At NUS conference, I felt completely unwelcome as a Jew

THE NATIONAL Union of Students (NUS) claims to be an organisation which “represents university and college students across the UK to achieve national change”, and my students’ union at Bristol University is a member. Being an NUS delegate meant attending NUS conference, which should be a hub for student activism and campaigning. Instead, my experiences of NUS conference left me feeling completely unwelcome as a Jewish student.

At conference, I attended the workshop on the motion titled “Solidarity with the People of Palestine and Preserving the Student Movement”. Nothing could have prepared me for the excruciatingly hostile and tense environment that I found myself in for the next three hours, as one of only a handful of Jewish delegates present.

It is difficult to convey the sense of isolation that I felt in that room, being unable to agree with the horrific comments which were coming out but feeling vulnerable and exposed for disagreeing with them and worried that I would be singled out.

In my group discussion, people spoke of Hamas as a resistance group and Iran also being a form of “Palestinian resistance”. The activists in that room did not stand for a peaceful end to the conflict nor a two-state solution; instead, they hoped for the end of Israel in any form.

It was so uncomfortable to sit in a room full of non-Jews and listen to them telling you what is or is not antisemitism, while none of them felt compelled to condemn Hamas nor show support when the release of the hostages held in Gaza was debated.

The feeling was so overwhelming that I, like other Jewish delegates in the room, felt the need to have a break and left briefly.

Then, the presence of UJS, the representative voice of Jewish students at conference, increasingly came up for debate. The idea that an organisation which promotes “Israel engagement” as a core value could represent Jewish students seemed beyond the pale to the student activists present. Condemnation for it from the room was a tangible signifier that “UJS” had become a replacement word for “the wrong kind of “Jew”. I felt completely unwelcome in that room.

Then there was the graffiti – “F*ck Zios” scrawled in three separate cubicles. In a different bathroom, delegates then discovered a swastika graffitied onto a toilet seat. I think fewer symbols are as stomach churning to see at a conference full of young people who are today’s student representatives and (supposedly) tomorrow’s leaders.

It was so terrifying to see the response by delegates on WhatsApp, suggesting that “F*ck Zios” was not offensive or someone had genuinely drawn an ancient Hindu symbol rather than a swastika.

I watched on the group chats as my fellow delegates described Jews as people who would “steal your money, your land, your food, your house and you must accept it”. Hundreds of messages from supposed student leaders demonised UJS and Jewish delegates present at conference for days afterwards.

The feeling of discomfort and unsettlement lingers with me as I have come back to my own campus, as I wonder how many students or sabbatical officers at my university would speak similarly, given the opportunity.

I have also left the experience with the familiar feeling of disappointment, even despair. Despite Rebecca Tuck KC’s landmark report into the NUS only last year, it is evident that NUS is still riddled with antisemitism, and the student movement enables racist vitriol. NUS may be a movement which “represents university and college students across the UK”, but it definitely does not represent me, a Jewish student.

We need better.