This week saw the release of a report into multiple allegations of antisemitism in the NUS ➡️ The tone is set in the opening sentence: “For at least the last decade, Jewish students have not felt welcome or included in NUS spaces or elected roles” ✒️ ...
Back in 2005, the National Union of Students was engulfed by a row about its handling of antisemitism; the NUS would later commission“The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is a 1903 pamphlet and Russian forgery which pretends to be a leaked copy of a Jewish plan for world domination; Hitler praises it enthusiastically inand Nazi teachers assigned it to German schoolchildren as a useful guide to the evils of the Jewish race.
I was no NUS activist, but I remember the events of 2005 well. A Jewish student at my own university raised a motion asking our student common room to express concerns to the NUS. What I remember most clearly was that the only people who spoke up to agree with him were students of Jewish heritage. And I was in a room full of my friends and peers. The rest agreed that they didn’t know enough about “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” to know it was antisemitic.