The news that the Oxford University Labour Club co-chair has resigned due to claims of antisemitism within the club may have been shocking to some. To Jewish students at Oxford, it was not. The student left produces the most aggressive and virulent propagators of antisemitism on campus.

Alex Chalmers’ resignation statement was clear, emphasising that: “A large proportion of both OULC and the student left in Oxford more generally have some kind of problem with Jews.” The Oxford University Jewish Society noted that it was “not the first time that it has had to deal with antisemitic incidents within the student left and it will not be the last”. The Labour MP John Mann, chair of the all-party parliamentary group against antisemitism, has called for the party to sever all ties with the club.

Following Chalmers’ resignation, further allegations have appeared. Other OULC members, including past executive officers, approached Oxford University Jewish Society with a list of antisemitic incidents they had recorded. One OULC member argued that Hamas was justified in its killing of Jewish civilians and claimed all Jews were legitimate targets. A committee member stated that all Jews should be expected to publicly denounce Zionism and the state of Israel, and that we should not associate with any Jew who fails to do so. It has been alleged that another OULC member organised a group of students to harass a Jewish student and to shout “filthy Zionist” whenever they saw her.

This type of rhetoric is not confined to OULC. Leftwing student leaders have rallied against “any Rothschild” and “Zios” in their Facebook statuses. One of Oxford’s online political forums removed members with Jewish sounding surnames from the group. In another group, a member called for Jews to pack their bags and leave the Middle East. One notable far-left student politician said, “I don’t like being smeared as antisemitic, but I don’t bleed from it either.”

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As a Jewish student, Labour voter and someone who identifies with progressive politics, I am aghast at the direction Oxford’s student left has taken. This is now the student left of radical socialism, of no-platforming, of identity politics and of antisemitism. Beneath the OULC headlines lies an intellectual structure that legitimises and reproduces antisemitism at a rate of knots.

At the centre of radical left antisemitism is its theory of racial oppression. The radical left holds anti-racism as a core principle and conceives of oppression through a binary of oppressors v oppressed, of whiteness v people of colour. It is a theory that has many merits, but when applied to Jews it becomes a quagmire of prejudice.

Put simply, the student left conceives of Jews as white. Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews are ignored and the history of Jewish oppression through racial construction is dismissed, with Jews framed as the oppressors and the beneficiaries of white privilege. The perception carries weight because in the eyes of many, it contains some truth. The argument that Ashkenazi Jews benefit from white privilege is not uncommon, nor is it restricted to the radical left.

Yet the consequence of seeing Jews as white is in effect antisemitic. Jews are identified with power, privilege and oppression, leading to overtones of some of the oldest antisemitic tropes: Jews controlling politicians, the media and financial institutions.

By seeing Jews as white oppressors, the student left also vaccinates itself against any sort of sympathy for the Jewish experience. Unsurprisingly, this manifests itself in anti-Zionist politics. The radical left interprets Israeli politics through the “settler-colonial” paradigm. Not only does it take a quite incredible lack of compassion to see a Jewish holocaust refugee as a skull-capped Cecil Rhodes, it is no coincidence that Jews are seamlessly aligned with white colonialism – the radical left’s highest manifestation of whiteness, power, and oppression.

Nor is it uncommon, as the evidence from OULC shows, to hear antisemitic rhetoric coded using the term “Zionist”, whether it be about the Zionists controlling the media, creating foreign wars or controlling the economy. It is perfectly possible to protest the human rights abuses of the Israeli occupation without these claims. But they are made nonetheless.

But perhaps what Oxford’s Jewish students hate the most is the way the student left reacts to antisemitism when it arises. Jews who mention their concerns are met with rolled eyes and snorts of derision. One leader of the Oxford student left, who was co-chair of the Oxford Student Council for Racial Awareness and Equality, openly mocked Jewish students protesting antisemitism - she later apologised. Another Jewish student who brought up concerns about antisemitism in the OULC meeting on Israel Apartheid Week was told her concerns were similar to heterosexual people feeling uncomfortable attending LGBT nightclubs. In short: be quiet, your concerns are not valid.

Both the propagation and dismissal of antisemitism stems from the same conception of the Jew as privileged and powerful. The Jew is one of “them”, the oppressors, rather than one of “us”, the oppressed.

The problem is by no means limited to Oxford, nor is it a new phenomena. Luciana Berger, now a member of the Labour shadow cabinet, resigned from the NUS National Executive Council due to “continued apathy within the NUS to Jewish student suffering”. Goldsmiths student union refused to commemorate Holocaust memorial day. Antisemitism is said to have “reached a fever pitch” at Vassar College, New York state. In so many situations, overt antisemitism is seen as lamentable but ultimately unproblematic. In others, it is simply laughed off.

As a lot of radical left discourse has made inroads into the mainstream, and as university politics continues to be dominated by the student left, the issue will not go away. On a more personal note, I hate that my Jewishness and my progressive politics are currently incompatible. And quite simply, I refuse to remain silent while Jewish students do not feel welcome in Oxford.

Oxford’s student left claims anti-racism as a core principle. But from a Jewish perspective it is hard to see that claim as anything other than morally bankrupt. Jewish students will no longer be intimidated into silence. It is time we acknowledged that the student left is institutionally antisemitic.