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January 1, 2017 9:04 am
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New Report: Some of 2016’s Worst Antisemitic Activity Took Place on British, Canadian Campuses

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avatar by Lea Speyer

An SJP protest. Photo: Students for Justice in Palestine/Facebook.

An SJP protest. Photo: Students for Justice in Palestine/Facebook.

Some of the past year’s worst antisemitic activities took place at British and Canadian universities, according to a new report, released by a prominent international Jewish human-rights organization.

According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s “2016 Top 10 Worst Global Antisemitic/Anti-Israel Incidents,” among the most distressing events of the past 12 months were the failure of UK school administrations to protect Jewish students, and attempts by activists at Toronto’s Ryerson University to derail a Holocaust education motion.

Citing a recent interview by British parliamentarian Baroness Ruth Deech — who, as The Algemeiner reported, decried that many institutions of higher learning have becoming “no-go zones” for Jewish students — the SWC wrote, “Antisemitism is so rife on campuses that some Jewish people are feeling threatened or unsafe.”

At the University of Manchester, for example, Jewish students were left “angry and fearful” in the wake of a successful Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, which they said “sprang out of nowhere.” In September, University of Exeter students were caught on camera wearing Holocaust-glorifying t-shirts at an off-campus party. And at Oxford, the co-chairman of the university’s Labour Club resigned over its members’ “problem with Jews.”

The worsening situation for the UK’s Jewish students, the SWC noted, comes against the backdrop of a heightened climate of antisemitism and anti-Israelis sentiment among members of the British Labour Party.

The SWC report also slammed Ryerson’s chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Muslim Student Association (MSA) for “torpedo[ing]” a motion presented before the student union (RSU) in early December to formally adopt “Holocaust Education Week,” despite the fact it had “nothing to do with the Israel-Arab conflict.” Jewish students told The Algemeiner that the disruption was a blatant act of antisemitism and “one step away from denial” of the Nazi genocide.

The motion was later passed by the RSU, despite calls by anti-Israel activists to change the proposed event to “All Genocides Education Week.”

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