Anti-Israel BDS calls on UK campuses thwarted by lawfare as antisemitism spikes
Bombastic university protests fuel a record-breaking rise in reported incidents of Jew-hatred — but the type and scope of divestment they seek is often contrary to British law
Robert Philpot is a writer and journalist. He is the former editor of Progress magazine and the author of “Margaret Thatcher: The Honorary Jew.”
LONDON — For decades, the prestigious London School of Economics has been seen as a hotbed of student radicalism and left-wing politics.
Unsurprisingly, in recent years, that cocktail has made the central London university a distinctly heated environment for pro-Israel students and visitors. In November 2021, for example, Israel’s ambassador to Britain, Tzipi Hotovely, was rushed to her car from a speaking event there after a large group of protesters engaged in what one UK minister later condemned as “aggressive and threatening behavior” toward her.
But this summer the school has struck twin blows against anti-Israel student protesters — taking legal action in June to end a monthlong occupation of a university building and last month robustly rejecting the demands of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
The stance by the London School of Economics (LSE) reflects the failure of BDS campaigners to advance their goals on Britain’s campuses despite a wave of pro-Palestinian protests and a surge in antisemitic incidents in the UK following the October 7 Hamas-led terror onslaught and the subsequent war in Gaza.
According to the latest analysis by the Community Security Trust (CST), which monitors antisemitism and provides protection for Jewish venues, there has been “a significant rise in anti-Jewish hate incidents in higher education settings.” January to June 2024 saw a record half-year figure and a sharp increase of 465% over the same period in 2023. Nearly three-quarters of incidents — in which the victims or offenders were students or academics, or which involved student unions, societies or other representative bodies — contained discourse relating to Israel, Palestine and the Middle East, compared to 52% of all incidents nationally.
The CST says no single factor can explain the higher prevalence of antisemitic incidents apparently linked to the Jewish state on campuses. However, it believes “a longstanding tradition of student anti-Israel activism can contribute to an environment in which some individuals respond to the current war in the Middle East in an antisemitic way.”
The Union of Jewish Students agrees. “Following a year where Jewish students have experienced the worst campus antisemitism crisis — that continues to unfold — a renewed campaign of BDS that targets Jewish life on campus is misguided, disruptive, and unacceptable,” a union spokesperson said in a statement. “BDS is a divisive movement prioritizing a single narrative instead of nuanced and respectful discussion. It divides peers, alienates Jewish students and creates an atmosphere that can and has fueled antisemitism on campuses across the UK.”
Since October 7, there has been a jump in anti-Israel campaigning on campuses. Student unions have passed motions attacking the Jewish state and demanding university authorities heed the demands of the BDS movement.
But, as has often been the case in the past, events at the LSE have drawn the most media attention. Anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian students occupied a building on the school’s central London campus in mid-May and issued a laundry list of demands they wanted fulfilled if they were to vacate. These included divestment from “any and all companies identified as complicit in crimes against the Palestinian people”; a ban on “representatives of the Israeli state or Zionist extremists” speaking at the university; and a bar on “active or reserve IDF members who have participated in genocidal acts or war crimes” enrolling at the university as students.
The students also demanded the university issue a public statement in collaboration with the Palestine, Islamic and other pro-BDS societies “expressing unwavering solidarity with Palestinian liberation,” and trash its adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism.
At graduation ceremonies in July, students receiving their degrees unfurled Palestinian flags and banners accusing the university of being “an Islamophobic institution.” Unsurprisingly, Jeremy Corbyn, the far-left former leader of the Labour Party, addressed students at the encampment, telling them they were “on the right side of history.”
Nonetheless, anti-Israel campaigners appear to have largely faltered in their efforts to use the conflict to push their agenda.
In June, the LSE went to court and became the first UK university to take legal action to end an anti-Israel encampment on its campus. The school’s administration has also taken a tough line against students’ BDS demands.
In a report issued in July, the LSE’s governing council said the school would not adopt the divestment policy demanded by the students which, in effect, encompassed all companies “that do business in or with the State of Israel.”
The council’s report argues its decision is consistent with LSE’s environmental, social and governance policy, noting the “impossibility of distinguishing this conflict from so many others of concern to different groups within the LSE community.”
The council rejected demands that the university back the Palestinian cause, saying its duty was to preserve “free expression and thought on campus and protect the academic freedom of all our faculty and students.” The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it said, is “an ongoing geopolitical dispute with many complex dimensions as to which members of our community hold a wide range of views and positions.”
And the council said it would protect “protest and criticism,” before pointedly adding “so long as it does not cross the line into harassment or hate and does not impede the teaching, research, and learning opportunities of others.”
Learning from their Yankee counterparts
Inspired by similar efforts in the US, the summer saw pro-Palestinian encampments appear at universities across the country, including at elite “Russell Group” colleges, such as the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Bristol, Manchester, Leeds, Exeter, and the LSE. In some instances, welcome talks at open days for prospective students were invaded — on occasion, with the permission of staff — by pro-Palestinian activists. Elsewhere, summer exams were disrupted, canceled and moved due to students barricading themselves in buildings.
The organization UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) has been keeping a close eye on developments, warning student unions and university administrators when their actions are likely to breach various British laws which regulate and have an impact upon the higher education sector.
Student unions, for instance, are charities and are barred from campaigning on issues beyond those directly affecting student life.
Those who administer university pension funds — a key target for activists calling for divestment from Israel and companies linked to the Jewish state — are subject to complex legislation. They are, for instance, not allowed to make decisions which might risk significant financial damage to the fund or which might not command broad support from the beneficiaries of the funds — primarily, former university staff.
More broadly, given their reliance on taxpayer funding, universities have to comply with regulations that bar them from allowing politics to influence their purchasing decisions.
Finally, the UK’s Equality Act is stringent and bars discrimination, harassment and victimization on the basis of factors including race (which covers nationality and ethnic origin), religion, or philosophical belief (which may include anti-Zionism), while public order legislation criminalizes threatening or abusive language and stirring up racial or religious hatred. The Terrorism Act bans the expression of views supportive of proscribed terrorist organizations, such as Hamas.
UKLFI has demanded tougher action by universities to protect Jewish students against antisemitism, harassment and discrimination, while warning them of the perils of acceding to the — often illegal — demands made by anti-Israel activists on campuses.
“We are concerned that they are responding to these unlawful encampments by giving in, which will only cause more trouble in future,” Jonathan Turner, UKLFI’s chief executive, told The Times of Israel. “They really shouldn’t allow the intimidation by the encampments to affect their policies. It’s one thing to hear reasoned argument from people behaving in a civilized way, but paying off, as it were, those who are making it extremely unpleasant for many of the other students is not actually the best course.”
In April, for instance, UKLFI told the University of Exeter, which is ranked one of Britain’s top universities, that the “current situation” on the campus was “unacceptable” for Jewish students.
It highlighted “extremely aggressive” weekly anti-Israel protests which were accompanied by chants of “genocide,” “murderers” and “from the river to the sea.” Jewish students, the letter said, were now being forced to cover up outward signs of their Jewish identity and walk in groups. It also detailed instances of lecturers describing the October 7 massacre as “resistance,” and PhD students making “viciously antisemitic” comments in an online group.
In June, UKLFI claimed that Oxford University’s “appeasement” had encouraged disruption which had led to the cancellation of some exams, while others took place amid noisy anti-Israel protests. The exam papers of Israeli, Jewish and Zionist students, who had been the “targets of such venomous hostility and threatening behavior,” should be marked more generously than those of other students, UKLFI argued, noting anti-discrimination legislation.
And last month, UKLFI wrote to the vice-chancellor of Bristol University — another top UK institution — after masked anti-Israel protesters disrupted visiting day lectures, and were then permitted or encouraged by staff to deliver speeches labeling the university “complicit in the genocide in Gaza” because it had failed to break ties with arms companies. Anyone choosing to attend Bristol University, the protesters told prospective students and their parents, had a “duty to resist” Israel’s “genocide.” The “uninterrupted hate speech,” and the role of staff in facilitating it, warned UKLFI, breached the university’s obligations under the Equality Act.
Focus on pension funds
A number of student unions — including at the University of Manchester and University of Nottingham — that passed motions calling for BDS campaigns have been forced to reverse course by their trustees following warnings by UKLFI and legal advice that advocating on issues not directly affecting students would breach their status as charities.
Turner believes the situation at UK universities is “not quite as bad” as the “horrifying” position on many US campuses.
Nonetheless, pro-Israel groups are not complacent about the potential threat posed by BDS on British campuses. Turner cites the University of Edinburgh’s response to an anti-Israel encampment which included instructions to its fund manager to pause the purchase of new shares in Amazon and Alphabet (Google’s parent company). Amazon and Google are targeted by the BDS movement because they have contracts with the Israeli government to provide cloud technology.
In a letter to the university’s vice-chancellor in June, UKLFI warned that, if the instruction affected the institution’s pension fund, the university could be opening itself up to legal action.
UKLFI is also concerned about decisions made by the University of Aberdeen in response to a pro-Palestinian student encampment.
Aberdeen has pledged a review of its investments and its contracts with IT giant HP and fast-food company Subway. (HP provides and operates technology for the Israeli government while Subway’s local franchises are accused of offering in-kind donations to the IDF).
And although the university responded to the encampment’s demand of a boycott of Israeli academic institutions by defending academic freedom, it went on to say that it had no active agreements with Israeli universities and no intention of embarking on new ones.
Britain’s previous Conservative government was pushing an anti-BDS bill through parliament when the general election was called. While the new Labour administration hasn’t proposed reviving the bill, Turner believes the UK’s existing laws remain “quite strong.”
But between the anti-Israel protests on campuses and the pro-Israel lawyers fighting on behalf of the Jewish state and Jewish students in the UK, there’s a murky grey area which no law can adequately address. Sometimes, as Turner concedes, it’s impossible to pinpoint just why a decision was made.
“Our opponents frequently claim a victory when an institution disposes of an investment in an Israeli company or a company they have targeted, even though the disposal may have been decided on purely financial grounds or on other ESG [environment, social and governance] grounds,” he said. “Conversely an institution may divest from a company because of BDS pressure or a member of staff in a key position who is hostile to Israel, but claim that it is a disposal on commercial or other ESG grounds.”
