During the Easter break, the National Union of Students held their annual conference in Sheffield, an event where hundreds of delegates from around the country flocked to decide the policies, elections and stance of the NUS in the coming year.
When the conference came to a close on the 29th April, it was seen to have been mostly successful, with only one incident tarnishing a generally well planned meeting. That incident was the vandalism of a Union of Jewish Student’s (UJS) stall by Pro-Palestine campaigners.
The stall, which represents thousands of Jewish students across the UK, was covered with ‘boycott Israel’ stickers, a move which has once again thrown the Israel-Palestine debate into the student political sphere. Like an unwelcome guest at a party, the act tarnished the NUS Conference, leaving a bad taste in everyone’s mouths.
Of course, the incident quickly entered the blogosphere, where the debate became centred on whether the vandalism had been an act of anti-Semitism. As the issue became viral, the arguments on each side became more emotional, and, as often happens with such disagreements, reason swiftly picked up its bags and left.
The claims of anti-Semitism arose from the fact that some stickers were placed on top of the Star of David, a holy symbol in the Jewish religion that adorns the UJS logo. As the Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sachs aptly put it, the act was ‘an indication of the increasingly blurred line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism’.
Sachs has managed to articulate the problem particularly well; that the fragile line that separates a form of racism from a political outlook is not one that is very well defined, a problem we undeniably have to sort out if we ever want to make any headway on the issue.
As always, pointing the finger does little to help. Both the Pro-Palestine groups and the UJS should be striving to make it harder for such confusion to happen. Before any political demonstration or protest, anti-Zionist students should think about who they are aiming at.
Boycotting a Jewish event without inquiring as to whether it has anything to do with Israel will do little to help your argument and will only make Jewish students feel victimised and discriminated against. Yet, the UJS must also try to make its stance clear. As an organisation with close ties to pro-Israel groups, it must realise that if it wishes to keep these links it must be prepared to see at least some political opposition, political opposition that it shouldn’t try to muffle by simply branding as anti-Semitism. The UJS needs to make it clear whether it is a non-political group that supports Jewish students across the UK, or whether it is also a group that wants to advocate on behalf of Israel.
The vandalism of the stall was unquestionably unwarranted. The NUS Conference, a time for students to come together as one cohesive group, is far from the place to try to score political points. The act will only divide and anger people and will do little to help the anti-Zionist movement.
Still, the issues it has brought up over the relationship between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism should not be ignored. Was it an anti-Semitic attack? I would like to think not and that the people who covered the UJS logo with stickers simply saw the Star of David as part of the logo of a Zionist organisation, and not as a symbol of the entire Jewish people.
Yet, I hope those people learn that while the Star of David is on the Israeli flag, it is not a political emblem, but one that encompasses an entire group of people across the world. If we can managed to separate acts of anti-Semitism from acts of anti-Zionism, the debate amongst students may become a lot less heated, and hopefully more productive.