If there was ever a way to come down from the summer holiday with a bump, it was immersing myself in the cheery topic of antisemitism, which I’ve been doing intensely while making a Telegraph documentary on the subject. It’s been eye-opening – even for me as someone entrenched in the Jewish community – or perhaps because of it. Having spoken to dozens of victims, it seems like it’s often those Jews who are most isolated from the community who are most vulnerable.
In the course of making the documentary (available on YouTube), I spoke to several students who lost their entire friendship group after October 7 and who were ostracised and bullied. Often (although not always) Israel was the crux of it. In many school environments, unless you are prepared to totally condemn the entire existence of Israel, show zero sympathy to any Israeli victim and use all the trending buzzwords to describe the conflict, then you shall be banished. One student I spoke to, who as it happened could not have been more left-leaning in his anti-Netanyahu anti-war stance, was spat at every day, constantly had his lunch whacked out of his hands and said he felt “truly hated”. When he reported it to the college, what they decided to do was… absolutely diddly squat. His crime? Sharing a post that said: “Innocent people do not kidnap people.”
Another student I spoke to was similarly shunned – to the point that she had to sit her A-levels in isolation because she would have been too vulnerable to bullies jeopardising her exams. Another case of the school punishing the victim. Parents Against Antisemitism, which was set up to help support students such as these, sees this a lot: the schools treating these situations as a conflict to mediate rather than a straightforward case of safeguarding against bullying and prejudice.
Ignite, another organisation assisting and empowering students, helps teach how to approach conversations about Jewish identity and Zionism in a calm, open-minded way. This year, they have also launched “conversation cards”, which sound like they might help students with their chat-up lines, but in fact aid them in the even more challenging social scenario of talking about Israel, which is something they may find themselves having to do whether they like it or not. (The cards are available to download for free at i-gnite.org).
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