The co-chair of the Oxford University Labour Club (OULC) has resigned
from his role over concerns of antisemitism and “poisonous” attitudes
towards disadvantaged groups from the group’s members. Alex Chalmers announced
with the “greatest regret” that he is leaving the largest university
Labour club in the country in the wake its decision to endorse Israel Apartheid
Week.
Chalmers said that while he had invested an “extraordinary amount
of time, energy, and emotion” during his time as chair of the club, he has
decided to quit as a result tensions “increasingly riven by factional
splits”.
In a lengthy statement on Facebook, he said: “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.”
Chalmers added the club’s decision to support Israel Apartheid week –
which claims be an effort to raise awareness about Israel’s “ongoing
settler-colonial project and apartheid policies over the Palestinian
people” – arrived despite the campaign having a history of history of
“targeting and harassing Jewish students and inviting antisemitic speakers
to campuses”.
“I had hoped during my
tenure as co-chair to move the club away from some of its more intolerant
tendencies: sadly, it only continued to move away from me, to a place I could
no longer hope to retrieve it from. I am now in a position where I can no
longer in good conscience defend club policy,” he said.
Fellow co-chair of the Oxford University Labour Club, Noni Csogor, said
she respected Chalmer’s decision to resign. Discussing the club’s 18-16 vote in
favour of backing the Israel Apartheid Week, Csogor added: “We did not
vote on a blanket position on the Israel-Palestine conflict; we voted to
support Oxford’s Israeli Apartheid Week. At Oxford, IAW has hosted a wide
variety of Israeli, Palestinian, and South African speakers, such as Denis
Goldberg, who fought against apartheid in South Africa, and Oxford professors
like Avi Shlaim, Karma Nabulsi, Sudhir Hazareesingh, and David Priestland. As
the motion notes, OULC and the Labour Party have always been against racism and
oppression in all its forms; this must include the policies of the current
Israeli government.
“Alex is right to
highlight growing antisemitic violence in the UK as a major issue; it’s also
horrifying that Jewish students feel unsafe on campuses.. .we take allegations
of antisemitism in the club very seriously and I will be discussing, with my
executive committee, how to deal with the kinds of statements Alex mentions,
and what concrete steps we can take in future to preserve a club that’s been a
safe haven for Jewish students in the past.”
