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.<\/p>\n
Saima Akhtar, the inclusion and diversity co-ordinator at CLF, who sits on the leadership council of Brunel, said Hamas terrorists were \u201cheroes fighting for justice\u201d and told people to ignore \u201cmedia attempts to paint Israel<\/a> as a victim\u201d the day after the attacks.<\/p>\n The Joneses, not their real names, are worried about their child attending a CLF school and are searching for a home in a more \u201cneutral neighbourhood\u201d.<\/p>\n Damien Egan, the MP for Bristol North East<\/p>\n BEN BIRCHALL\/PA<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThe small Jewish community is being ostracised in an organised way,\u201d Jones said, comparing their treatment to black and Asian minority groups in the past. \u201cIt is being done by the left and and polite society aren\u2019t doing enough.\u201d<\/p>\n Michaela Wilde, a pastoral support worker at a sister school and the NEU branch secretary for CLF schools, said she was \u201cvery proud\u201d of having forced their employer to cancel Egan\u2019s 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<\/a>. \u201cDon\u2019t mess with NEU in CLF, we are not here to play,\u201d she warned on Facebook.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n ADRIAN SHERRATT FOR THE TIMES<\/p>\n Jones said his child had \u201calready experienced hassle from another pupil over Gaza\u201d at the primary school, which left the child in tears, and all the local secondary school options were run by CLF.<\/p>\n He said it was perfectly normal for people in their neighbourhood to talk about their racial heritage and which protest marches they had attended.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are regularly testing you,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are very few spaces where you are not getting it in your face with the Gaza<\/a> conflict. We are not Israelis but it\u2019s pumped into our lives like it\u2019s happening just across the border in Bath.<\/p>\n \u201cWe 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\u2019s right to exist.\u201d<\/p>\n At a children\u2019s football club, which has a Soviet-style red star as a logo and stated aims that include \u201cto challenge racism, sexism, fascism, homophobia and transphobia\u201d, a parent was explaining at half-time how Jesus was a Palestinian, not a Jew.<\/p>\n \u2022 The Times View: Antisemitism in plain sight must meet full force of the law<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n \u201cEveryone was nodding along,\u201d Jones said. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Jones said his wife had family who have lived in Israel for almost a century, having escaped discrimination in another Middle Eastern country.<\/p>\n On the streets around their home, many houses and shops display posters showing they are boycotting Israeli products to end the \u201capartheid\u201d in Gaza and the West Bank.<\/p>\n Tom and Rand, young parents who have a poster in their front window, said they supported the school cancelling the MP\u2019s visit because they were \u201cpro-Palestine, so we wouldn\u2019t want anyone with any connection to Israel going in\u201d.<\/p>\n Asked if they thought a two-state solution was the best way to resolve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, Rand said: \u201cIt\u2019s hard to think of Israel ever as being good, in a way, but whatever helps Palestine.\u201d<\/p>\n ADRIAN SHERRATT FOR THE TIMES<\/p>\n Others in the neighbourhood also support the school\u2019s cancellation of Egan\u2019s visit. One man, who had a \u201cVote Green<\/a>\u201d placard in his front garden, said: \u201cIf the government and other bodies aren\u2019t going to say we need to draw a line and we are not all right supporting a genocidal state [Israel], it\u2019s up to unions to apply pressure themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n Shivanni, 34, a self-employed property manager, said: \u201cThe people who run our country openly admit they are Zionists. Our government, as opposed to working for us, is working for Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n She said she supported the cancellation of Egan\u2019s visit. \u201cWe are a very liberal city and I would say in general we all feel the same way.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Newly](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1768610421_867_\/a22b7ee0-7eda-493d-8b50-ac22cccdd69c.jpg\")
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