Universities must rein in scourge of hate they left unchecked for so long

The tirade at UCL is nothing new. Anti-Jewish racism has echoed throughout history, and I well remember from my own education at church primary and secondary schools that condemnation of Jews infused worship and teaching.

But we live today in the age of anti-racism. An important and urgent cause, apart from the fact that it isn’t extended to Jews. It has become a modern cliché that self-identifying anti-racists are so often the worst purveyors of anti-Jewish racism, and Britain’s once world-renowned universities have become their safe space.

The cloak of so-called ‘anti-Zionism’ has led them towards the oldest hatred. So blinded by their detestation of the State of Israel, it is now perfectly unremarkable for students to demand ‘resistance’ – naturally appearing alongside Hamas-associated imagery – as well as the genocidal call for the destruction of Israel. The Prime Minister was absolutely right to recently declare “From the River” as antisemitic but it has had zero impact on the actions of university leaders.

And so, left unchecked by British authorities (from the Government and police through to universities and wider society), the anti-Zionists have radicalised. The disgusting - and utterly unchallenged - utilisation of an ancient Jewish blood libel by Dr Maqusi at UCL this week shows that a new line has been crossed. The speaker's reported decision to matter-of-factly cite the 1840 Damascus Affair and the long-repudiated lie that Jews used the blood of non-Jews for religious rituals is grotesque.

Patently baseless centuries-old anti-Jewish hatred is now being revived and repurposed to brainwash the next generation of leaders. Anyone acquainted with Jewish history will know full well that blood libels such as this have been the source of hundreds of years of violence, persecution, and massacres against Jewish communities across the world. The university authorities are complicit in this terrible danger.

StandWithUs UK has documented dozens of harrowing testimonies from students at universities all around the country. They have empowered Jewish students to proactively stand up against this onslaught and they have movingly retold their stories to parliamentarians and the international media. These are the true anti-racist heroes who deserve our full admiration and support.

The problem is clear and many of the tools to tackle it already exist but much like the obstinate leaders at the BBC, it requires university officials to take note of what is being taught on their campuses, accept responsibility and their own failings, and root out this poisonous ideology.

UCL’s immediate and unequivocal response to this shocking incident is welcome and offers a blueprint which I hope other universities will follow. If they continue to fall short, however, the Office for Students must forcefully act, and university leaders should be summoned to Parliament to account for the shameful discriminatory and menacing environment for Jews that they have allowed to take root.