Zionism and/in the National Union of Students: Associative Partnerships during a Genocide


Far from mirroring the pulse of Palestine resistance animating our campuses, the National Union of Students (UK) upholds pro-Israel Zionist aspirations and in sync with the British establishment, has proved actively complicit in blanketing genocide.


Blanketing Genocide

Never has there been a period in recent memory that saw campuses organize for Palestinian Liberation as the year 23-24. Continuing well into the new academic session and persevering in the face of legal evictions, disenfranchisement and state repression, students encamping and graduating in true keffiyeh style have engraved 2024 in the annals of decolonial protest against university complicity.

But in the wake of a barely paused genocide, as British university thinktanks are beginning to take stock of last year’s encampments and how to manage, or rather, repress them better in the future, we would be remiss to overlook another matter that has barely registered any attention. That is, the palpable dissonance between the tidal wave of Palestine solidarity among British students (not forgetting scholarly/union pushback) and the egregious void emanating from the largest student union in the UK, The National Union of Students.

There is palpable dissonance between the tidal wave of Palestinian solidarity among students (not forgetting scholarly/union pushback) and the egregious void emanating from the largest student union in the UK, The National Union of Students.

Naturally, considerable attention has been placed on universities as sites of complicity in Israel’s genocidal undertaking, but segments of the British student body and the official institutions that anchor, legitimize and buttress Zionist aspirations, should not escape our attention.

As a claimed representative body, a democratic space run ‘by the students for the students,’ one would expect NUS’s official decorum to reflect the pulse of resistance animating campuses. Moreso, given its long history of anti-apartheid activism, something it prides itself on as a reminder for today’s student activists, one would imagine a similarly robust stand against Israel’s colonial-apartheid regime, its brazen annihilation of Gaza, parts of Syria/Lebanon and its’ planned annexation of the West Bank. This is precisely the stance of, for example, NUS Australia. For NUS UK, not so.

South Africa’s case against Israel under the genocide convention was brought forth to the world’s highest legal body, the International Court of Justice, back in late January 2024. There has since been mounting evidence of starvation, crimes against humanity as well as reaffirmation of Israel’s illegal occupation and arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant. But none of this detail, over the course of 18 months of genocidal fervor, has jump-started union management to act or speak in sync with the wider student body. This inaction remains unchanged.

How is it that the largest student representative body in the British Isles, claiming to represent at least 7 million students – a confederation of 400 unions – has instead offered mild placations of Israel’s genocide, preferring to craft directed guidance against Palestine activists?Indeed, NUS’s absence of public statements (as often the case for Israel’s advocates), on behalf of students reprimanded and convicted for resisting genocide,signals their tacit endorsement of state criminalization of Palestine solidarity activists.

The NUS has remained silent, except when iterating Israel’s myopic Zionist chronology that “unimaginable violence and suffering have taken place in Israel and Palestine on, and since October 7th 2023.” Unlike the NUS’s ‘unwavering’ statement of solidarity with Palestinians issued in May 2021, when Israel’s industrial scale demolition of Gaza and incursions into al Aqsa were on full display, its public stance has emerged relatively mute, with a pitiful early public statement on the ‘Middle East crisis.’

This statement is no doubt informed by the ‘Independent’ antisemitism inquiry (otherwise known as ‘the Tuck Report’), as examined elsewhere  an inquiry that has led to numerous measures to contain and manage Palestine solidarity. In keeping with its chequered history on Palestine activism, the statement reflects the way the NUS has come to function as an active conduit for the advocation of Zionism as a political project; not just as one form of political expression among others (as often portrayed, though problematic in its own right), but as an exceptional position worthy of exceptional measures.

In the context of an unprecedented wave of pro-Palestine activism and the  internal pressure it has induced, these insidious political alignments are being spotlighted for the racialised discrepancies and political immunity NUS bestows on the Zionist student movement – namely the Union of Jewish Students, (UJS) – known for its direct links and sponsorship by settler colonial institutions and well-disposed to an Israel-aligned establishment. Here I discuss NUS’s skewed interventions and persistent intransigence during Israel’s genocide.

The Statement: A Crisis of Sorts

Not long after Hamas stormed Israel’s settler colonies on 7th October 2023, NUS issued its ‘Middle East crisis’ statement. At first glance, it reads as the equality-driven interjection needed amid heightened campus tensions. It makes all the right references: standing against ‘occupation,’ ‘terrorism’ and ‘Islamophobia.’ Although burying the awkward matter of being boycotted by FOSIS (the British Muslim student representative body they name) and notwithstanding the homogenizing binaries of ‘Jewish’ students (as if all Jewish students are Zionist/ ‘represented’ by the UJS) and ‘Muslim’ students, (inferring the age-old trope of religious ‘conflict’ between Muslims/Jews and bypassing broader political solidarity forged on campuses), it presents itself as a measured response to campus tensions.

But upon closer inspection, advice offered to the student populace is guided by deference to its Zionist Associates, the UJS, a pro-Israel collective claiming representative status for British Jewish students. This becomes obvious in NUS’s slanted pleas for compassion, which as the ‘crisis’ guidance continues, is presented through a lens of Zionist angst.

For example, the insistence that students extend “compassion and sensitivity to fellow students no matter their identity or politics,” to remain unjudgmental on political persuasion are directed at, not on behalf of, pro-Palestinian activists; activists urged to be mindful their activism doesn’t slide into ‘hidden meanings.

The political subtext hardly requires deciphering. While the latter is framed as a directive for all students, it is a reference to Palestine activists, who in the Tuck report (3-4/ 31) and many interventions since, are cast through a prism of insidious antisemitism. It is a peculiar, even wanton proposition to expect solidarity activists seeking to divest from Israel to reserve judgement and extend compassion to those who uncritically advocate for Israel, while the settler- state eviscerates Palestinians. Yet NUS interventions invariably center the angst of those rationalising the genocide, while seeking to discipline those that resist it.

This approach was duly illustrated at the NUS Conference in April 2024. When students put forward a motion in support of Palestine, the final amended version railroaded in with the Tuck Report and correlated Palestine protest, both overt and ‘underground,’ with antisemitism, making this the crux of the motion. There was little trace of Gaza or support for resistance to Israel’s onslaught in the final motion. Yet amid a tsunami of Palestine solidarity on campuses, this was the only motion on Palestine for a national conference claiming to represent 400 unions.

The insidious erasure and devaluation of Palestine’s worthiness in public script and commitment is an outcome of the way the Tuck report has been willfully instrumentalized, as no doubt intended, to shrink the space for Palestine resistance, explaining   NUS’s openly skewed alignment. It edits out the daily genocidal violence to which Palestinians are subject, to enable comfort-zones and buffers for their Zionist associates. This explains why the ‘crisis statement’ does not rebuke Zionist students for their perceived “absence of humanity or compassion” relating to Palestinian deaths as it does very specifically in light of “Israeli deaths.”

Indeed, glancing at UJS campaigns alone, one would think Israel has not decimated the length and breadth of Gaza, including its hospitals and universities, or that in excess of 65,000 Gazan’s have been killed by Israel, a gross underestimation by any measure, or that a staggering 20,000 children are not ‘missing,’ many likely buried under rubble. UJS have remained steadfastly silent on Israel’s industrial-scale ethnic cleansing, instead streaming visual campaigns on antisemitism that proclaim, with no irony, “we’ve had enough.”

It is difficult to reconcile the glaring dissonance between the proclaimed violence of ‘intifada posters’ on campuses, deemed to be fermenting antisemitism on the one hand, with the actual violent extermination of children such as Sidra Hassouna, hanging lifeless and limbless in Rafah’s ‘safe zones’ on the other; a harrowing reality one cannot mentally erase.

Universities and the NUS appear content to indulge in this trail of campus distractions, dominating media discourse and rehabilitated at every opportunity by Israel advocates to quash and criminalize Palestine resistance. Feeding into the official registers of universities and NUS, the latter is most clearly evidenced in the way Palestine activism is perpetually qualified and measured by a gauge of Zionist discomfort, where the gamut of Israel-critical speech, including simple calls for a ceasefire, have been deemed a precursor for antisemitic sentiment (5.16, 42).

Similarly, skirting around Zionist pretensions reached new heights at last year’s national NUS conference, when NUS imported an external Zionist consultancy, Solutions not Sides, to micromanage student debate on Palestine/Israel at the behest of the UJS, a spectacle recounted by Muslim NUS delegates.*

Elephants in the Room

For the NUS, exercising impartial, even compassionate judgement, as it requires of Israel’s critics, appear not to apply to their Zionist Associates. The UJS have side-stepped the apocalyptic toll of Israel’s impunity and instead focused their energies on admonishing Palestine protests at every opportunity: urging VC’s to collaborate with police and creating a montage of antisemitism charges, some of which, morph into criminalizing the very terms of Palestine resistance. Intifada, students are told in their IHRA antisemitism training, (training which UJS has petitioned for, and delivered and which NUS endorses in its guidance) is antisemitic.

The UJS have side-stepped the apocalyptic toll of Israel’s impunity and instead focused their energies on admonishing Palestine protests at every opportunity: urging VC’s to collaborate with police and creating a montage of antisemitism charges, some of which, morph into criminalising the very terms of Palestine resistance.

Amid a widely reported upsurge in antisemitism, this certainly poses questions around how this upsurge is artificially inflated by subsuming Palestine solidarity resistance. It is precisely this routinised blurring of boundaries between antisemitism and anti-Zionism that remains a contested feature of the IHRA definitions’ 11 working examples. A number of these ‘working’ examples, 7 to be exact, pertain to Israel, explaining its centrality in Zionist lobbying. This political investment in the IHRA has transformed it from a non-statutory working definition intended to be subject to review, to a set of exemplars ‘being worked’ with finality as if imbued with legal powers.

These conflations have also led to the unusually public step of Muslim organisations such as MEND, the British Muslim engagement and Development NGO, to call out the criminalization of Palestine solidarity activists by UJS.

Yet we would be mistaken if we thought Zionist student lobbying is simply a matter of parochial student infighting. Its reverberations are felt across the sector – making NUS’s partnership with its advocates deeply egregious. The case of Stella Maris and James Dickins, Emeritus Professor at Leeds, present just two examples of the type of campaigns pursued, in concert with others, to undermine and remove Palestinian solidarity voices from post. They have in part, and for the time being succeeded.

Yet, as the elephant in the room, often compelling a “break with ancient traditions,” this well-funded “Friend of Israel”’ (166-7), continues to be unnamed and unscathed, unlike the subjects of their complaints who are often publicly denounced, smeared and presented as a threat to ‘Jewish safety.’

Factoring in this degree of lobbying, that the onus of compassion (and generously disseminated charge of antisemitism) has fallen on Palestinian Solidarity activists remains grossly misplaced. One cannot think of a single Zionist student or member of staff being personally or professionally targeted, at least in the British context, for their political beliefs. That casebook is empty.

Comparatively, since October 2023, the European Legal Support Centre have confirmed a ten-fold increase in logged incidents of repression at British universities/unions, where staff and students have been flagged for Palestinian advocacy or Israel-critical views. The list of academics being targeted is growing, with public protest and much behind-the-scenes lobbying of university management.

Carte Blanche

It is certainly worth revisiting NUS’s preoccupation with ‘safeguarding’ its Zionist members, given six months into Israel’s onslaught, UJS conducted its pit-stop tour in historic Palestine.

Besides their memorialization of 7th October at Kfar Aza, a settler-colony just three miles East of Gaza and their visit to one of Israel’s founding settler-colonial institutions, the Jewish Agency, they met with Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog and Mark Regev, formerly Mark Freiberg.

Regev is the former Israeli ambassador to the UK and special advisor to Israel’s war cabinet. He is well-remembered by British audiences for his 2014-15 defense of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. In August 2024, he was presented with a charge sheet for “advocating genocide,” making false claims about Israel’s benevolence and providing “intellectual cover” for Israel’s genocidal violence.

Expectedly quashed through Israel’s ‘diplomatic’ interference, the charges are likely headed to the ICC. Herzog is also the subject of serious criminal complaint.

Indeed, while the NUS are busy chasing hidden motifs among Palestinian activists without inhibition, their ‘associates’ are openly being hosted by those donned as ‘architects of genocide’ deemed guilty of war crimes and live-streamed on social media complete with the national anthems of Eyal Golan. Golan is an Israeli pop singer with considerable right-wing appeal, often performing for the IDF to keep their genocidal spirits high. He is, with little coincidence, also included in South Africa’s submission to the ICJ for his calls to wipe out Gaza.’

While the NUS are busy chasing hidden motifs among Palestinian activists, their ‘associates’ are openly being hosted by those donned as ‘architects of genocide’ deemed guilty of war crimes and live-streamed on social media complete with the national anthems of Eyal Golan.

Of course, courting  Israel’s ministerial office, and in-person visits with a string of Israel’s unsavory characters are routine engagements for the UJS. Regev has been hosted by JSOC’s on British campuses on numerous occasions. However, unlike the precarious position of Palestine solidarity activists, these ventures mark an entitled settler-colonial positionality,* evading scrutiny at home and in the colonies.

It seems that ‘due diligence’ checks required of other potential incoming associates, as per NUS’s antisemitism action plan, appear to have bypassed UJS altogether. Typically, these would entail a thorough risk assessment. What these checks entail in the NUS remain unknown. UJS are presently the only student collective with associative membership, a fee-paying status that guarantee their voices are heard (and perhaps the only voices) within management quarters.

Here lies the crux of the issue. In addition to NUS’s historical preclusion of bans (104, 106) on UJS, it is also official policy for them to be debarred from political scrutiny.

Reflecting the British establishment’s carte blanche approach for Israel’s colonial expansionism, NUS insulate its Zionist associates with similar exceptionalism. This explains why UJS’s openly displayed proximity to Israel, be it in the settlements, the Knesset or in view of their Israel tours, preceding and during this genocide, have merited no official scrutiny – only measures to ‘safeguard’ Zionist, not all Jewish students. This is true of the sector in its entirety, which has continued with business as usual through a genocide.

NUS intransigence

While the archives of genocidal intent grow, and international pressure soars against the pariah regime, NUS’s unequivocal support for its Zionist associates appears increasingly anachronistic. Contrary to its own anti-apartheid history and out of sync with the prevailing global intifada, NUS remains at odds with growing condemnation of and petitioning for Israel to be ousted from the grossly violated sanctum of International Law.

NUS may have moved little, but over the course of this year alone, we have witnessed the boycott movement make key gains. Subject to calls for revocation, the charitable status of some Zionist institutions are being reviewed for funding “illegal Israeli settlements and military activities in the occupied Palestinian territories;” a contention also now raised to the ICJP. In Canada, the Jewish National Fund has already been stripped of its charitable’ status for the same reasons.

The net on the transnational Zionist movement and specifically its settler colonial anchors is closing in, with even the UJIA, key UJS sponsors for Israel tours, retreating from their previous violations of the ‘green line’ to comply with UK Charity Commission requirements.

The Green line is the armistice line established in 1949 demarcating what has historically been recognized as ‘Israel proper,’ from illegally occupied territory, in which Israel has no sovereign power but seeks, in contravention of the Geneva Convention, to annex at will.

Indeed, after years of uninhibited touring of occupied territory, the Agency’s self-imposed restrictions, are by no means incidental in a context which has seen unprecedented international scrutiny. The ICJ recently concluded that the “settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem,” sites which British students often like to “see for themselves”, have been “maintained in violation of international law,’ (8) compelling greater legal consensus for Third States to prohibit Israel-touring (52-53) in Palestinian lands.

If ‘Third sector charities,’ and institutions such as the World Zionist Organisation, are the subject of scrutiny and potential sanction at the highest levels, what makes the NUS believe their associates ought to be exempt? Such questions are rarely publicly articulated, but they are unlikely to go away any time soon.

In a period which marks the unravelling of Israel’s Zionist project, NUS’s commitments to covet the political advocacy of their associates are as unsustainable as they are anachronistic. Facing growing discontent in their own ranks, they will no doubt have to contend with the fruits of their complicity.

*Forthcoming articles will be available here.


Dr. Shaida Nabi is an independent academic researcher. She obtained her doctorate in Political Sociology on Institutionalised Islamophobia and Muslim Student Activism from the University of Manchester.

Her special interests include institutionalised Islamophobia, the lifecycle of ‘Prevent’ in British universities, decolonial Politics and settler-colonial logics in the academy. She has written for various media and is presently writing on settler colonial erasure between the British ‘metropole’ and Israe’ls colonies. She can be found at Shaida R Nabi – Academia.edu