‘People are afraid to show signs that they are Jewish’

For many Jews, Britain's universities feel more and more like the front line of a 'new antisemitism'.

- Nicole Lampert reports

At the University of Liverpool, a student group was busy planning what appeared to be a celebratory “Palestine bake sale”. The poster, adorned in the red, black and green of the Palestinian flag, was made to promote the event on October 7 - titled “Time for Dessert”.

A group called Goldsmiths for Palestine will host a night of “remembrance and resistance” in The Feminist Library, away from campus. There will be a film as well as tea and cakes. Groups at other UoL sites, including King’s College London and the London School of Economics, will be organising a 2pm walkout. In Edinburgh, there will be a rally outside the library under the slogan “Divestment today, liberation tomorrow”.

On the anniversary of a massacre in which more Jews were killed than on any other day since the Holocaust, many students will not be lending their support to the Jewish community. They won't be holding a vigil. Their events feel closer to celebrations. At least in the case of the bake sale, the organisers finally “agreed to move this fundraising activity to an alternative date, following an intervention by Jewish News”.

On Monday, Keir Starmer condemned the students planning protests on the anniversary of the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7 2023. He wrote in The Times: “It’s un-British to have so little respect for others. And that’s before some of them decide to start chanting hatred towards Jewish people all over again.”

But this state of affairs has been two years in the making, and similar protests have taken place across the UK during that time. Ruth Deech, a crossbench peer and a former principal of St Anne’s College, Oxford, said: “As a new academic year begins at British universities, it is painfully clear that authorities have failed to tackle extremist events and ideology on campus.