Lessons in antisemitism from the NEU The powerful teachers' union is obsessed with Palestine

One might wonder what a British teaching union has to do with a geopolitical conflict 3,000 miles away, but the question would be moot. Every year — excepting wars and pandemics — the NEU subsidises two propaganda trips to the Palestinian Territories, while its magazine Educate frequently denounces Israel. In one recent editorial, Kebede wrote: “As educators whose instincts are humanitarian, members are appalled by the willingness of political leaders to let this situation go on. Why do arms sales continue? Why has the verdict of the International Court of Justice not restrained their behaviour?”

To understand this obsession, one need only attend the NEU’s annual conference. Even before the conference, different branches were thinking up novel ways to attack Israel. Natasha Brandon, a Jewish secondary school teacher based in North London, was surprised to find it top of the agenda for the LBGT+ division when they got together ahead of conference.

“One motion attacked Israel for its LGBT+ positive policies which it called ‘pinkwashing’,” she tells me. The motion said: “Pinkwashing is used by many countries, including Israel, to detract from their human rights abuses and deflect attention away from other discriminatory practices.” It insisted: “Conference instructs the executives to publish a statement condemning countries who target the LGBT+ tourist market through pinkwashing whilst violating human rights of other oppressed groups.”

Natasha wrote to the organisers to express her discomfort with the motion. “The idea that queer people in Israel are somehow a ploy to distract from other things is both antisemitic and homophobic,” she said in her letter. Her complaints were ignored.

At the conference itself, held just before Easter in Bournemouth, there wasn’t just a fringe meeting on Palestine — there’s one every year — but also a standing ovation for its star speaker: the Palestinian “Ambassador” Husam Zomlot. He told the audience that his presence was indeed “a statement of support and solidarity” as “you have been the strongest supporters of Palestine historically”. He gave a special thanks to Louise Regan, who doubles as both the chair of the Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) and the NEU’s Executive Member and Chair of International.

Incredibly, Louise is one of four of the PSC’s 14 directors — the group which organises London’s almost weekly anti-Israel demonstrations — who also have roles within the NEU. The others are NEU trustee Bernard Regan, NEU Bolton’s International Solidarity Officer Julia Simpkins, and Northumberland NEU district secretary Alex Snowdon.

After Zomlot’s warm welcome came the motions about Palestine. One claimed that “Israel’s hard-right, racist government is the main driver of conflict, violence and war in Palestine and Israel”. Having reaffirmed “support” for the PSC it also chillingly agreed to circulate educational resources to “increase understanding” of Palestine and Israel.

All of this was achieved with a confidence normally reserved for student union politics. During an amendment debate which committed the NEU to campaign for the abolition of the government’s Prevent anti-extremism programme, one delegate, Mat Milovanovic, proudly insisted: “Are we not allowed to show our students what is right and just?” He told the audience that he and his colleagues in Ealing had been expressing solidarity with Palestinians by “wearing lanyards, badges and taking group photos calling for an immediate ceasefire” — even though they were aware the school could face possible investigation “on the grounds that we do not meet our obligation of political impartiality”.

During another debate attacking the UK and other countries for withdrawing funding from UNRWA after it was discovered some of their workers had joined in on October 7, Peter Block, 75, a retired Jewish primary school teacher from London, asked to speak. He’d already learned that a younger Jewish teacher who was due to debate one of the motions had pulled out. “He was so intimidated that he was afraid for his own safety,” recalls Peter. “The whole of the executive group were wearing Palestinian keffiyehs and it was intimidating. But I felt I had no choice but to speak because of all the half-truths and downright lies that were being spouted.”

Peter started his speech with a message of peace — “Shalom” — but the mood swiftly soured. “It was a febrile atmosphere and the noise and the cat-calling started almost immediately. I couldn’t even finish my speech.”

The NEU told me that it has “condemned without equivocation, the actions of Hamas on October 7”, adding: “The call for a ceasefire is now imperative in the face of the destruction and loss of life in Gaza,” and insisting: “it is legitimate for the NEU to speak out, alongside bodies such as the TUC and the UN, to stand up for the urgent protection of children and teachers in Palestine.” But is there something darker at play?

Last July, the NEU hosted an event in London called “How to talk about Palestine in our schools”. “There was a whole bookshop of pro-Palestinian literature,” says Peter, who attended. “The conference had speaker after speaker going on about the evil of Israel. After lunch they broke up into groups and I went into a smaller room where they were meant to be discussing antisemitism. Except they weren’t. It was all about Israel. So I stood up and pointed out that we were supposed to be discussing antisemitism. But I was told I needed to sit down — because the other people were ‘threatened’ by me”.

Kate (not her real name), another Jewish teacher from London, attended the same event, only to discover one of her colleagues from school discussing how he used “every opportunity I can to share my views” on Palestine, including bringing the topic up when covering war poetry. He also boasted that he had set up an after-school “human rights group”, which he was using to tell children how evil Israel was. Although she wrote to her headteacher to complain, nothing was done. He still runs his after-school club.

The union is also a linchpin of the anti-Israel demonstrations taking place in our cities. Data taken from 41 major PSC protests between October 2023 and the end of November last year shows that NEU had 23 official speakers — nearly twice as many as the next union, the RMT. Other times they sponsor the demonstrations; for a February one in Leicester, the NEU’s symbol was next to extremist Islamist groups 5 Pillars and CAGE International.

Following the motion to circulate “educational material” on the conflict, Natasha says she is aware that one proposal is to “paint Israel as a colonialist endeavour” while Peter has been shown discussions about material which “seeks to say Jews have no history in the region”.

Last month, the NEU joined the call for Palestine Day of Action. In November 2023 this led to a series of school walkouts with children singing pro-Palestine songs. This year, the NEU told teachers in its North London branch: “Our plan is to wear red and green or keffiyehs, a fundraiser for Medical Aid for Palestine and a vigil in the park with floating lanterns.” Only a last-minute Government intervention — reminding teachers of the policy of the neutrality — scuppered some of the plans. Only a few teachers openly broke the rules. Never mind, the NEU is likely to figure at the heart of the next demonstration for Palestine later this month.

Faced with this sort of behaviour, a group of Jewish teachers met with Kebede last year to ask for a more balanced approach to the conflict. They are not holding out much hope; Kebede is a long-time admirer of Jeremy Corbyn who once claimed the former Labour leader’s critics were being offered “30 pieces of silver” — an ancient antisemitic trope. While he later apologised, the following year, at an anti-Israel rally, he issued a call to “globalise the intifada”. An NEU spokesperson later claimed that it was merely “an expression of solidarity and support for civic protests”.

How such “solidarity” manifests in the classroom is often anecdotal, but it certainly isn’t making schools safer. One parent at the Norwood School in South London told me about two incidents in which she felt children at the school were being subtly educated against Israel. Her 14-year-old son brought home teaching material which had been passed out in a “citizenship class” about refugees, which had an incorrect map of Israel and erroneously claimed that “since 1948 more than five million Palestinians have been displaced” — when the 1948 war displaced 700,000 Palestinians (the five million figure comes from the number of their descendants). At another school, in West London, a substitute teacher asked her eight-year-old primary school pupils to put their hands up if they were Jewish. When a couple put their hands up, the teacher told them: “I’m Free Palestine.”

For Jewish parents this is a difficult time. According to the CST, which monitors anti-Jewish hate crimes, instances of antisemitism affecting schools continue to rise, with 162 incidents in just the first half of last year. Sometimes anti-Jewish bullying has been so bad in schools that parents have felt forced to remove their children.

Meanwhile, as the NEU continues to focus on a war on the other side of the world, problems the union should be looking at barely get a look in. “I know I am not the only one who wonders what all of this obsession with Israel has got to do with a teaching union when we have plenty of problems at home,” says Peter. “We have a huge problem with teacher retention, with violence in schools against teachers, with crumbling schools — but all they want to talk about is Palestine.”

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Nicole Lampert is a journalist based in London.

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