Caitlin Johnstone discusses the UK Department of Education report on anti-semitism in schools:
The Bell review lists 27 recommendations for dealing with “antisemitism” in English schools, which the government has reportedly accepted in their entirety. The first recommendation is adopting the hotly disputed International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism which lists common criticisms of the state of Israel as hateful toward Jews.
Under the IHRA definition, you are guilty of antisemitism if you compare the modern state of Israel to Nazi Germany, or if you say that Israel exists as a racist endeavor. This framing effectively brands anyone a hateful bigot who agrees with the unanimous consensus of international human rights groups that Israel is a genocidal apartheid state.
This is absolutely bonkers.
As a former governor of a rural school for some 15+ years, FNN knows there are far bigger problems with the UK education system than anti-semitism. Funding for a start.
Other than schools in North London, which is primarily who this report is really aimed at, FNN would bet that most schools in the UK have no Jewish students so the students know no Jewish kids so all this anti-semitism virus spread through schools is nonsense - the problem is not schools but social media. Schools are a symptom of the underlying problem.
The other strange thing is that no government department in the UK is sponsoring 107 page reports about 'Russophobia' in schools.
Why are common criticisms of Russia, not only in social media but also in the MSM, not classed as hateful towards Russians/Slavs?
Russia invaded Ukraine. Israel invaded Gaza.
Russia has killed Ukrainian civilians. Israel has killed far more Palestinian civilians.
Russia is villified in the UK MSM. Israel is not.
Russia lost over 20 million people in WW2, close to 1 million in the siege of Leningrad alone - far more than the holocaust - and many of them died in Nazi slave labour camps, in concentration camps and in horrible atrocities committed by the Einsatzgruppen, SS and Wehrmacht and but strangely no-one seems to care about this.
As Councillor Duxbury would say: Think on't.
Update: 24/10/26:
Double Down News
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pEiZYoRUz8
The NEU view:
The NEU welcomes a strengthened focus on antisemitism in the statutory safeguarding guidance and we would encourage the Department for Education to go a step further by strengthening the guidance on all forms of racism. We are concerned that addressing antisemitism without an equally clear commitment to tackling all forms of racism risks creating a hierarchy of racism.
https://neu.org.uk/latest/press-releases/neu-responds-bell-review-antisemitism