Starmer Promised to Fight Antisemitism — Then Handed University Training to Zionists

Right, so an antisemitic attack targets a synagogue in Manchester. It’s serious, hateful, and rightly condemned. But the response from Labour now, isn’t expanded anti-racism or cross-community protection — it’s a crackdown on students protesting Israel’s war on Gaza. The government roll out of 600 “antisemitism training” sessions across UK universities, are not going to be delivered not by neutral educators, but by the Union of Jewish Students — a Zionist group formally affiliated with the World Zionist Organisation, which oversees illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. For this rancid Starmer regime therefore, criticism of Israel now falls under the jurisdiction of hate. A legitimately antisemitic attack is being weaponised to promote pro Israel narratives in our Universities. The BBC played its part in this on Laura Kuenssberg’s stenography show this weekend. Dissent is reframed as extremism. And while actual Jewish safety is used as political cover, what’s really being policed is speech, protest, and the right to stand with Palestine. This isn’t protection. It’s ideological discipline — and Labour want to shovel it into the classroom.
Right, so Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has positioned itself as the responsible alternative to the chaos of previous leadership. One of its clearest messages though, repeated through press releases, televised interviews, and internal policy documents, is that antisemitism must be confronted head-on. In and of itself, that’s not a line many of us would disagree with. This line is presented as a moral imperative after all. Labour under Starmer no longer simply opposes antisemitism. It uses the fight against antisemitism to signal moral clarity, political responsibility, and distance from the Jeremy Corbyn era, still smeared as antisemitic by the worst dross that passes for mainstream media.
This might appear, on the surface, to be a natural course correction, but this is Starmer we’re talking about. What has now emerged is a policy framework in which real antisemitic violence, namely the recent Manchester synagogue attack, is being mobilised as the pretext for a broader ideological project — a project not aimed at confronting racism, but at consolidating pro-Israel orthodoxy within British universities. The mechanism for this campaign is the government’s partnership with the Union of Jewish Students, a Zionist organisation with links to illegal settlement infrastructure in the West Bank, tasked now with delivering 600 antisemitism training sessions in higher education.
What is being constructed through this programme is not a safeguarding system. It is an enforcement architecture. And its political function is clear: to recast opposition to Israeli state violence as racial hate, to bring university policy into alignment with Israeli diplomatic strategy, and to shut down student-led resistance to occupation and apartheid.
So we’re all familiar with the recent attack on a synagogue in Manchester. This was a criminal act motivated by hate. This was genuine antisemitism. Local and national politicians condemned the attack. Media outlets ran coverage emphasising the broader context of rising antisemitism across the UK. Jewish organisations called for increased protection and institutional support. These responses in large part were both necessary and appropriate given what had happened.
However, the policy direction taken in response to the incident has diverged from that cause. Instead of expanding anti-racist protections across the board, the Labour Party, through Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, detailed as she appeared on Laura Kuenssberg’s Sunday morning politics show, used the attack as a pretext to launch a campaign aimed at curbing antisemitism in universities. During that televised interview, Phillipson announced that the government would be funding 600 antisemitism training sessions across British higher education institutions and that the contract to deliver this programme was being given to the Union of Jewish Students.
The language used to justify this rollout was immediately revealing. Phillipson one point that was raised during that interview citing what was being described as a rising tide of antisemitism on campuses were the lyrics by British punk band Bob Vylan, who of course now infamously chanted “Death to the IDF” and this was pointed to as evidence of this trend. This lyric, whatever one’s personal view of its tone, refers to the Israel Defense Forces, a state military organisation, one the Green Party under Zack Polanski have said they’d proscribe as a terror organisation. It does not target Jews, it targets the Israeli military. Under any objective definition of antisemitism, it does not qualify.
This framing reveals the structural intention of the programme. The distinction between Jews as a people, Judaism as a religion, and Israel as a state is being erased by design. The policy is not concerned with racial hate. It is concerned with political speech. The reclassification of anti-military or anti-colonial slogans as antisemitic is a clear indication that the policy’s purpose is to collapse criticism of Zionism into an accusation of racism. To keep on conflating the two, to keep on endangering Jewish people as a result of that, arguably a narrative that could have led to the attack on that synagogue in Manchester and the conflation in my mind is itself racist.
On the same broadcast, Laura Kuenssberg repeated an allegation from the advocacy group Stand With Us, claiming that a group of anti-Israel students at an unnamed university – which is awfully given we cannot check the story - had compiled a list of Jewish students to “mark and harass” them. No institution was named. No evidence was provided. No legal complaint was filed. Yet the claim was broadcast on national television regardless. The source, Stand With Us, is a known pro-Israel organisation with documented ties to Israeli government departments and a history of disinformation and aggressive campaigning on campuses in the UK and US.
The effect of airing that claim, in a segment focused on Labour’s policy rollout, was to produce a narrative climate in which pro-Palestinian student activism was indistinguishable from hate speech, and in which government-led ideological control could be legitimised as a public safety measure.
The organisation chosen to deliver the government’s training sessions is not a neutral body. The Union of Jewish Students, by its own definition, is a Zionist organisation. Its constitution affirms support for Israel as a Jewish and democratic state and endorses the principle of Jewish self-determination in Israel. UJS runs programmes promoting engagement with Israeli officials and supports policies that reject the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. Its education materials and political advocacy consistently defend Israeli state interests.
UJS also maintains a formal relationship with the World Zionist Organization. The WZO, through its Settlement Division, operates as a key facilitator of Israel’s illegal colonisation of the West Bank. The WZO operates as a semi-official arm of the Israeli state, channelling public funds and logistical support to settlement construction while avoiding legal accountability through its designation as a “private” body. The settlements built with WZO support are widely recognised as violations of international law.
In affiliating with WZO and aligning itself with Israeli state policy, UJS functions not simply as a student welfare group, but as a participant in a global political programme. The delivery of antisemitism training by an organisation with this profile introduces a conflict of interest so severe that it undermines any semblance of the programme’s credibility. This is not the deployment of a neutral anti-racism framework. It is the imposition of a political litmus test. How far can Starmer push this?
At the centre of Labour’s framework is the IHRA definition of antisemitism. This working definition, now widely used across public institutions, includes eleven examples of antisemitism — seven of which refer directly to the state of Israel. These examples include statements such as “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour” and “applying double standards by requiring of it a behaviour not expected of any other democratic nation.”
This formulation allows for the classification of statements opposing apartheid, occupation, and ethnonationalism as expressions of racial hatred. It provides ideological cover for treating Palestinian narratives as threats. It also permits institutions to classify political slogans, calls for boycott, or academic research critical of Israel as hate speech. The use of the IHRA definition in university policy has been widely condemned by academics and human rights lawyers, including the definition’s own lead drafter, who has stated publicly that it is being misused to suppress academic and political freedom.
In practice, students have been referred to disciplinary panels or subjected to institutional investigations for holding banners, chanting slogans, or distributing literature that falls under the IHRA’s politicised criteria. Phrases such as “From the river to the sea” are routinely framed as incitement, despite their consistent use in Palestinian civil society and their basis in political geography.
In parallel, Jewish students who reject Zionism have reported being marginalised or misrepresented by campus Jewish organisations. UJS does not formally represent anti-Zionist Jewish groups. In several reported cases, Jewish students opposing Israeli policy were excluded from public dialogues, accused of betrayal, or silenced by mainstream Jewish student bodies. The resulting effect is that anti-Zionist Jews are erased from the public narrative, reinforcing the illusion that Jewish identity and support for Israel are inseparable.
Labour’s programme has received minimal scrutiny from the press. The BBC, in particular, has played a central role in validating the political framework of the policy. By airing unverified claims from lobby groups, platforming pro-Israel politicians without challenge, and consistently excluding Palestinian perspectives, the BBC has helped produce a consensus narrative in which pro-Palestinian protest is framed as extremism.
The latest broadcast of Kuenssberg’s show featuring Bridget Phillipson and Priti Patel exemplifies this pattern. Kuenssberg did not mention Patel’s resignation over secret meetings with Israeli officials. Nor was there any effort to interrogate the interests or credibility of Stand With Us. No Palestinian guests or anti-Zionist Jewish representatives were invited to participate in the discussion. Where’s the balance this time BBC? The effect of this silence is structural. It removes dissent from sight and frames the debate in terms set by the state and its allies.
This is not an editorial oversight. It is an example of narrative enforcement, in which a public broadcaster advances state-aligned messaging under the guise of balanced reporting. The outcome is a media climate that justifies policy repression, marginalises resistance, and isolates those who speak against dominant narratives.
The implementation of Labour’s university antisemitism policy has had immediate consequences for students. Reports from student organisers and rights monitors indicate that pro-Palestinian activism is being subjected to enhanced scrutiny, institutional penalties, and informal pressure. Students involved in Gaza solidarity encampments have faced referrals to the Prevent programme.
Others have been warned against using certain slogans, even when those slogans are in use by human rights organisations and are historically grounded.
Campus groups advocating for Palestinian rights have had events cancelled, funding withdrawn, or meeting spaces revoked following complaints from external organisations. Muslim students, in particular, report being subject to disproportionate monitoring. The result is a chilling effect across political life on campus. Students censor themselves. Events are quietly dropped. Conversations are redirected. Political education gets undermined.
These developments take place within a broader context of state securitisation. By embedding Zionist-aligned training and IHRA-defined speech limits into university policy, Labour is operationalising a form of soft censorship. The institutions of education are being enlisted into an ideological campaign that not only distorts the nature of antisemitism but uses the fight against racism as a mechanism for political control.
The risk is not only to students. Academics researching Israel-Palestine, teaching critical human rights law, or hosting public lectures on decolonial theory have faced administrative pressure and reputational attacks. This degrades the principle of academic freedom and undermines the role of the university as a site of open inquiry.
Labour’s current approach to antisemitism in universities cannot be understood as a good-faith effort to protect Jewish students. It is a deliberate political strategy built on redefining antisemitism to encompass opposition to Zionism, outsourcing training to organisations with clear ideological interests, and marginalising voices that challenge state narratives. The outcome is the reclassification of political protest as hate, the erasure of Palestinian perspectives from campus life, and the weaponisation of antisemitism in the service of a foreign policy agenda.
Jewish students deserve protection from racism absolutely. They deserve protection from their faith being weaponised against them in the interests of another state as well. Palestinian students deserve the right to organise without being cast as extremists. Academic institutions must remain spaces of plurality, not enforcers of state ideology. What Labour is building is not anti-racism infrastructure. It is a mechanism for indoctrination.
Any response to antisemitism must be grounded in a commitment to truth, plurality, and justice. Anything less is not protection — it is propaganda.
Of course whilst Starmer and Co try and indoctrinate universities, Starmer himself might be heading for a day in the dock over his pro Israel proclivities – namely over the abandonment of British civilians on board vessels that were part of the Global Sumud Flotilla to Israel’s tender mercies – British citizens being kidnapped in international waters by a foreign state and Starmer didn’t say boo to a goose over it. Get all the details of the bind he’s rightly put himself in in this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch.
Please do also hit like, share and subscribe if you haven’t done so already so as to ensure you don’t miss out on all new daily content as well as spreading the word and helping to support the channel at the same time which is very much appreciated, holding power to account for ordinary working class people and I will hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.