One in five students reluctant to share house with Jewish person, union president says

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[00:00:00]Welcome back. The prime minister has pledged to bring in a zero tolerance approach to anti-semitism on university campuses and called for institutions to show how they are doing to so to tackle the issue. In a study by the charity Stand with Us, 29% of students said they believe October the 7th attacks by Hamas were an understandable act of resistance.

[00:00:22]Unbelievable. Uh among Russell Group University students, that figure rose to 38%.

[00:00:28]Meanwhile, 38% of students agreed that students who publicly support Israel should expect abuse on campus.

[00:00:37]Wow. I'm joined now by the president of the Union of Jewish Students, Louis Dank. Louie, thanks so much for joining us. It's good to see you.

[00:00:44]>> Thank you for having me.

[00:00:45]>> I was going to start with the fact that uh you're at this meeting yesterday with the prime minister, but I I'm really just blown away by those statistics. Has it been >> that bad for a long time? I think since October the 7th, 2023, Jewish students have dealt with a a rise of anti-semitism on campus. I mean, it's not just related to Israel. We published a report, the Union of Jewish Students, in March that found that one in five university students would be reluctant or unwilling to share a house with a Jew, irrespective of their opinions on the conflict. And so this is, you know, not just discourse about Israel and Gaza. This is anti-semitism, pure and simple.

[00:01:20]uh it must make student life very very difficult worse than that for Jewish students.

[00:01:28]>> It's really challenging. It's really challenging and I think that there has been a normalization of anti-semitism on campus. We see mass under reporting of incidents because for students this is normality. There was a story I know of students who were walking down the street near campus wearing a kipar skull cap on their heads and someone started yelling at them about the conflict in Gaza and started chasing them down the street brandishing a glass bottle. So there's physical unsafety as well. But it's important to say we won't be cowed.

[00:01:57]We won't be cowed into insularity. We're going to still be proud Jews, proud Brits on campus and live out Jewish lives.

[00:02:04]>> Um what do you put it down to? Is it ignorance? Is it outright evil? What?

[00:02:13]How do you kind of try to work it out?

[00:02:15]>> I think it's a little bit of both. Um, but I think ignorance is a real problem.

[00:02:19]Jews are less than 0.5% of the population. Lots of people go onto campus having never met a Jewish person and they come into an incredibly intense environment of protest and activism. And I think you know one of the conversations we were having yesterday at this summit was about the need for education on anti-semitism and on Jews in school not at university but earlier primary school secondary schools. What is the Jewish community in this country?

[00:02:43]How are they a proud part of multicultural Britain because there's so much ignorance in young people.

[00:02:48]>> Um so tell me about this meeting yesterday with with the prime minister.

[00:02:52]Um what was your message to him and do you think he heard it?

[00:02:56]>> I think so. I mean, to be honest, my message was was really to the civil society leaders in the room. I think the big question that's been nagging at me for the past few weeks is where is the outrage? Where has anti-racist civil society gone? There has been a stunning silence in the past few weeks from so many groups that you would expect to be standing with the minority community under attack in Britain. And so my message to them was there's been enough institutional timidity. It's time for real bravery and standing with the Jewish community. Um, do you get a sense far too late, unacceptable as it is that people are changing their tune in the last week or not? I mean, again, as I say, far too late, unacceptable as it is, is is there a shift? The very fact that you were in Downing Street yesterday, >> I think so. I think yesterday's meeting was the right one. I think bringing those leaders together is crucial. We need a whole society approach and there have been some really good announcements overnight already in terms of policy changes in the education space, in the culture space, policing, the CPS. So, I think there's been a step change, but we need to see that continuing. Yesterday can't just be a flash in the pan.

[00:04:02]>> Um, and do you think these changing messages are filtering through maybe it's I'm sure it's too early to tell, but filtering through to younger people, two campuses. take take me back to um that balance of I I guess you're alluding to to in one of your earlier answers the sort of peer pressure aspect that that dominates.

[00:04:22]>> Yeah. I think that my generation are echo chamber natives, right? We grow up on social media. We live our lives through Instagram and Tik Tok. And so it's so easy to lose nuance in debate.

[00:04:33]Um but actually we need to learn to live with difference. We're a multicultural society. there are so many different opinions and perspectives and that needs to be able to be shared without resorting to violence or threat or assault or abuse as those statistics at the start outlined.

[00:04:47]>> Um you mentioned the scale of uh of kind of I guess at times even threats of physical violence but uh of kind of discrimination that Jewish students have faced on the campus >> as the president of the union of Jewish students. You must personally have faced even more than the average Jewish student.

[00:05:06]>> Yeah. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard. I think that every time we were to post something on social media, uh, there is a torrent in the replies. Um, and I think that, you know, I I spoke at Downing Street yesterday and spoke about, um, the rise in anti-semitism and posted the video and underneath in the replies, you know, exploitives, uh, conversation about the conflict in Gaza, which my speech had nothing to do with. And that's the sort of whataboutery that we always have to deal with. When Jews cry anti-semitism, we're asked, "Well, why haven't you condemned this? Why haven't you done that?" But actually, we're facing discrimination as British Jews and just for being Jewish.

[00:05:45]>> Well, I mean, well done you for standing up in the face of this uh as as a as a young man in particular. Um it's it's brave and it's making a difference as I think uh you're alluding to from the from the meeting yesterday. Uh and we thank you very much for joining us, but most of all for the work you do.

[00:06:02]>> Thank you. Louis Danka, the president of the Union of Jewish Students.