Letter: Anti-Semitism is not rife at the university

From the archive, first published Tuesday 27th Sep 2005.

The article "Extremism at our colleges" (The Argus, September 23) bears no relation whatsoever to reality.

I am Jewish and a post-graduate student of the School of Law. Never, not once, have I experienced anti-Semitism at the University of Sussex.

Anti-Semitism, let us be clear, is not opposition to the Israeli state and its repression of the Palestinian people. A belief that Israel and Zionism, the ideology and movement which gave birth to the state, is racist is not anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism is sticks and stones. It is hatred of people because of something they can never change, the fact that they are or were Jewish. It is a form of racial hatred.

Support of Israel and Zionism is a political position. As Albert Luthuli, the great fighter against racism in South Africa, noted, politics can change, racial characteristics can never change. That is what makes racism a pernicious evil.

Like many Jews, I am also an anti-Zionist. The lessons I have learnt from the Holocaust is that if racism is wrong, it is wrong whoever the target is and whoever the perpetrator is.

I happen to believe that a state which allows me to "return" when I've never lived there but which denies the same right to Palestinian friends of mine who were born there is racist.

I believe a state which compensates Jewish victims of terrorism but which refuses Palestinians any compensation when they are the victims of terrorism, because anti-Palestinian terrorism doesn't harm the Jewish state, is racist.

Let us be clear. Students at the University of Sussex have always given support to the Palestinians.

I am proud to say that in more than 30 years' experience of fighting local racist and fascist groups, Sussex students have been at the forefront of fighting the real anti-Semitism that exists among certain fringe groups.

-Tony Greenstein, Brighton and Hove Unemployed Workers Centre, Hollingdean

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