Tuck Report into the NUS and antisemitism – unfit for purpose
There has been wide coverage of the Tuck report into allegations of antisemitism in the National Union of Students (NUS). We do not doubt there have been instances of antisemitism that have been poorly dealt with but we do not believe the Tuck report is a fair or balanced account. Its almost exclusive focus is on hurt felt by some Jewish students who identify strongly with Israel. The Union of Jewish Students (UJS) is, by its own account, passionately engaged with Israel but its perspectives dominate Tuck’s report uncritically. NUS represents many students, Palestinian, Jewish and others who are fiercely critical of Israel but their perspectives are not reflected at all.
Some treatment of pro-Israel UJS members may exhibit antisemitism but far more interaction is rooted in deep disagreement about the nature of the Israeli state and its actions. Any behaviour rooted in antisemitism is not to be tolerated and must be addressed by engaging people in an educational process about the nature of antisemitism. That education cannot start from the stance of the inadequate IHRA working definition and must recognise that criticism of Israel and endorsement of Boycott Divestment and Sanctions are not indicators of antisemitism.
We commend the responses of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine which we reprint below.
Palestine Solidarity Campaign
PSC is deeply concerned at the outcome of the investigation by Rebecca Tuck KC into antisemitism within the National Union of Students (NUS). The report released today follows the unprecedented decision in November 2022 to dismiss its elected President, Shaima Dallali, a decision PSC condemned.
From the outset of the investigation, we raised fundamental concerns about the terms of reference of the investigation and the failure to acknowledge how the conflation of antisemitism with legitimate critique of Israeli oppression has been used to silence Palestinians and those who support their rights. We have also raised concerns about the disproportionate involvement of the Union of Jewish Students (UJS), which was given significant authority in the framing of the investigation and the appointment of the independent investigator.
Whilst we recognise the need for the NUS to consult with a body representing many Jewish students in addressing concerns about antisemitism, the degree of prioritisation of a single interested party violates due process, in particular because it was clear that some allegations of antisemitism being investigated were clearly cases of legitimate protest of the Israeli state.
The report also fails to take into account the role the UJS has played in the conflation of antisemitism and legitimate critique of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people, including its active promotion of resources which suggest that it is inherently antisemitic to advocate for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against companies involved in violations of Palestinian rights, or to describe Israel as a state practising the crime of apartheid, despite this being the view of Amnesty International, B’Tselem and Palestinian civil society.
These concerns have been proven justified by the content of the report, which the NUS committed to accepting in full before it was even written. Whilst the report does touch on incidents of antisemitism such as the deplorable “white t-shirt parties” held on campuses, which should be rightly investigated and condemned, the report’s primary and explicit focus is on finding antisemitism in the campaign for Palestinian rights. It reinforces, both in its main body and its recommendations, the conflation of antisemitism and legitimate advocacy for Palestinian rights.
A key recommendation is that students should be “facilitated to engage in more nuanced debate” when discussing Palestinian rights. There can be nothing nuanced in enabling Palestinians to articulate the facts about what they are being subjected to by the Israeli state – forcible transfer, home demolitions, arbitrary detention and torture, and armed violence, including the assassination of human rights defenders. It is grotesque to suggest that debates about Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, a set of non-violent tactics to end complicity in these abuses, should be facilitated to ensure that nuance is maintained, that “both sides of the argument” are heard, and that students who identify with Israel are protected from discomfort. Must we ensure everyone hears “both sides” of colonisation? Will this mean the NUS start imposing facilitation on debates about showing solidarity with Ukrainians? On showing solidarity with Black people struggling against racism?
Astonishingly, in a multi-page section on different interpretations of Zionism, not a single Palestinian perspective is cited. Throughout the report, there is no mention of Palestinian students, or the impact this report will have on their engagement with the NUS and student activism.
In the summer of 2022, accusations of antisemitism in the NUS began to dominate media headlines, fuelled by Government threats to cease engagement with the NUS and to cut its funding. At this point the NUS made explicit to PSC that it regarded these threats as potentially existential. It has asserted that it will not allow those threats to divert it from its decolonisation work, of which support for the liberation of the Palestinian people is an integral part. If it is to make good on these commitments and live up to its broader obligations to be an anti-racist institution, then it must take these urgent steps:
- Of paramount importance, it needs to make clear its understanding that being consistently anti-racist means opposing antisemitism robustly but also opposing the conflation of antisemitism with advocacy for Palestinian rights.
- The NUS must reaffirm publicly that consistent anti-racism means standing opposed to all structures of racist oppression, including the system of apartheid imposed by Israel upon the Palestinian people.
- The NUS must abandon any process, including training and guidance for students on Palestine, that suggests the rights of the Palestinian people and the facts of Palestinian history are a matter for debate.
We will continue to hold the NUS to these challenges. We also call upon all students who are committed to anti-racist work and who support the Palestinian struggle for liberation to demonstrate their refusal to be silenced by joining the Student Day of Action, called for 17th February.
BRICUP Statement on NUS Tuck Report
13 January 2023
The Tuck Report into complaints of antisemitism in the National Union of Students is a travesty. The British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP) gave written and oral evidence to the Tuck Inquiry about the danger of criticism of Israel being assumed to be antisemitic. Evidently we were talking to deaf ears.
Key points
- The selection of the KC to conduct the Inquiry was subject to a veto from the Union of Jewish Students, which represents just one of the views that Jewish students hold on Israel/Palestine.
- The Report acknowledges far-right antisemitism on campus, and then ignores it to concentrate on criticisms students make of Israel.
- The Report briefly acknowledges that campaigning against Israel’s crimes, e.g. by advocating for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), is not necessarily antisemitic, but makes recommendations that would, in effect, suppress it.
- The Report recommends eliminating candidates for NUS office based on historic social media posts, including immature teenage comments; this is a licence for the selective elimination of those with passionate social commitments.
- Overall the recommendations if adopted will intensify the existing chilling effect on free speech over Israel/Palestine on campus.
Statement
The British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP) expresses its dismay at the Report, Independent investigation into allegations of antisemitism within NUS. Dismay but sadly not surprise.
The selection of the ‘independent’ investigator into antisemitism in the National Union of Students (NUS) was made conditional on his/her acceptability to the Union of Jewish Students (UJS), an organisation partly funded by the Israeli Embassy. The framing of the report by Rebecca Tuck KC reflects this provenance on page after page.
The Tuck Report produces no credible evidence of the prevalence of the ‘anti-Zionist’ antisemitism it seeks to inhibit. No survey was carried out. No evidence is offered that UJS represents all Jewish students. The data it uses was gathered with the assistance of an energetic campaign by UJS among its activists. There has been no attempt to discover how representative these views and experiences are of Jewish students at UK universities. The Report marginalises other Jewish voices. It even acknowledges (on page 1) that its approach carries “an inherent risk of being partisan and incomplete”.
The most reliable source of evidence on the attitudes of British Jews to Israel is the 2015 survey carried out by City University. When asked “do you consider yourself to be a Zionist?” 31% replied ‘no’ and 10% responded “Not sure”. That 41%, or whatever the figure now is 7 years later, is a barely acknowledged presence in the Report.
The bias in the Report’s analysis runs through its selection of extended quotations from a range of books, articles and other reports that are used to justify its conclusions and recommendations. They run to many pages in length. Overwhelmingly they are the work of committed supporters of Israel and of the discredited IHRA ‘working definition’ of antisemitism. The one clear exception runs to only 5 lines – and that is only a statement on the length of time that the debate about antisemitism has been running. Its author was one of those who gave verbal evidence to the Inquiry. Yet his authoritative book-length critique of the conflation of antisemitism with anti-Zionism is not even mentioned.
The actions recommended by the Report will give added impetus to the silencing of the voices of Palestinian students and those who support the rights of Palestinians, who live under what the prestigious human rights bodies Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have unequivocally described as apartheid. Nowhere in the report is the significance of this outrage to human rights even mentioned. Repeated concern is expressed, however, for the discomfort that (some) Jewish students have experienced in NUS debates and other meetings.
The Report in effect recommends the avoidance of this discomfort through the suppression of active debate on Israel/Palestine. Debates on BDS should only be allowed under the control of ‘an experienced facilitator’. Many students outraged at the violation of the human rights of Palestinians will be prevented from even running for NUS office by the vetting of their historic social media accounts.
That there is a disturbing level of low-level antisemitism on many campuses was revealed in 2020 in a magisterial report by the Academic Board of University College London. This antisemitism consists principally of derogatory remarks based on traditional stereotyping.
The Tuck Report urges a ‘zero tolerance approach to antisemitism’ but has nothing to say about the educational programme that would be needed to achieve it. Indeed this low level type of antisemitism is barely mentioned in the Tuck Report.
Instead it homes in, unerringly, on incidents and events in which political criticism has been made of Israel. These make Jewish students ‘uncomfortable’. The Report allows the potential discomfort to some, and by no means all, Jewish students to trump what should be the over-riding concern to preserve freedom of expression in our universities. If implemented, these recommendations will deter, even prevent, students from exploring and expressing their concerns about social injustice. That is a travesty of the sort of education we should be providing.
If in any doubt about where the UJS is coming from read this:
https://electronicintifada.net/content/union-jewish-students-voice-israel/35381?fbclid=IwAR0mYelWq8gfym8_GUm3GW8T80Tmmh7gFcUG76pB-gVfDiDQLZkm9YufVTM
I only skim read the Rebecca Tuck report but …,
While there was a “DEFINITIONS of antisemitism” section within the report there was barely a mention of the Jerusalem Definition (no other definition was mentioned).
Tuck’s analysis of the Jerusalem Definition’s similarity with the IHRA says both definitions agree on the perceived close connections between antisemitism and negative attitudes to Zionism and Israel. Having read the Jerusalem Definition’s sections A,B and C in their entirety, in my opinion that text CONTRADICTS what Tuck claims it says.
The PSC three-requirement statement is good, but omits the presence – indeed the prevalence – of systematic anti-Palestinian (and more broadly anti Arab and Islamophobic) prejudice, discrimination, discourse and indeed persecution, – especially within this country, within British universities, within the British establishment at large and especially within the NUS. Each form of racism requires not ‘positive’ privilege (‘queue-jumping’ in antiracist work ), but thorough investigation of its history, specificity, internal form and content, location within British society and politics – and especially its function, if any, to uphold the power structure and policy of the British ruling capitalist class. The positive privileging of ‘responses’ to alleged racism is allied to the chauvinism of the allegedly oppressed group: and the history of the terms and conduct of this ”report” constitute a prime example of this form of privileging, even when the link with the apartheid Zionist state (any criticism of which is effectively defined as antisemitic by the ‘IHRA’, is partialled out). The NUS-Tuck ensemble is thus itself an example of racism – anti-Palestinian racism.
I read in the news that one of the worst instances of Anti-Semitism was of a student being refused the use of a prayer room as it had been pre-booked for another meeting.
Often criticism can be constructive as it highlights things that can be improved. To say that nothing about Israel could be improved would stretch credibility beyond breaking point. If people who are committed to Israel were prepared to accept criticism as legitimate, even constructive comment then everyone could participate in a civilised debate instead of taking offence and adopting hard and uncompromising positions like immature adolescents.