University of Exeter. Photo: Wikipedia.

Since the October 7th massacre committed by Hamas, antisemitic hate crimes in the UK have recorded the highest increases in modern history.

The radicalism of pro-Palestinian rhetoric has created a dangerous environment on college campuses. These groups are “crybullys,” who claim to champion academic freedom and “moral” virtue, while silencing and targeting Jewish students.

When hundreds of thousands of Muslims were murdered en masse in countries like Syria, Yemen, and Myanmar, campuses across London were empty. Yet, radical student groups in the UK are now protesting against Israel’s response to Hamas terrorism.

There is only one explanation for this: antisemitism. 

Even university administrators have displayed anti-Israel bias. Two months after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, my school’s administration (the University of Exeter) has not published a single statement acknowledging the suffering of their Jewish or Zionist students, or a gesture of solidarity for the pain of the Jewish community, let alone a statement that condemns Hamas for its brutality.

Considering that Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organization in the UK, this shouldn’t have been difficult to do.

Instead, Exeter has allowed antisemitic students to spread social media posts openly supporting the murder, rape, and butchery of Israeli civilians. This is not surprising, given that a professor at the university can openly state that he doesn’t think Hamas is a terrorist organization without any consequence.

As Jewish students witness calls for a global “intifada” — and explicit calls for an exclusionary Arab ethno-state in place of the world’s only Jewish state  — academics across the political spectrum are suggesting that Hamas is not a terrorist organization, and that its atrocities against Jews were justified and legitimate.

On top of this complete administrative failure to protect Jewish students from direct and indirect threats of violence, they have allowed academics across the UK to publicly debate whether Israel’s attempt to stop future massacres is itself permissible. This is outrageous.

My friends and I are scared to express our beliefs in fear of being attacked. Our bigoted and ignorant peers have been allowed to freely chant blood libels and death threats at Jewish students. There have been physical attacks on Jews on college campuses in the US.

While Exeter has promised its Jewish students that they will increase protection and monitoring on campus, the need for such initiatives in 2023 is absolutely sickening. 

Recently, I was denied the so-called “equal” opportunity to write in my campus paper, the Exeposé. Apparently, publishing pro-Israel content conflicts with their desire to appear “neutral.” However, letters calling for a ceasefire and articles that uncritically quote Al Jazeera — the Qatari state-owned, pro-Hamas media organization — are perfectly acceptable.

It seems that equality is only a right upheld for those who do not hold pro-Israel views. 

One way that these immoral beliefs have gained credibility is through the prejudicial act of tokenism, where anti-Israel students use fringe Jewish groups to justify their views.

However, groups that claim to represent Jews, like Independent Jewish Voices (UK), US based Jewish Voice for Peace, and extremists Neturei Karta, can in fact be antisemitic.

Ultimately, the Jewish community knows that those who take to the streets every Saturday in the UK are not the majority in this country — but in the words of Elie Wiesel, neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Unfortunately, it seems as though a significant portion of Britain has chosen to do exactly that.

Rojin-Sena Cantay is a student at the University of Exeter, and a CAMERA Fellow for the 2023-2024 academic year.