Here's my @Spectator column, 'What’s really causing anti-Semitism in British schools' spectator.com/article/whats-… Sir David Bell’s report into anti-Semitism in schools (which will be published this afternoon but has been widely trailed) is an important document with a series of worthwhile recommendations. He finds that three in five Jewish students have experienced anti-Semitism – a statistic that should be profoundly shocking but is now entirely unsurprising – and that fewer than half think that there is any point reporting it, given that schools have consistently refused to take serious action when it is reported. In that context, Sir David’s recommendation that schools and colleges should be forced to recognise anti-Semitism as a specific category of harm – as opposed to the general requirement to tackle racism – and to take explicit action to tackle it is eminently sensible. But for all Sir David’s good intentions, his report suffers from the same fundamental flaw as almost all such official analyses of anti-Semitism: his terms of reference did not allow him to examine the causes of the Jew hate he found, only its extent. Which begs so many questions. None of those questions will even be asked by Lucy Powell, the Education Secretary, in her response to the report in the Commons this afternoon, let alone answered. She will doubtless make a big deal of the fact that Labour commissioned the report and will – as all politicians always do – tell MPs that anti-Semitism has no place in schools. It’s the line we always hear whenever there is a major incident – demonstrating in reality that the opposite is true and that there is a very large place for anti-Semitism in Britain today. Any analysis of the growth of anti-Semitism in the years since Israel began its military operation in Gaza in response to the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023 would have to include the words and actions of Labour ministers who have deliberately turned on Israel, in an attempt to appease the sectarian Muslim voters who started to desert Labour in the last general election. Ministers’ rhetoric – such as Ed Miliband speaking last month of Israeli war crimes and ethnic cleansing – has the effect of licensing Jew hate. The government cannot even bring itself to condemn the regular hate marches – sending the message that Jew hate on the streets is entirely legitimate. Add to that the obsession of so many Labour backbenchers with Israel and you have a recipe for the spread of anti-Semitism. Then there is the elephant in the room which few are willing to identify: that much of the problem in schools lies with Muslim children (see this report from Parents Against Anti-Semitism). All too often, this is swept under carpet in fear of accusations of Islamophobia.A typical incident was reported earlier this year, in which two Muslim girls approached a child and stated: ‘We will send our family to behead yours like Jews deserve.’ The incident was reported to the Metropolitan Police but their response was that the girls involved were considered exemplary students and no substantive action would be taken, except talking to them via Police Community Support Officers. Islamophobia and right-wing extremism are often seen as a more significant concern than anti-Semitism. When it comes to having a clear-sighted approach to the issues around anti-Semitism it is difficult to think of a worse possible education secretary than Lucy Powell. Infamously, she claimed that the Manchester Arena suicide bombing which killed 22 people had nothing to do with Islam. Asked on the BBC after the murders, ‘How serious is the problem of Islamist radicalisation in Manchester?’ she replied: ‘I’m not sure that this is the right moment to totally go into that, because I don’t even want to ascribe what has happened to the Islam faith.’ Powell also denied the evidence of links between the bomber, Islamist radicalism and certain mosques, telling the Manchester Evening News: ‘I’m particularly worried about that kind of narrative that somehow there’s areas or hotspots of Manchester that are hotbeds of radicalisation.’ She also, of course, described concern over the rape scandal as a right-wing ‘dog-whistle’. Sir David is to be commended for his report. It is not his fault that it was limited to the extent of school anti-Semitism rather than the causes. But we already know what will happen now, because it always happens. Instead of dealing with the facts of Jew hatred in Britain in 2016, the report’s findings will be attacked with reference to the Gaza war – as if Jewish children at school in Britain are soldiers in the IDF, which itself demonstrates the problem of anti-Semitism.

🧵Arif Ahmed, Director for #FreeSpeech and #AcademicFreedom at @officestudents , gave the Keynote at the Conflict on Campus event organised by @SimonFanshawe & @Sparemu today.

Entire fantastic article by BRENDA POWER below (the rest in comments) Liberal Woman Who’s The Emblem of French Plight AN ELEGANT Parisian woman in a chestnut wool coat, sunglasses perched on the black headband in her long blonde hair, stands at the door of a ruined grocery shop as masked looters descend upon it. She is every privileged, middle-class, thirtysomething Western woman you’ve ever seen at a pro-Palestinian, pro-immigrant march, wearing a keffiyeh and waving a 'Refugees Welcome' placard, chanting, 'From the river to the sea'. Madame Everywoman has so despaired of the bigotry of the far right, and denounced the vile racism of the fascist commentators warning that Europe is being 'invaded' by Islamists, seeking to overrun and replace the continent’s indigenous population. She has applauded the sight of blue-eyed policing on city streets across France, the UK, Italy, Germany as heart-twinging evidence of 'multiculturalism'. She’s supported the introduction of more halal outlets, even though the Islamic slaughter method is cruel and bloody, and welcomed the neutralisation of backward old Christian observances like Christmas and Easter into 'winter' and 'spring' festivals. She’s supported bans on dogs being walked in certain parts of Paris because Islam considers them unclean, thinks burkas are an expression of female will, and insists that immigrants from non-Christian cultures enrich, energise and enlighten our home-grown Western societies. Unless they’re Jews, obviously. And until that is, they active masked and such-handed to 'enlighten' the shelves of her friends' grocery store of all their goods — taking alcohol test, in many cases, leaving only the 'haram' pork products strewn on the floor — and enriching only themselves. The footage of Madame Everywoman coming face-to-spitting, seething face with the culture she has championed has circled the globe over the last few days, as the French riots spread countryside and beyond. 'This is not the cause,' she pleads with the masked looters, nearly all young men, as they push past her to ransack the store. She has supported them, she wails, she is on their side, she shares their ideology, they have the same objectives of liberty, equality, peace, prosperity — burning and looting shops in dire suburbs was never in the script. They push her aside, tell her clear off if she doesn’t want to get hurt, she turns to the camera, the picture of anguished realisation dawning just a little too late, a human metaphor for modern, liberal, progressive Europe’s tardy awakening to the medieval fate it has unwittingly sealed — there is no shared ideology, there is no political conviction, there’s no noble aspiration or mutual goal, just a brutal, marauding horde with no objective but to pillage and destroy, and nothing in their hearts but well-deserved contempt for useful Western idiots like Madame Everywoman and her keffiyeh-toting ilk. If asunder empathy has a face, it’s that elegant Parisian woman in her chic headband, her expensive coat and her utter bewilderment. These protests are far more than shout poor educational facilities. Pictures of thugs fleeing Christian Dior and Louis Vuitton stores with armfuls of designer clothing appear online, satirically captioned, 'French students desperately seeking new school uniforms.' Now they are just a sinister flex by a menacing cohort which has steadily infiltrated western Europe over the past decade, exploiting colonial guilt, the positive, preening vanity that passes for political debate on social media, and the witless purity spiralling of liberal competitive wokeness. Five years ago, it would have been considered a hate crime to suggest that while most migrants were genuinely well-intentioned people simply hoping for a better life, there was a significant number from incompatible cultures driven by envy and hatred of Western liberties, whose aim was to despoil, plunder and subjugate the liberal societies ...cont in comments

This open letter from our arts elite opens with the straw man that Sally Rooney is not a terrorist. It never gets round to discussing her promise to fund a criminal group. When did the intelligentsia decide it was cool to pretend to be thick? 1/3 newstatesman.com/cover-story…