Its Solutions Are Not Exactly Credible

The report into antisemitism is schools is demolished in the videos here, here and here, while Ricky D. Hale writes:

As expected, the Labour government has accepted 27 recommendations of a report into antisemitism in British schools. The report suggests that antisemitism is a major problem, but its solutions are not exactly credible. They focus on killing solidarity with Palestinians, and re-educating children to make them pro-Israel.

A key argument for this moral panic is that three out of five Jewish pupils have experienced antisemitism in schools. However, that figure comes from a survey of 5,000 kids, only 92 of who were Jewish. That’s right, the sample size was just 92!

Those 92 kids were asked if they’d personally experienced antisemitism at school and only 70 responded. Twenty-nine said yes—that’s less than one in three of those asked! Only 12% of the kids who responded said they felt antisemitism was a problem at their school and only 2% said it was a big problem.

You can count the number of kids who felt antisemitism was a problem at their school with your fingers. Yet the government decided that means antisemitism must be put into its own special category of racism and treated more seriously than the others.

To make matters worse, the report did not bother asking Muslim kids about their experience of racism. This is presumably because it would undermine the narrative by showing they are far more likely to be victims of hate.

One figure that has been pushed by the BBC is that Jews are nine times more likely to experience racism than Muslims. However, that figure is bullshit. The Home Office says the most reliable data comes from the Crime Survey for England and Wales. Guess what? It shows that Muslims are twice as likely to be victims of hate crimes than Jews.

You might wonder how the report could get it so badly wrong. Well, let’s take a look at the author, Sir David Bell. He sits on the council of the Academic Group for the Study of Israel and the Middle East—a charity whose main focus is to oppose BDS.

Despite this potential conflict of interests, the media has made no attempt to scrutinise Bell’s report. Instead it has used it as proof that antisemitism belongs at the top of a racism hierarchy. It’s essential we challenge this framing because the proposed measures will hurt solidarity with Palestinians.

The report is supposed to be about antisemitism, but it mentions Israel and Gaza dozens of times. It suggests that Palestinian flags and badges contribute towards a hostile environment for Jewish kids and that schools should consider their dress codes accordingly.

Palestinian flags are not antisemitic and banning them because they make Zionists feel uncomfortable would be absurd. We should be teaching kids that a genocide is taking place and the correct moral position is to oppose it. Instead the report wants neutrality on genocide.

It recommends that schools have balanced, impartial discussions “particularly those relating to the Israel-Palestine conflict and contemporary antisemitism.” It also suggests schools should adopt the IHRA guidelines (which conflate anti-Zionism and antisemitism) and kids should be trained to confront antisemitism online [how, exactly, if they are to be banned from social media?].

If you are serious about tackling antisemitism, you do not recommend a range of measures to suppress support for Palestine and boost sympathy for Israel.