Jewish students’ security fears ‘propaganda’, says academic

A SPEAKER at an event organised by the former education officer for UCL Students’ Union dismissed allegations of antisemitism within the Labour party as “mostly false” and labelled security concerns of Jewish students “propaganda which they have been schooled with”.

David Miller, a professor of political sociology at the University of Bristol, had been invited to speak at a seminar titled “How to stand up against intimidation at campuses”, held by an organisation called Olive, whose stated mission is “mobilising Palestinian youth by raising awareness, enabling and empowering them on their journey towards a free and peaceful homeland.”

The event, held earlier this month, was organised by Sarah Al-Aride, the former Education Officer at UCL Students’ Union, who wrote on the event’s Facebook page that it was “for students only”.

Prof Miller, who has previously claimed that a number of UK charities “financially support the Occupation”, as well as listing specific British Jews who have given money to such charities, told the students: “Let’s be clear, there is antisemitism in the Labour Party.”

But he followed up by saying: “There are people who are actual antisemites — very, very few of them — a much larger number of people who occasionally say things that might be seen to be potentially antisemitic by accident… I admit that’s true, but by and large most of the allegations of antisemitism in the Labour Party have been false.”

In a recording of the event, published on Harry’s Place website, Prof Miller said in a discussion about Jewish students feeling unsafe on campus: “It’s not Jewish students who feel unsafe, it’s specific Jewish students who are part of a particular political tendency.”

He went on to say that “these are not students who are spontaneously threatened”, alleging that “it’s propaganda which they have been schooled with… there are… Israel lobby organisations, Zionist movement organisations, some allied to the Israeli government, who have devoted huge amounts of time to do messaging to working out how to combat, in particular, BDS.”

The academic, who described himself as a Labour member who had briefly been suspended for comments about Zionism, also defended Ken Livingstone and Tony Greenstein, calling their treatment by the party “absurd” and “a disgrace” and saying: “I don’t think anything he [Livingstone] said was historically inaccurate.”

Daniel Kosky, campaigns officer for the Union of Jewish Students, said: “Jewish Top: Al-Aride, who organised the event; and Miller students who have expressed concerns do so not as a result of ‘propaganda’ or for any other ulterior motive. To suggest they do so is part of the problem that Professor Miller seeks to deny.”

Defending his talk, Prof Miller said: “I would say that I gave a nuanced response which accepted the evidence of actual and clumsy or mistaken antisemitism in the context of the campaign led by pro-Israel forces against Jeremy Corbyn.”

He expressed “regret” that “any student should feel unsafe on campus as a result of their faith, identity or ethnicity”, and cited the “hasbara phrase book” (‘Luntz report’) produced by the Israel Project as evidence for his allegation that some Jewish students claiming to feel unsafe are part of a propaganda exercise.

On his claim that Israel is a racist endeavour, he said: “I note... that you have excised the portion where I discuss the intricacies of the IHRA definition in which saying ‘a’ state of Israel is a racist endeavour ‘could, taking into account the overall context’ be antisemitic.

“I specifically discussed ‘the’ actual historical state of Israel — not any more general or hypothetical state of Israel; and that, second, I was not making a point about ‘the Jews’ but specifically about a form of colonialism which is not exceptional, but which is in fact part of a wider historical pattern.”

Prof Miller insisted that the idea of Israel as a settler colonial entity was well supported in the scholarly literature and that his work on Israel/Palestine was rigorously evidence-based.

He stated: “I reject the smear, evidenced in this article, that critics of Israeli policies are antisemitic.”