Malia Bouattia’s views are incompatible with the values of the vast majority of Jewish students. This is a person who has welcomed an endorsement from a member of MPAC UK, an inherently antisemitic organisation. She has spoken in favour of ‘violent resistance’ and shared a stage with a PFLP hijacker. She has described the media as being “Zionist led”, and labelled her own University of Birmingham, a campus with the country’s largest Jewish student population, as “something of a Zionist outpost.” Many Jewish Society Presidents and others have since signed an open letter roundly condemning her.
Recently the NUS endorsed the BDS movement and removed Jewish students from its anti-racism campaigns. Some attendees at this year’s conference reportedly argued against commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day. It is within this context that yesterday’s election of Malia Bouattia as President marks an irreversible shift in the NUS towards political irrelevance and ideological extremism.
Most students don’t want divisive leaders. The NUS badly needs a President that unites students regardless of background or beliefs. Jewish students repeatedly complain of being ignored or suspected of acting in bad faith. Little indicates that Malia will do much to repair damaged relations between Jews and student activists, nor promote a respectful campus dialogue freed from the toxic debates of Israel-Palestine and the Middle East at large.
There has often been a fraught relationship between the NUS and Jewish students. In the 1980s, many Jewish societies were expelled from student unions under NUS’ no-platform policy. Luciana Berger, a current Jewish Labour MP, resigned from the NUS Executive Committee in 2005. She cited institutional antisemitism as her main reason.
In her quest to be an arch anti-imperialist, Malia regurgitates an obscene form of anti-Zionism that borrows from the coded language of antisemites. Her victory emboldens, empowers and legitimates prejudices that have travelled from the extremist fringes to the mainstream of student politics. It is deeply shameful that hundreds of delegates voted for her and ignored the concerns of Jewish students. The NUS doesn't represent me, it doesn’t represent 99% of British students, and it certainly doesn’t represent Jews who they repeatedly defame, humiliate and denigrate. It's time for UJS and other student unions to sever relations with it.
Richard Black is a postgraduate student at the University of Oxford, studying Modern British and European History. He has served on the committee of the Oxford Jewish Society and the Israel Forum. He has previously written for Standpoint and a number of student publications.
