http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/3329296/the-jihad-against-britains-jews.thtml

I am hearing ever more alarming accounts of the deepening attrition
against British Jews in the wake of the incitement against Israel
provoked by the war in Gaza….

[A] violent demonstration organised by the Stop the War coalition
[STWC]… prevented the deputy commander of Israel’s Gaza
operation from speaking at London’s Jewish student centre, Hillel
House, when a crowd of about 60-80 students attempted to storm the
building.

One of the most troubling developments is the way in which the
universities have become an extension of the Middle East conflict,
with a simulacrum of the aggression, intimidation and violence from
which Israel is under attack by the Arabs being directed at Jewish
students on British campuses, who now routinely run a gauntlet of
intimidation and abuse from Arab and Muslim students. But even more
worryingly, some universities are spinelessly choosing to give in to
such bullying.

Throughout last week, after the cease-fire was declared in Gaza,
there was a series of anti-Israel sit-ins and demonstrations
organised by the STWC at some 17 universities: in London at the
School of Oriental and African Studies, the London School of
Economics, Queen Mary College and King’s College, as well as at
Bradford, Sheffield Hallam, Warwick, Leeds, Oxford, Cambridge,
Sussex, Essex, Nottingham, Birmingham, Manchester, Manchester
Metropolitan and Strathclyde.

Some of these protests led to criminal damage and forced the
universities to pay thousands of pounds to deal with the disruption,
rearrange lectures, hire extra security guards and repair the damage.

The demonstrators took control of lecture halls and made a series of
demands: that the universities should issue a statement condemning
Israel’s actions in Gaza; offer scholarships to Palestinian
students; send surplus educational materials to help rebuild Gaza
(presumably its Islamic University, said by Israel to be a fount of
terror); dedicate some of their time to fund-raising for Gaza; and
take no action against the demonstrators.

Some of these universities responded robustly to such disorder and
intimidation. Manchester Metropolitan, Birmingham, Nottingham and,
after some delay, Leeds and Cambridge reportedly refused to accept
any of these demands. At Nottingham and Sheffield Hallam, the
demonstrators were forcibly evicted.

But the LSE [London School of Economics], King’s College London,
SOAS [the School of Oriental and African Studies], Bradford,
Strathclyde and Oxford reportedly gave in to some or all of these
demands.

According to the [weekly Jewish Chronicle], the LSE agreed to waive
application fees for Gaza and West Bank students ‘directly affected
by the conflict’, while Bradford agreed to investigate the ‘ethical
background’ of food and drink served on campus, and promised to
‘explore the feasibility of a twinning link with the Islamic
University of Gaza’.

Strathclyde agreed among other things to cancel a contract with an
Israeli water-cooler company. Oxford ¬ which fined each demonstrator
the princely sum of £20 ¬ nevertheless started negotiations with
them with indecent haste, and a mere few hours later had agreed to
pretty well everything. In a craven letter to colleagues the
Vice-Chancellor, John Hood, having stated that unlawful action of
this kind cannot be condoned proceeded to reward it by giving the
perpetrators what they had demanded.

The Oxford demonstrators also demanded that the title of the series
of lectures on ‘world peace’ at Balliol, recently inaugurated by
Israeli President Shimon Peres and named in his honour, be changed;
the Senior Proctor, Professor Donald Fraser — who oversees
disciplinary matters and who recommended ‘a relatively lenient
course of action against the demonstrators ‘– duly wrote to Balliol
drawing its attention to the students’ concerns.

Thus the trahison des clercs [“the treason of the learned”; a
reference to a 1927 book by Julien Benda, a Jewish French
philosopher, published in English as “The Betrayal of the
Intellectuals”] as they crumble in the face of criminality, violence
and intimidation.

And so now at British universities –which should be the most
protected of all environments for free discourse and inquiry —
British Jews no longer feel safe. At Nottingham, one such student
said: The sit-in has created an atmosphere where we do not feel
comfortable going into shared buildings on campus.

At King’s, another Jewish student said: Someone from my course wrote
‘kill the Jews’ on my Facebook profile. Later he said he didn’t know
I was Jewish….

And at Oxford, the JC reports: One University Reader reportedly told
a meeting that ‘within five years, Oxford will be a Jew-free zone’
and a student wrote to Professor Fraser warning that for Jewish
students, the university and the city have developed a toxic
atmosphere in which I and many others feel increasingly alienated
and unwelcome….

[T]he protests in Britain have nothing to do with humanitarian
concerns for the innocent. They are part of the jihad against the
Jews ¬ and those in the universities and other parts of the
establishment who are capitulating to or even endorsing this are
accomplices to a great evil that is now consuming British public life.