New counter-terrorism measures aimed at tackling antisemitic extremism on campus could be published within days, the government has said.
Speaking during a Westminster Hall debate on antisemitism in higher education, government minister Josh MacAlister said he has reviewed draft guidance updating universities’ Prevent duties, including revised rules on external speakers and events.
The minister for children and families told MPs that the extremist ideology “underpinning antisemitism” can lead toward terrorism.
“Left unchallenged, [these ideologies] can create an environment where radicalisation becomes more likely; at their most serious they can form part of a pathway toward terrorism.”
MacAlister affirmed: “We are strengthening oversight of universities' Prevent duties, updating guidance on external speakers and events, and that’s due to come very soon.”
The government is “improving our ability to identify emerging extremist activity, enhancing whistle-blowing protections and increasing transparency around incidents of antisemitism,” he went on.
He told MPs he had reviewed a draft of the guidance “a matter of days ago” and said it would be “published very shortly”.
The minister also said the government was “strengthening its response to state threats through tougher powers to identify and disrupt hostile activists, greater transparency around foreign influence and stronger measures against those acting on behalf of foreign states.
"Where there is evidence of unacceptable activity of foreign states, including Iran, we will not hesitate to act.”
His comments came after Labour MP for Leeds South West and Morley and parliamentary chair of Labour Friends of Israel Mark Sewards warned that universities were being targeted by the Iranian regime.
“Campuses are not hermetically sealed bubbles. We know that because the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the nefarious IRGC, Tehran and its media mouthpieces are seeking to radicalise young people here, spread antisemitism, amplify anti-Israel activism and narratives.
“In recent years, IRGC commanders have addressed UK-based student groups in online seminars urging them to become... holy warriors in an apocalyptic war against the Jews,” Sewards, who secured Tuesday's debate, went on.
“Universities have become the final battlefront, and they are calling them to arms.
“We must not allow our seats of higher educational learning... to become incubators of extremism, fundamentalism and hatred.”
Conservative shadow education minister, Saqib Bhatti, said: “A permissive culture of antisemitism and abuse has been allowed to fester. Antisemitism has been covered up as activism and protest.”
He asked for “further clarity” on what the government will do if “universities continue to fail to tackle antisemitism” and added that his party would deport hate preachers.
Throughout the debate, parliamentarians shared accounts of antisemitism experienced by Jewish students, including reference to the Time for Change report by the Union of Jewish Students, which found that one in five UK students would be reluctant to, or would never, live with a Jewish student.
MPs referred to the glorification of the Holocaust on campus, attempts to exclude Jewish students or societies from campus spaces, and physical assaults, including one student who was reportedly “ambushed from behind” and nearly pushed down stairs, and another beaten up at a nightclub.
Repeated accounts were raised of universities failing to take disciplinary action against antisemitic abuse, including one case in which a female student at a London university was called a “white supremacist b*tch,” with no reported action taken against the individual responsible by university authorities.
A graffiti attack on Leeds’ Hillel House was also referred to, which local MP Alex Sobel said: “Created a whole culture of fear on campus which has taken us years to correct”.
Introducing the debate, Sewards said “those who deny there is a problem [of antisemitism on campus] are part of it,” and argued that much Jew-hatred is “driven by antisemitic antizionism”.
“Over 70 per cent of antisemitic incidents recorded in higher education last year were overtly related to Israel and the Middle East,” he said, citing figures compiled by the Community Security Trust.
During an intervention, pro-Gaza independent MP for Dewsbury and Batley Iqbal Mohamed said: “Conflating Israel with all Jewish people is also something that should be avoided.”
Responding, Sewards said he wanted to “be clear that a lot of what is driving antisemitism on campus today relates to the denial of the equally legitimate right of the Jewish people to self-determination”.
Former Liberal Democrat leader and MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale Tim Farron also said: “The people of Israel have a right of self-determination.”
Conservative MP for Beaconsfield Joy Morrissey referred in her speech to the interwar period, which she said “plays a vital role in why we need to clamp down on antisemitism today.”
During that period, “there was no Israel” and there was a similar “economic situation,” she suggested, before drawing comparisons between contemporary protests on university campuses and those of the interwar era.
“I do not want to see our country go down the way of the rise of nationalism much like they did in Germany and even the US in the interwar period,” she said, “Stopping antisemitism at the university level is so vital to protecting the next generation.”
Iqbal Mohamed, meanwhile, said he shared “some of the experiences of the Jewish students” and expressed “empathy in some of what they are going through.”
He added that accusations of antisemitism on campuses have been “thrown around without sufficient care in response to criticisms about the Israeli state’s actions in the Middle East.”
Referring to a United Nations enquiry, he said it found that Israel was “continuing to commit genocide”.
“Many students are engaging in protests because of their principled opposition to these gross injustices,” he went on, adding it was “therefore vital that we do not conflate legitimate, courageous defiance of this government's apathy in the face of inhumanity, with a specific and pernicious form of racism that antisemitism constitutes.”
In the audience gallery for the debate, Jewish students and communal leaders watched, including the past, present and incoming presidents of UJS, which was repeatedly praised for its work supporting Jewish students on campus and exposing the “torrent of antisemitic abuse” Jewish students are subjected to.
Following the debate, incoming UJS president Raphi Leon recognised the political unity against antisemitism: “We welcome this cross-party commitment to support for Jewish students.”
He said UJS is calling for “further action from government and institutions, including faster implementation of the recommendations of our Time for Change report and best practice guidance. We will continue to advocate for the enrichment and protection of Jewish life on campus.”
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