Jewish - Muslim alliance on UK campus prevents anti-Israel programming

UK Jews, Muslims form rare alliance
Rebecca Anna Stoil, THE JERUSALEM POST Dec. 3, 2006
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When a new student organization tried to push six anti-Israel bills through
the student union at London's Kingston University over the weekend, Muslim
and Jewish students banded together to vote them down.

In a rare alliance, they argued that if their campus supported one political
position over another, the university's ideal of diversity would be damaged.

British universities have become increasingly known for taking action
against Israel, either in student unions or through academic boycotts, and
it seemed last week that Kingston would become yet another school on the
growing list of anti-Israel institutions.

When the freshly-founded Friends of Palestine (FOP) set out a package of six
anti-Israel resolutions for the student union to adopt, the 15 members of
the university's Jewish society thought they had no chance at fighting the
legislation on a campus with thousands of Muslim students.

"I heard that the motions were put forward only 36 hours before the vote,"
Sammy Kalmanowicz, an International Law student and president of the
Kingston Jewish Society, told The Jerusalem Post.

"I read through the whole student union constitution. The whole day we were
trying to bring people along because we knew that the FOP had been
organizing these motions for weeks."

Kalmanowicz contacted the campus chaplaincy and the Union of Jewish Students
to ask for help.

Help also came from a less expected quarter. Shermarke Salah, Kalmanowicz's
Somali-born, Iraqi-raised Muslim flatmate decided to join in the struggle.

"It was the underlying principle of the proposals which I opposed," said the
soft-spoken Salah.

"Me and my flatmate Sammy have political differences, but we didn't feel
that the student union was the right forum to discuss them. The SU is there
to serve the student body in a neutral position," he said.

Salah characterized Friends of Palestine's initiative as "a campaign from
people outside of the university to impose politics on the campus."

Salah, whose family left Somalia for Iraq, and then fled Iraq immediately
prior to the first Gulf War, said he had strong views about diversity.

"Right now we have a good university. It's tolerant and it's calm, but it
just takes one spark to set off an explosion. We must make it clear that we
won't accept such attitudes on campus," he said, adding that his father had
frequently reminded him that "the difference between tolerance and
intolerance is just two letters."

Salah's message eventually carried the day. In the end, even the head of the
university's Islamic Society opposed the propositions because of the
possibility that they would divide the student body.

"In the beginning, we had the better arguments, but we didn't have the
majority," said Kalmanowicz. "I was so pessimistic, I was surprised that we
got even one proposal defeated," he said. Kalmanowicz described his campus
as "culturally diverse" and without much racial tension.

That very diversity, he said, was what brought many of the campus's Muslim
student body as well as the Christian Society to vote against the proposals.

"It was the argument that we shouldn't bring a political view into the
student body. We don't want any politics in the student body because they
segregate our student union," Kalmanowicz said.

One proposal called for the university to mark November 29 as the
International Day of Solidarity Action for Palestine and contained a plan to
"put up our own 'wall' on university premises with 'soldiers' and
'Palestinian civilians.'"

It said the aim of this "stunt" was to raise awareness of the
"disruptiveness of checkpoints" and "to show just how disruptive the
apartheid wall is to the everyday lives of Palestinians, especially
Palestinian students."

According to another resolution, "The systematic obstruction and destruction
of education in the West Bank and Gaza by the Israeli military occupation
not only violates the human rights of individuals, it is an attack on the
development of Palestinian society."

Richard Budden, a member of the National Executive Committee of the National
Union of Students who was on campus to oversee the Kingston vote Thursday
evening, said it had been a victory for campus democracy.

"All the democratic processes were utilized," he said. "The students
exhausted the opportunities for democratic debate on campus. Each campus is
different, and Israel-Palestine is a hot topic. Today the students at
Kingston University decided that there was no place for this discussion."