Student chief quits Oxford’s ‘anti-Semitic Labour club’
A CHAIRMAN of Oxford University Labour Club has resigned after accusing it of anti-Semitism and a ‘poisonous’ attitude to minority groups.
Alex Chalmers, 20, co-chairman of the student political body, said a ‘large proportion’ of members had ‘some kind of problem with Jews’ and ‘intolerant tendencies’.
The history student said individuals on the executive had used offensive terms ‘with casual abandon’ and that some members even voiced support for terror group Hamas.
He had decided to resign after OULC voted on Monday to endorse Israel Apartheid Week, an annual series of lectures against Israeli settlement in the West Bank and Gaza.
Mr Chalmers, who is not Jewish, said the movement had a ‘history of targeting and harassing Jewish students’ and ‘inviting anti-Semitic speakers’.
His concerns follow a growing number of complaints from Jewish students that they are made to feel unwelcome on campuses around the country.
Earlier this year, an Israeli speaker cut his lecture short at King’s College London due to a violent demonstration by proPalestinian student activists.
Resigning online, Mr Chalmers said some members’ attitudes were ‘becoming poisonous’.
He added: ‘Whether it be members of the Executive throwing around the term ‘Zio’ (a term for Jews usually confined to websites run by the Ku Klux Klan) with casual abandon, senior members of the club expressing their “solidarity” with Hamas and explicitly defending their tactics of indiscriminately murdering civilians, or a former cochair claiming that “most accu- sations of anti-Semitism are just the Zionists crying wolf”, a large proportion of both OULC and the student left in Oxford more generally have some kind of problem with Jews.’
Mr Chalmers recognised that many left-wing students also opposed anti-Semitism and that not all critics of Israel were antiSemites. He told student newspaper Cherwell: ‘I hope my decision will go some way in raising awareness of the campus antiSemitism that has gone unnoticed for far too long in Oxford.’
Remaining co-chairman Noni Csogor said: ‘I’m deeply upset by Alex’s decision to resign, but it’s one I respect. I will be discussing, with my executive committee, how to deal with the kinds of statements Alex mentions.’
In March last year, Moselle Paz Solis, Jewish Society president at the School of Oriental and African Studies, central London, told the Jewish Chronicle that she was ‘too scared to go anywhere’ after students voted to academically boycott Israel.
And anonymous Jewish students recently told student paper The Tab that their schools had advised them not to apply to certain universities – because they would not be safe.