Antisemitism in schools and colleges in England

Who we are, and why we wish to comment

Our group was established in 1974 by people whose formative experiences were in the fights against poverty, antisemitism and fascism in 1930s Britain. A key motivation for the founding of our group was the sharp growth in racism and fascism in the 1970s and our desire that the wider Jewish community should be positively engaged in the struggles against these threats, whoever the principal targets of racial hatred were. Our group has been continuously engaged in local and national bodies campaigning on these issues.

Many of our members are or have been educators, in nursery, primary, secondary, further, higher and adult education, and in teacher training institutions. Some are involved today in directly educating teachers about the rise of fascism and antisemitism in Britain and Europe in the 1930s, forms of resistance to it, and teaching about the Holocaust. This includes leading study tours to Poland.

Our approach to antisemitism and our current concerns

Antisemitism and other forms of hatred, especially Islamophobia and anti-immigrant and anti-refugee sentiment, are rising again in many spheres. In contrast to the Independent Review’s terms of reference, which highlight 7 October 2023 as the catalyst for growing antisemitism, our research and activities, in collaboration with a range of other organisations, indicate that the current normalisation of racist attitudes including antisemitism, and the increasing strength of far right movements in many societies, are part of a process that goes back well before 2023.

We do recognise that events directly related to the Israel-Palestine conflict, both the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023 and the Israeli state’s continuing response to it since then, including Israel’s massive destruction of Palestinian civilian lives and homes, and the devastation of health and educational infrastructure, have contributed to despairing and angry attitudes expressed outside of that region, including here in Britain. While mainstream protest movements have remained politically focused against actions by the Israeli government and military, individual attitudes often fail to differentiate between the Israeli government, the Israeli people, and diaspora Jews, as well as between Jews holding different political perspectives and allegiances.

We are also aware of a polarisation of attitudes within the Jewish community, with a growing and highly visible far-right element among diaspora Jews who show indifference to or even support that destruction and devastation, and have openly embraced Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism, sometimes violently.

Our philosophical approach is strongly influenced by our experience over decades of united work with other minority communities against discrimination and hatred. It is also strongly influenced by the work of eminent scholars such as Michael Rothberg and his concept of multi-directional memory. He refuses to see communities’ lived experiences of racism, ethno-nationalism and genocide as a zero-sum game. Instead, he emphasises communities learning from each other’s experiences of racism in order to strengthen and expand empathy and solidarity, rather than engaging in building a league table of suffering.

One of our most central concerns at this time, is that positive relations between Jewish people in Britain with people from other minority communities that face daily racism, must be cherished and enhanced. This must especially include the section of the Jewish community working and learning in educational settings.

Our group’s desire is that all learners/students and school/college staff should be equipped to recognise and respond confidently to antisemitism and other forms of racism in ways that challenge them effectively. We want to ensure that educational institutions develop a range of strategies for educating the perpetrators of racist actions and changing their minds.

One enduring moment of solidarity that continues to be very important for our group dates back to 4 May 1978, the racist murder of Altab Ali, a 24-year-old immigrant Bengali clothing worker by three youths, in a district where the parents and grandparents of many of our members had also been immigrant clothing workers. It was a horrific event, but we also know that Altab Ali’s murderers were not born racist. They learned that. And their education, tragically, did not prevent them acquiring those attitudes.

We have a commitment to children’s rights and to the right of children to have a voice and agency in their own lives. Fifty years after the Soweto Uprising by school children who refused to accept the extreme discrimination they were suffering on the single basis that they were black, especially through the education system, we value this as an example of how everyone, young or old, not only has a right to voice their own needs and concerns and to protest against injustice, but should be helped to inform themselves and supported in doing so.

The growing awareness of young students to the situation of Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank has been seen by educational establishments as something to be suppressed and silenced, and any display of kinship with Palestine or the Palestinian people is interpreted as antagonistic or hostile to Jews. Instead, we should see this an opportunity to engage with them and confront some dangerous antisemitic stereotypes that are circulating on social media. This is the moment at which a student may actively want to understand a deep and historically complex subject; and they are likely to be more open to information and ideas that challenge the assumptions and conspiracy theories they are receiving via the internet than to the content of a standard history lesson.

Definitions of antisemitism

We are extremely concerned that the stated terms of reference for this important inquiry privilege the use of the widely criticised and discredited IHRA Definition of Antisemitism. It is a definition backed by a series of examples that conflate attitudes to Jews with attitudes to the separate issues of Israel/Palestine and attitudes towards the political ideology of Zionism. One of its sharpest critics has, indeed, been its author, Kenneth Stern, who regrets that it has too often been used as a witch-hunting tool rather than as a means of enlightenment and positive action. Even those who defend it, must recognise that it has generated conflict and hostility, diverting, rather than facilitating, constructive debate and a deeper understanding of antisemitism

From its foundation until today, our group’s own attitude to antisemitism has been to recognise and highlight its continuing presence. In 2026, that means acknowledging its continued centrality to far-right theories that seek to explain global social, political and economic developments. This is demonstrated especially in relation to the “Great Replacement Theory”, which unites disparate far-right groups internationally. It claims that Muslims are “replacing” white Christians in the West – and blames shadowy Jewish figures for facilitating this process.

While some people see antisemitism as historic, rather than a current feature of racism, claiming that hostility to Jews has been superseded by hostility to other groups, our knowledge, research and experience indicates that that antisemitism is very much alive and kicking today. Our perception is that fascists do not replace their “enemies”, they accumulate them. Today, we are increasingly alarmed that antisemitic conspiracy theories not only still exist but are now spreading beyond their traditional far-right home. For us that emphasises the urgency of Jews and other groups that face daily racism working and educating together against these ideas.

We articulated our group’s definition of antisemitism in a statement in July 2017 www.jewishsocialist.org.uk/news/item/fight-antisemitism-and-defend-free-speech. That statement condemned the “uses and abuses of the IHRA definition”. It defined antisemitism instead as: “prejudice, hostility and discrimination against Jews, as Jews, and the use of negative stereotypes of Jews”.

In 2021 we declared our support for the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, which itself defined antisemitism as: “discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews, as Jews, (or Jewish institutions as Jewish)”

The Jerusalem Declaration was the result of two years of deliberation by hundreds of scholars working in Holocaust History, Jewish Studies and Middle East Studies, who shared a determination to fight antisemitism while protecting free expression. Michael Rothberg was one of those scholars.

We urge the Reference Group Members of your Inquiry NOT to use the IHRA definition but to use the much clearer, more consistent and inclusive definition and approach of the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism.

We note that the Terms of Reference of the Independent Review quote approvingly from the work of the Institute of Jewish Policy Research (IJPR). We respect the IJPR’s work and we would urge your Reference Group Members to look at their other very recent reports – such as the one identifying the widening range of political attitudes within the Jewish community in Britain today. It noted especially the significant decline in identification with Zionism, particularly among the Jewish under-30 age group.

That cohort consists of Jews with current or very recent experience of the education system in Britain. Within that group 44% identify as either anti-Zionist or non-Zionist. That 44% are likely to be extremely sceptical of a definition of antisemitism that is so intimately linked with narrow and defensive attitudes towards Israel and towards classic Zionist formulations about Jewish self-determination. Those formulations are increasingly being questioned within (and beyond) our own community and not just by that younger cohort.

Finally, among the questions you expect the review to consider are two that we consider particularly problematic. The first is the assumption that staff should be politically impartial, partcularly in relation to Israel/Palestine and, presumably on other issues, too. If educators and educational institutions are genuinely taking a stand against racism, including antisemitism, they would – and should – find themselves at odds with racist political philosophies which, as the Review acknowledges, are becoming increasingly normalised. This means that racism and antisemitism are being freely and confidently expressed by some (including mainstream) political parties and by influential mainstream media. It is impossible to square this with a requirement that teachers challenging antisemitism should be “politically impartial”.

The following point invokes “fundamental British values” as a vehicle for promoting mutual respect. It does not outline these values (perhaps assuming respondents are familiar with the DfE’s list of British values and the duty to promote them (democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect for and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs, and for those without faith) or acknowledge that these – as well as the concept itself – are highly contested. There is a vast literature on this subject but at its most basic, there is an unbridgeable gulf between those who portray “British values” as benign and beneficent and those whose life experience – perhaps as refugees, colonised peoples, racialised minorities, and, incidentally, as targets of the Prevent strategy (also invoked in the Terms of Reference) – has denied them many of these rights and led them to the opposite conclusion. We believe that exploring these conflicting beliefs and experiences, rather than imposing a singular set of supposedly shared values, is fundamental to challenging antisemitism and all forms of racism.