Jewish pupils face a climate of fear
by Julian Mann, The Conservative Woman:
IF YOUNG Jewish actors are hiding their Star of David, what is life like for Jewish school children in the British state education system?
In an interview with Emily Maitlis on the BBC’s Newsnight following the principled resignation of Dame Maureen Lipman from the actors’ union, Equity, after it urged its members to take part in a pro-Palestine march, the Jewish actress Tracy-Ann Oberman said:
‘I have had so many young Jewish performers contact me as a sort of de facto leader on this. They are telling me that they are hiding their Star of David; they don’t want people to know that they are Jewish; they don’t want to get into the immediate conversation about Israel, having to justify where they stand on this.’
One would normally think of acting as a liberal profession. So if Jewish actors are feeling under pressure, the Lord alone knows what Jewish children must be experiencing in the politically-correct indoctrination centres otherwise known as state schools. Is the generally woke outlook of the teaching profession creating a climate of fear for Jewish pupils?
In any British school, a young person should be allowed to express open support for Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign democratic state. He or she should also be allowed to express the view that Hamas is a vicious terrorist organisation. But in many state schools, and even and perhaps especially in independent schools, one could imagine a Jewish teenager – indeed, any teenager – being afraid to express such opinions.
The cultural crisis for British Jews is exacerbated by the political establishment’s tendency to treat Israel and the Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip as moral equivalents (discussed here by Melanie Phillips). This neutrality, which is actually a symptom of moral relativism, serves to foment anti-Semitism by giving houseroom to a movement that is hell-bent on destroying Israel. As Karen Harradine, of this parish, has argued: ‘The ideological drive to destroy Israel and “free Palestine” is a war cry led by Islamists and propagated by their useful idiots on the Left. Should anti-Zionists get their wish, and Israel is destroyed, half the world’s Jewry would be left homeless, and diaspora Jews would become even more vulnerable to anti-Semitism.’
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