Rabid Israelophobia has infiltrated the classroom

When Damien Egan, the Labour MP for Bristol North East, arranged to visit Bristol Brunel Academy in September, it should have been routine. A careers talk with students about parliamentary life. Instead, what followed was a chilling demonstration of how anti-Israel activism has become a vehicle for hate.

The visit had to be cancelled after a campaign by the National Education Union (NEU) and the Bristol branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC). Their objection? Egan is Jewish, married to an Israeli, and serves as vice-chair of Labour Friends of Israel.

And so, in a shocking move, the school moved to ban an MP simply because activists disagreed with his views. It capitulated to those who explicitly stated that Jewish MPs who support Israel are ‘not welcome in our schools’. Teachers at the school were even planning to wear keffiyehs on the day of his visit and preparing ‘work that [they] could do with students’ to prime them against their MP before he could even speak.

In a grotesque inversion, school leaders justified the ban by citing ‘safeguarding concerns’. But the real safeguarding failure belongs to the school itself, which capitulated to hate. The activists depicting Egan’s visit as dangerous weren’t engaged in principled political opposition. They were excluding and demonising a Jew.

In the worldview of these educational activists, Jewishness is acceptable only when apologetic and distanced from the world’s only Jewish state. An MP can be pro-Palestine and welcome in schools. But a Jewish MP who supports Israel’s existence? Apparently, he symbolises a ‘genocidal assault’ from which children must be protected.

The campaign against Egan was mounted by an interconnected network. There is the PSC, which has been organising near-weekly marches against Israel since it heard Israeli Jews had been slaughtered in their homes by Hamas on 7 October 2023. It has a long and active affiliation with the NEU, encouraging members to join rallies that have been characterised by anti-Jewish racism. During a rally in 2021, the NEU’s general secretary, Daniel Kebede, told the crowd to ‘globalise the intifada’.

The NEU also coaches its members on how to bring the ‘Palestinian struggle’ into schools. With the ban on Egan, that’s exactly what we got: a hatred of Israel brought into a British school. If nothing else, this contravenes the Education Act 1996, which requires schools to provide ‘a balanced presentation of opposing views’.

The animosity of parts of the education sector towards Israel is a long-standing problem. In 2021, a woman who vandalised the Warsaw Ghetto with the words ‘Free Gaza and Palestine’ ran an ‘Understanding ant-Semitism’ training session for the NEU. That same year, then education secretary Gavin Williamson was forced to remind headteachers of their legal duties after Jewish students and teachers faced widespread bullying. In 2024, another former education secretary, Gillian Keegan, condemned hateful NEU conference motions where a Jewish teacher was heckled for objecting to Hamas being glorified. Last year the Department for Education warned NEU teachers about their legal duty to be politically impartial and to protect Jewish children’s safety.

Yet despite the warnings and strong words, activist teachers have never faced any consequences. In 2024, a Year 9 teacher in London called Hamas ‘defenders of humanity’, and said it had ‘committed no crime’ on 7 October. The Teaching Regulation Agency found his conduct amounted to unacceptable professional behaviour. But it didn’t issue a teaching ban.

This week, communities secretary Steve Reed has called the ban on Egan ‘an absolute outrage’ and promised those responsible would be ‘called in’ and ‘held to account’. It’s important he follows through on this. Jewish MPs should be free to represent their constituents without facing exclusion based on their identity. Schools need to stand up to activist pressure and sectarian demands. And we all need to recognise anti-Jewish racism when it wears the mask of ‘progressive’ politics.

Bristol Brunel Academy has arranged an ‘alternative date’ for Egan’s visit – we’ll see if it stands firm this time. If Jewish MPs need ideological purity tests to enter British schools, we’re no longer the country we think we are. Right now, the sectarian activists are winning.

Alex Hearn is director of Labour Against Anti-Semitism.