National Union of Students elects Malia Bouattia as president.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/feb/10/gcse-results-ethnicity-school-meals
"Every group, apart from those from traveller, Gypsy or Roma families, performed better than white, British-born children."

So when both whites and blacks are poor they do as bad as each other in education, in fact whites do worse. Therefore there goes your claim that other races don't suffer from the effects of poverty. I also notice that you fail to mention what I said about the GDPs of Trinidad and Poland. Poland sucks because it's been war-torn for years and under Communist occupation. Nothing much has happened in Trinidad. Again showing that when whites are in a bad situation they do worse than blacks.

As for the sickle cell and prostate cancer stuff you're still failing to to realize that the blacks in the West only represent a small fraction of the black race from West Africa. Medical stats on UK blacks are not applicable to all blacks.

How about this one: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3549948/NUS-elects-president-refuses-condemn-ISIS-calls-Birmingham-University-Zionist-outpost.html

Or this: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/20/malia-bouattia-elected-nus-president-after-causing-controversy/

This articles are based on allegations and have no true substance in them. And you know what, it's alright isn't it, as long as they're attacking 'Muslims'. Bloody Hypocrites.

Now where's your evidence?

Being against the systemic human right abuses committed by the government of Israel does not make a person anti-Semitic, it makes them human. Being against a certain political ideology, Zionism in this case, doesn't make her an anti-Semitic. If that was true than the same can be said about the thousands of orthodox Jews who are also against Zionism, which is an oxymoron. I've never seen a single shred of evidence of Malia Bouattia being anti-Semitic in any way whatsoever as I read articles about her over the past few days.

What is disgusting and racist though, is the shameless and unhinged attacks right-wing media has been making against Malia Bouttia solely because of her faith.

Well she is clearly going to deny she is an anti semite!

The video posted on this thread was utterly devastating to her reputation vis a vis any decent, right thinking person. Have you watched it??

If you have you will know that In it she denounces "peace talks" (she even says the phrase with a palpable sneer) and advocates terrorism to topple the "colonialist" Zionist State. She calls it "armed resistance" not terrorism.

She is clearly going to deny she supports terrorism.

What does that "armed resistance" mean in practice?

Crazed hate filled Palestinians knifing random Israeli citizens. What else can it mean?

Support for the terrorist organisations, Hamas and Hizbollah who murder Israeli citizens just because they are Jews. . What else can it mean?

That video, her own words, demonstrate that she is utterly unsuitable to have the position she does and brings it, and all the UK students (it purports to represent) into serious disrepute.

The only way forward is for individual SU's to disaffiliate. It is already happening, as others have said on this thread. I encourage all civilised, decent people, who abhor terrorism, to follow this lead and support disaffiliation also.

Palestinian militants (who, in contrast to Israeli forces, are neither a single force nor centrally directed from above) lack the resources or capacity to employ such tactics, rendering the question of whether they are 'allowed' to use them redundant.

I have to say I tried a few times to give a meaningful response here, but I can't quite capture the sheer ridiculousness of what you just said.

The key word being 'allegedly', there's no proof she actually said these things. The claim that she conflated Zionists and Jews together might have been totally fabricated as an attempt to besmirch her character. How do you know this isn't part of a wider smear-campaign to force her to resign before she even started her job? My evidence supports this theory but your evidence is based on unverified allegations. It is blatantly obvious that some parts of the media are desperately trying to peddle an anti-Muslim narrative and this story fits nicely into that.

I might change my mind if you prove me wrong by providing good solid evidence that no one can deny.

My evidence supports this theory but your evidence is based on unverified allegations. It is blatantly obvious that some parts of the media are desperately trying to peddle an anti-Muslim narrative and this story fits nicely into that.

Firstly, it is not racist to criticise Malia for her beliefs. It's racist to do so based on her 'race'. Secondly, criticism of Israel's policies is not necessarily anti-Semitic. But rarely are the motivations for these criticisms backed by evidence and instead are fuelled by a dislike for Judaism or the Jews. It's fair to say that it is identical to Muslims claiming that criticism of their faith or beliefs is Islamophobic (which is incidentally what you are trying to suggest). Finally, denouncing Islamic State has little to do with Israel. Why, then, is she unable to do so? Does she feel it goes against her Islamic views to do so?

I'd also like to add a side note here (and this is not a personal attack): the level of ignorance about Zionism amongst much of the Western public and audience is quite shocking.

For the sake of fairness I'd like to see the differences between the motion she rejected and the alternative that was later accepted.

For the sake of fairness I'd like to see the differences between the motion she rejected and the alternative that was later accepted.

Yes I was wondering about this too. On what basis exactly did she reject the original motion while accepting the latter?

Well, here is the rejected motion:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1u02m-DH4Gbe5LeCL2GFrr59oIXEYexDsjx2EKB7DCSI/edit?pref=2&pli=1

Notice that it specifically criticises the US intervention.

The passed motion is here:

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/resources/reports/426-national-union-of-students-votes-to-oppose-us-and-uk-military-intervention-in-iraq-and-syria

It gives with the right hand, while taking away with the left, of course, by condemning the western allies ate the same time, and condemning Islamophobia (undefined).

Where did Bouattia mention Hamas? It certainly wasn't in any of the quotes I've commented on.

Yawn, I've been through this a million times on here - no it doesn't, disgusting as it is, and parts of it explicitly contradict such an interpretation. And of course, there's the fact that Hamas' leader himself has said he no longer considers it relevant.

Why is it inherent?

X

It's precisely the tactic used:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-weapons
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qassam_rocket

The Nazis fired a bit over 10,000 rockets, the Palestinians a bit less than 9,000.

It's as ridiculous as to say that supporting the Nazis didn't become OK in 1945 because the Nazis became too weak to put their genocide and world conquest plans into practice.

It's the idea that's the thing, not the means.

Of hugely different destructive capacities, among other differences.

It's ridiculous because you morally equated genocide of millions to the deaths of a handful of people.

The Nazis had already committed genocide by 1945. In fact, most of the Holocaust had happened by late 1943.

I disagree that it's either; it's about actions. Particularly as what we were discussing was legitimacies of tactics.

Absolutely superb post mate, I cannot commend you highly enough for a very thoughtful, insightful and incisive contribution. I particularly appreciate how you distinguished the four categories.

In my experience, many people on the student left confuse category 1 and category 2; they think "Zionist" means "far right Israeli settler" or something like that. They don't realise that Zionism is simply the founding ideology of the State of Israel (and which was actually opposed by many religious Jews originally... the people who founded the State of Israel were predominantly socialist atheists and Israel had socialist governments for its first 30 years).

I consider myself a staunch supporter of the State of Israel, I understand why it is so vital that there be at least one place on earth where they could flee if things ever got truly bad again. And I think the Jews have concluded they're not going to let themselves be herded into gas chambers again, now they have nuclear weapons and they will do whatever it takes to survive. Governments around the world also know they risk angering Israel and attracting the attention of the Mossad if they start to harass their Jewish minority.

I also think many on the student left have a very ahistorical understanding of the State of Israel. For many who get their knowledge about it primarily from what other people who are more committed to the subject have told them, they are under a great misapprehension. They think that basically the Jews turned up in landing crafts in 1948, that Europe and the US basically gifted them a state out of guilt for the Holocaust, etc. They don't realise that Jews have lived continuously in the Levant since the BC era, that Jerusalem for example had a Jewish majority in the mid 1800s. Also, that the Jews had to fight for their survival in 1948 and they had little help from Europe or America; most of their arms came through a strange deal with Stalin who allowed them to buy arms from Czechoslovakia most of which were factories still using Third Reich designs. The Jordanian Legion, the best armed and trained Arab military force, was supplied by the British and led by British officers. Royal Air Force patrols got into dogfights with Israeli Air Force Messerchmitts they'd purchased from Czecho.

And of course there's the million or so Middle Eastern Jews from Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Egypt etc who had to leave their homes and move to Israel such that today a majority of Israeli Jews are descended from Middle Eastern Mizrahi Jews.

Anyway, sorry for the short rant. Your post was superb and a cut above what we usually see on here.

When people say they are "anti-Zionists", they not saying they are against Israel because of the actions of the Israeli Government at the moment. They're saying they're against the existence of Israel in the first place. So when they try to make out like they wouldn't be against Israel if only they did this, or did that, it's a lie. What Israel does has no bearing on their views of Israel because what they want to see if the destruction of Israel since they don't believe Israel has a right to exist.

So when they go on their little whines, it's hard to take them seriously.