When a fellow parent at a park in Bristol learnt they were Jewish, Francis Jones and his wife, Rachel, were asked: “Well, you’re not Zionists are you?”
“We looked puzzled, and from then it didn’t go well,” Jones said. “That family no longer talk to us.”
The Joneses say they have seen a gradual increase of “a permissive culture of antisemitism” since Hamas terrorists attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people, committing sexual violence and taking 251 hostages.
The final straw for the couple, who live in a supposedly progressive neighbourhood in east Bristol, came when their local secondary school cancelled a visit by a Jewish MP and its head of diversity was revealed by The Times to be a supporter of the October 7 attacks.
Bristol Brunel Academy, part of the Cabot Learning Federation (CLF), suspended a visit by Damien Egan, the MP for Bristol North East and vice-chairman of Labour Friends of Israel, after learning that National Education Union (NEU) members on its staff and activists from Palestine Solidarity Campaign were planning protests.
Saima Akhtar, the inclusion and diversity co-ordinator at CLF, who sits on the leadership council of Brunel, said Hamas terrorists were “heroes fighting for justice” and told people to ignore “media attempts to paint Israel as a victim” the day after the attacks.
The Joneses, not their real names, are worried about their child attending a CLF school and are searching for a home in a more “neutral neighbourhood”.
Damien Egan, the MP for Bristol North East
BEN BIRCHALL/PA
Jones, who works for a charity, says he faced parents wearing keffiyehs at playgrounds and at the school gates. They were confronted with the war in Gaza on their daily walk to school, with posters bearing the bloody hand prints of children and declaring a genocide in Gaza.
“The small Jewish community is being ostracised in an organised way,” Jones said, comparing their treatment to black and Asian minority groups in the past. “It is being done by the left and and polite society aren’t doing enough.”
Michaela Wilde, a pastoral support worker at a sister school and the NEU branch secretary for CLF schools, said she was “very proud” of having forced their employer to cancel Egan’s visit in September. They had already successfully pressured CLF to remove a speaker from Check Point Software Technologies, an Israeli-owned security company, from their summer conference in July. “Don’t mess with NEU in CLF, we are not here to play,” she warned on Facebook.
CLF, which runs 36 schools in the southwest, has been affected by NEU strike action at several of its Bristol schools in the past two years. Union members have fought successfully for better pay and working conditions.
ADRIAN SHERRATT FOR THE TIMES
Jones said his child had “already experienced hassle from another pupil over Gaza” at the primary school, which left the child in tears, and all the local secondary school options were run by CLF.
He said it was perfectly normal for people in their neighbourhood to talk about their racial heritage and which protest marches they had attended.
“People are regularly testing you,” he said. “There are very few spaces where you are not getting it in your face with the Gaza conflict. We are not Israelis but it’s pumped into our lives like it’s happening just across the border in Bath.
“We believe in a two-state solution but the only way you can navigate this area of Bristol is to say you believe in the destruction of Israel. People lose their minds if they suspect you have any sympathy for Israel’s right to exist.”
At a children’s football club, which has a Soviet-style red star as a logo and stated aims that include “to challenge racism, sexism, fascism, homophobia and transphobia”, a parent was explaining at half-time how Jesus was a Palestinian, not a Jew.
• The Times View: Antisemitism in plain sight must meet full force of the law
“Everyone was nodding along,” Jones said. “I called him out and said Jesus was Jewish and I was looked at like I was causing a scene. We had to change football clubs.”
Jones said his wife had family who have lived in Israel for almost a century, having escaped discrimination in another Middle Eastern country.
On the streets around their home, many houses and shops display posters showing they are boycotting Israeli products to end the “apartheid” in Gaza and the West Bank.
Tom and Rand, young parents who have a poster in their front window, said they supported the school cancelling the MP’s visit because they were “pro-Palestine, so we wouldn’t want anyone with any connection to Israel going in”.
Asked if they thought a two-state solution was the best way to resolve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, Rand said: “It’s hard to think of Israel ever as being good, in a way, but whatever helps Palestine.”
ADRIAN SHERRATT FOR THE TIMES
Others in the neighbourhood also support the school’s cancellation of Egan’s visit. One man, who had a “Vote Green” placard in his front garden, said: “If the government and other bodies aren’t going to say we need to draw a line and we are not all right supporting a genocidal state [Israel], it’s up to unions to apply pressure themselves.”
Shivanni, 34, a self-employed property manager, said: “The people who run our country openly admit they are Zionists. Our government, as opposed to working for us, is working for Israel.”
She said she supported the cancellation of Egan’s visit. “We are a very liberal city and I would say in general we all feel the same way.”
Jones said he welcomed Ofsted’s investigation into whether Brunel “may have been intimidated into cancelling a visit”.
Brunel was last inspected in June 2023, when Ofsted judged it “good’ and said diversity was “valued and celebrated”.
CLF said Egan had previously visited six of its schools and it “fully agrees with the prime minister’s view that MPs should be able to visit schools in their constituencies without issue”.
ADRIAN SHERRATT FOR THE TIMES
It said the MP’s visit was “postponed” because of concerns about the “safety and wellbeing” of pupils during planned protests, and a new date for a visit had been agreed.
It said it was investigating Akhtar’s social media posts and had commissioned an external review of its staff training.
The NEU said: “The general secretary [Daniel Kebede] wants the NEU to be a healthy and participative trade union, with good workplace practices and where different views can be heard.”
The Department for Education said: “No Jewish MP should be prevented from attending schools in their constituency. It is a legal duty for teachers to be politically impartial.”