As Jonathan Tobin has observed, Jeremy Corbyn, leader of Britain’s Labour Party, has been “openly sympathetic with Hamas and Hezbollah,” has “campaigned for the release of terrorists convicted of attacking Jewish targets,” and has “praised vicious anti-Semites.”

It is, therefore, no surprise that the Oxford University Labour Club (OULC) voted on Monday to endorse Israel Apartheid week, “in continuation of its solidarity with the Palestinian people.” The Club, was, after all, a big fan of Corbyn’s even prior to his election as Labour leader.

It is surprising, however, that the co-chair of OULC, Alex Chalmers resigned, not only over the vote, but over longstanding issues with the organization. In a Facebook post, he explained:

Whether it be members of the Executive throwing around the term ‘Zio’ (a term for Jews usually confined to websites run by the Ku Klux Klan) with casual abandon, senior members of the club expressing their ‘solidarity’ with Hamas and explicitly defending their tactics of indiscriminately murdering civilians, or a former Co-Chair claiming that ‘most accusations of antisemitism are just the Zionists crying wolf’, a large proportion of both OULC and the student left in Oxford more generally have some kind of problem with Jews.

As Chalmers also says, the vote to endorse Israel Apartheid Week, far from being an innocent example of solidarity with Palestinians, is a decision to endorse “a movement with a history of targeting (sic) and harassing Jewish students.” By now, no one who follows the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, of which Israeli Apartheid Week is a part, can be innocent of that movement’s support for the ongoing violence against Israeli civilians.

Certainly no one in the OULC can be innocent of what kind of movement they’re dealing with, assuming the OULC members who came forward after Chalmers’s resignation are to be believed. Here are a few of the things they have heard other OULC members say.

It is not antisemitic to claim that there is an international Jewish conspiracy. Hamas is justified in its policy of killing Israel civilians and, indeed, all Jews are legitimate targets.

Jenny Tonge, a peer who was forced to resign from the Liberal Democrat parliamentary group over her record of inflammatory anti-Israel remarks, including insinuations that Israeli relief teams just might be harvesting the organs of Haitian earthquake victims, should be invited to join the Labour Party. In fairness to the student in question, Labour’s Deputy Leader, Tom Watson, agrees.

In spite of all this, the vote to endorse Israeli Apartheid Week was close, 18 to 16. Perhaps Chalmers resignation will make a difference.