British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called on university bosses on Thursday to protect Jewish students from what he said was harassment and antisemitic abuse from a vocal minority at protests on campuses.
\nStudents at some British universities have set up small encampments in protest at Israel\u2019s conduct in its war against Hamas, but there has so far not been the same scale of unrest seen at some US colleges.
\nSunak invited leaders from some of Britain\u2019s best known universities to Downing Street and told them they had to take a zero-tolerance approach to incidents of antisemitism and any other form of discrimination, his spokesperson said.
\nThe prime minister \u201ccalled on universities to remain bastions of tolerance where debate takes place with respect for others and where every student feels safe,\u201d the spokesperson told reporters after the meeting.
\nSunak, attended alongside his education, security and communities ministers, and in the discussion concerns were raised about \u201cnon-student agitators\u201d infiltrating campuses, the spokesperson said.
\nLast year, the Community Security Trust, a charity that advises British Jews on security matters, recorded 182 antisemitic incidents in which the victims or offenders were students or academics, or which involved student unions.
\nTell Mama, a group that monitors Islamophobic incidents and supports victims, said it has also seen a rise in anti-Muslim incidents on campuses.
\nIsrael\u2019s invasion of Gaza has killed nearly 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gazan authorities, and triggered a catastrophic humanitarian crisis and famine threatening the enclave\u2019s 2.5 million residents.
\nThe war began when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
\nThe Union of Jewish Students, which represents Jewish students in Britain, warned last week that the encampments were creating a \u201chostile and toxic atmosphere\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called on university bosses on Thursday to protect Jewish students from what he said was harassment and antisemitic abuse from a vocal minority at protests on campuses. Students at some British universities have set up small encampments in protest at Israel\u2019s conduct in its war against Hamas, but there has …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":21345,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21341"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21346,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21341\/revisions\/21346"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}