This blog has been shortlisted as part of our JC student blogger competition

Back in February, when my student union passed a motion in support of BDS, I sent a message to a friend on the editorial team of the student newspaper, asking if I could write a response. I picked up and put down the metaphorical pen time and again, trying to find the right words to express my anger at having my country singled out in this way, at me being singled out by extension. In the end, I took the wrong course: I put the pen down. I had only one year left of my degree, I reasoned, better just to keep a low profile, keep my head down and let it blow over. I don’t immediately identify as Israeli to people I meet (thanks to my British accent, it’s not automatically clear), and I didn’t want to make myself a target.

In the following months, everything that happened with NUS has made me realise that’s not an option. Nowhere has that been clearer than in the post-conference discussions. The endless, inane, cyclical arguments over whether NUS and its new president are antisemitic or simply anti-Zionist are as off-target as an Englishman in a World Cup penalty shootout. I am all of the above: Jewish. Zionist. Israeli. I am one of hundreds of Israeli citizens on campuses across the UK. Bouattia openly endorses violence against us, students that she supposedly represents, so what does it even matter if she genuinely is “anti-Zionist” or “anti-Israel”? How has that become the debate?

So now I will speak out for Israeli students, because nobody else seems to want to. We are as politically and ethnically diverse a minority as any you would find, and we should not be made to feel unwelcome here by student politicians playing at grown-up politics.

Sahar Zivan, is a British/Israeli third-year student at the University of Bristol