My resignation from UCU
‘What took you so long?’ I hear you say. After many years of membership of the University and College Union, first as a UCL employee and then as a retired member, I have been (almost but not quite) a lone voice in standing against the tide of anti-Israel hatred. The most recent Hamas atrocity, and the disgraceful response to it of my Union, have finally forced me to understand that the time for this is over. On Friday 27th October the UCL branch of UCU held a meeting to discuss the conflict. Despite being the only speaker against the motions I was allowed a mere 2 minutes to speak. The following are my speaking notes. Due to the time constraint I was only able to get through about half of it. I attached the full text with my resignation email, and I am publishing it in full here.
On 7th October a pogrom was perpetrated. The first anti-Jewish pogrom of the 21st century. I pray it’s the last, although I’m not sure that sentiment is shared by everyone present here.
On 7th October, more Jews were murdered in one day than on any day since the Holocaust.
Babies were butchered, including in some cases being beheaded. Some children had been raped so savagely that the corpses were found with broken pelvises.
Families were snatched from their houses and slaughtered or kidnapped.
At a peaceful music festival, 250 young people were massacred in a pit, reminiscent of scenes from the Holocaust. The naked corpse of one young woman was dragged round in triumph.
It is not the worst that all over Israel families pray that their kidnapped loved ones are alive. The worst is that some pray their loved ones are already dead, to spare them from the torment that they know is being inflicted on the living.
All this and worse happened. We know it happened. It has been confirmed by international forensic teams, and by the phone evidence from the murderers themselves, as they gleefully filmed themselves committing the atrocities.
Some years ago I stood up at a branch meeting discussing Israel-Palestine and quoted from the genocidally antisemitic Hamas charter. Did anyone listen? Did anyone believe me? Does anyone listen now that Hamas have done exactly what they always said they would do? Exterminate the Jews, in the most savage manner possible. It was only a Jewish army, and some heroic armed civilians, that prevented the pogrom from becoming a genocide.
This is a massacre that will be remembered in Jewish history for centuries, alongside the Kishinev pogrom, Krystallnacht, Babyi Yar and the death camps. And if you don’t know what those were, educate yourselves.
Jews around the world are traumatised by what happened. We are even more traumatised by the response here. On the very day it was happening, mobs appeared on the streets of London celebrating the slaughter and calling for solidarity with the butchers.
Media, both mainstream and on line, issued lie after lie. The worst was the lie that Israel had bombed the Al-Ahli hospital. We know, absolutely, that this was an Islamic Jihad rocket that fell short, but the lie went round the world, a medieval blood libel that fuelled world-wide anti-Jewish riots. The oldest synagogue in Tunisia was razed to the ground.
The old lies are trotted out. The lie that Israel is a western colonial implant. The lie that Israel is an apartheid state. The lie that Israel is committing genocide. And the old slogans are trotted out too. From the river to the sea. Free Palestine. How many of you have chanted them on demos? How many of you will still do so? Well now you should know — as many of us always knew — what those slogans mean. Whether you realise it or not, you are calling for a new Holocaust. Let me just quote briefly from a statement by Manchester PSC on the 7th, the very day the slaughter was happening. ‘The brave fighters [i.e. the Hamas murder squads] gave us all a glimpse of a liberated Palestine’. Indeed they did. And every Jew now knows what a ‘liberated Palestine’ means.
Jews are left in fear as Islamist mobs roam the streets of London calling for the deaths of Jews.
And now, the final indignity for me, I have to read the motions put forward for this meeting (link here NB the worst motion, calling for intifada until victory, does not appear as it was censored by the university). The disgusting gaslighting and moral inversion contained in this order paper makes me sick. Most of the motions don’t even mention the atrocities I’ve described. In another case it’s merely a sort of throat-clearing before getting on to the real business of demonising Israel.
Some of them call for a ceasefire. Well, where were your calls for a ceasefire while Hamas were slaughtering Jews? Only now, when Israel hits back, you suddenly agonise over poor suffering civilians. Reading this order paper feels a bit like reading Der Sturmer after Krystallnacht, as it praises the brave German people for standing up to the Jewish menace.
Until now I have done my best to maintain civilised relations with people within this branch, even while we disagree on Israel-Palestine. No longer. I cannot be civil while this branch, and this union, glorifies the slaughter of my people.
Jews in Britain, including myself, have received many, many expressions of support from non-Jewish friends, neighbours and colleagues, and that has helped to keep us going. But not here, clearly. Reading this order paper makes me feel dirty, and I never want to go through this experience again.
For the last few months, Israel has been divided on internal issues. Not now, as they stand together against the murderers. For ever, Jews in the UK and elsewhere have disagreed with each other on virtually everything, including Israel. Not now. We stand together, united as I’ve never known it, against both the murderers and their apologists and cheerleaders here. And I stand with them.
