jewish
Student (Queen Mary and Westfield College) at a meeting
of Jews for Justice for Palestinians in London, 28July 2003 Therefore, in my speech
about academic freedom on campus, I shall be looking at
how the Union of Jewish Students tries to stifle any
discussion about Zionism or Israel/Palestine and how the
progressive organizations and we as progressives have to
counteract that. In looking at the Union of
Jewish Students strategy and tactics, I am going to look
at the national or NUS Conference situation and the local
or individual university one. UJS works on both tracks so
that a stifling of discussion on one can be transferred
to help achieve success on stifling discussion on the
other. It is also important to note the differing tactics
of the UJS in dealing with the Jewish and non-Jewish
student bodies. The National Level The Union of Jewish Students
is a formidable organization, acting more like a
centralised political party than a student society. They
may state that they are not a political organization, but
they act at NUS Conference as if they are one. They say
that they are proud to be Zionists while disavowing the
political nature of Zionism. The financial muscle of the
UJS is awesome compared to any other student society or
indeed the National Union of Students itself. While many
student societies are run on an amateur ‘love of the
sport’ ideal, UJS has the capacity to employ 10
full-time officers. Nationally they operate as a
political faction, spending £10,000 on campaigning on a
two-day conference. That is half of what the whole
National Union of Students spent on non-fees campaigns in
a full year, and we might also compare it with the
£90,000 the NUS spends on all campaigns in a year. Pretty much everything that
the National Union of Students does is a result of
battles and horse-trading between various political
factions, a process that can seem incomprehensible to the
uninformed outsider. Labour students and the Union of
Jewish Students indulge in a bout of horse-trading so
that both parties benefit to a degree far in excess of
their actual support base. UJS lends it block vote to
Labour students to ensure that the National Union of
Students President will always be the Labour candidate.
Hence every NUS President so far has been from that
group, although this year Mandy Telford only won by 3
votes against the Campaign for Free Education (CFE)
candidate. In return, the Union of Jewish Students get
support from Labour for elections to the Conference
Steering Committee and the UJS member of the block of 12
part-time NUS Executive members is given responsibility
for the NUS anti-racism and fascism campaigns. The former
is a very important position in that it dictates what is
and isn’t discussed at Conference, so that the Union
of Jewish Students have control of the basic means of
getting (or blocking in this case) Palestine onto/from
the agenda. By using delaying tactics at
Conference they can ensure that Palestine doesn’t
get discussed if it comes to the top of the emergency
debate ballot as it did in 2002 (during Operation “Defensive
Shield”). This year the Union of Jewish Students
managed to ‘bulldoze’ the agenda by inviting
Shimon Peres to speak at a fringe meeting, a move that
attracted media attention away from any other
discussions. This came at some cost to the Conference, as
due to the excessive security measures demanded and the
demonstrations it occasioned, a full half-day of the main
Conference had to be cancelled (1/6 in total!). Had
this opportunity for debate on Palestine at the national
level materialised, it could have been used by individual
student unions as an example to follow. This illustrates
how the success of the Union of Jewish Students at the
national level helps them to consolidate their campaign
at the local level. With UJS having an executive
role in the anti-racism campaign run by the National
Union of Students, they can advance their own causes,
which may not be so important in the wider context (e.g.
the case of David Irving) compared to the discrimination
faced by asylum seekers, Muslim, Black and Asian
students. The Local Level Locally, Jewish Societies
(or J-Socs) do differ in activities and composition, yet
their autonomy is curtailed by the central UJS
organizations. When Jews for Justice for Palestinians
(JFJFP) organized a tour of Israel refuseniks, the
Leicester Jewish Society invited them to speak. They were
unable to host them however because the central Union of
Jewish Students organization forbade them to invite the
refuseniks. In terms of their approach to non-Jewish
students this can be described as FUD (Fear, uncertainty
and doubt). When dealing with any motion or event that
they deem hostile, J-Socs introduce a spurious religious
aspect to any anti-Occupation motion and declare that if
this motion is passed it will be the cause of a major
upsurge in anti-semitism and the Jewish student body will
be in fear of their safety. This makes non-Jews reluctant
to vote for these motions for fear of being labeled
anti-semitic. Allied to this is the
practice of trying to pass motions labelling anti-Zionism
as a form of racism. Such motions were passed at Surrey
and Liverpool universities. These motions state that
Zionism is merely the expression of self-determination
among the Jews and is separate from the Israeli state,
its government, political parties and actions! The local
Jewish Societies are also very adept at winning
Sabbatical and part-time positions in student unions,
giving them a vantage point on union and society
activities. Here at Queen Mary and Westfield College,
students do have an opportunity to write about Palestine
in the student magazine. This is accompanied by a ‘rebuttal’
by a J-Soc member, which muddies the waters for the
majority of students as in these articles the situation
is always portrayed as a battle between two equal sides.
In this way, unions feel unable to take a strong position
on this issue. If there are any
particularly effective campaigns about the iniquities of
the Israeli government, the occupation. etc. then the
J-Soc can always count on some powerful allies in the
Jewish press (the Jewish Chronicle, London Jewish News,
Jewish Telegraph, etc) and Jewish Communal organizations
in claiming that their community is being attacked by
malign racist forces. A successful Israel-Iraq motion at
QMUL was accompanied by reports in the London Jewish News
of vicious anti-semitism. Needless to say such claims
were pretty unfounded. An anti-checkpoint street theatre
demonstration which had been carefully prepared and whose
organizers had negotiated strict guidelines with the
university administration was met by a provocative
counter-demonstration staged by some members of the
J-Soc. What was particularly abhorrent about this was not
just the offensive slogans they wore on their T-Shirts
(If I were a suicide bomber, you’d be dead by now)
or the fact that they decided to stage this
counter-demonstration at the last moment, but that they
demonstrated with a deliberate aim to provoke anger and
then label it as anti-semitism. This precipitated more
hysterical press reports, which were only partially
redressed, and a visit to the university by the Board of
Jewish Deputies. One can only assume that the workload
among the Anglo-Jewish community cannot be very high if
they can afford to waste time investigating this
non-event, which was only anti-semitic in the minds of
the J-Soc. Scared by the fuss the J-Soc stirred up, the
university refused to allow us (The Palestine society) to
put on a photo exhibition. UJS Approach to Jewish
Dissidents The Union of Jewish
Society approach to any Jewish dissidents is interesting
in that it combines a mixture of pleading, threats and
low-level violence. Just take as one example the
hand-over letter of the outgoing UJS president Alan
Senitt .It pleads for all Jews of all political and
religious backgrounds to unite under UJS as UJS continues
to be the only organisation in this community that
provides an environment that is open and accessible to
all Jewish students. He also states that while
one may be critical of an action of the Israeli
government, this does not cast any aspersions on its
motives, ideology or claims to be democratic. Yet this is
an organization so rigid and unyielding in its defence of
Israel that UK Friends of Peace Now (which is hardly the
most radical organization) does not believe it worthwhile
to include UJS in its dialogue groups because of its
inflexible dogmatic attitude. When Jewish non- or
anti-Zionists have stood for office, J-Soc members have
dogged them with a ritual of low-level violence and
intimidation – with the candidates in question
having their posters torn down, drinks poured over them
and being slurred as Nazis. When a youth refusenik was
due to speak at Liverpool University, J-Soc members
turned up trying to disrupt the meeting by shouting and
ringing each others mobiles as well as threatening the
premises manager to have the place shut down. Such
tactics continue as part of a strategy to attack anyone
they see as a threat and then sling the mud at anyone who
campaigns or work with these opponents so they are
discredited by association. The Way Forward So these are the means by
which the Union of Jewish Students seeks to diminish
freedom of speech on campus on issues involving
Israel/Palestine. How then should we combat it? I think among the wider
community, there has to be more campaigning by Palestine
and sympathetic groups, not least in order to give this
campaign a universal and international significance.
There are important universal issues, parallels and
similarities to be drawn between the situation in
Israel/Palestine, East Timor, Burma and South Africa that
go way beyond any narrow ethnic or religious dimension. I
also do sense a shift in the general public’s
perception of the situation. When the issue was discussed
a few weeks ago on BBC1 Question Time (time of attempted
Rantissi killing), many members of the audience severely
doubted Sharon’s sincerity in making peace, and this
shift is being reflected in the general media. Among the Jewish community,
there has to be an alternative focal point for Jewish
students. That is why we at JFJFP (Jews for Justice for
Palestinians) are in the process of setting up a student
branch of our organization, and we intend this to be up
and running by the start of the new academic year in
September 2003. This organization cannot simply have as
its basis the negative appeal of being anti-UJS. It will
have to set out its own agenda and dare the Union of
Jewish Students to open its horizons. It needs to show
that Zionism is not an integral part of Judaism; that it
is an outdated and racist political ideology, which is
alien to Judaism and has outlasted its time. It needs to
tear down the wall that UJS has created between the
Jewish student body and Muslim and Arab students. So I
therefore urge everyone; if they know anyone who is
currently studying at university and is sympathetic to
our aims to please get them to contact us. If you are interested
in the new group he is setting up: Ben Young can be
contacted at: blinderben@hotmail.com |
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