The president-elect of Britain’s National Union of Students (NUS) has refused to condemn violence committed by Palestinians, whilst repeatedly refusing to say Israel has a right to exist.
Malia Bouattia, who claims to represent the UK’s 2.5 million students, denied all the anti-Semitism allegations put to her, claiming she will be “branded an Isis sympathiser” by a supposedly racist media and society simply because she is a “black Muslim women”.
Many online have pointed out, however, that she is not black but an Algerian Arab. Even Channel 4 chose to describe her, bizarrely, as “politically black”.
“It’s not for me to condemn Palestinian violence!” said Ms. Bouattia on the evening news last night, claiming that Palestinians have a “right” to use “violence” because attacks on Israel are “self defence”.
Ms. Bouattia has previously voiced her support for “resistance” against the state of Israel, which was not limited to, “non-violent protest and the Boycott”.
She insisted that there was “absolutely not” a “double standard” at play when she repeatedly condemned Israel in such strong terms, but blocked a motion condemning the Islamic State (IS) terror group.
At the same conference where she blocked the IS motion, and whilst she says it is “not for [her]” to condemn Palestinian terror, Ms. Bouattia did take it upon herself to join a motion “condemning” UKIP, effectively blocking the party that has 4 million voters in the UK from the NUS.
She then refused, when asked three separate times, to deny she thinks Israel does not have a “right to exist… where it is now”, or that she has a, “problem with Israel per se”.
“Israel, where is now, is that problematic to you?” she was asked firmly. “Israel as it behaves is problematic to me”, she responded with a smirk, as if to acknowledge how blatantly she had avoided the question.
In the interview, Ms. Bouattia also refused to condemn her anti-Semitic attacks on supposedly “Zionist-led media” and claimed she had only blocked the motion condemning IS because it contained “problematic wording”, which might hold, “all Muslims accountable for their action”.
However, as the Gerasites blog points out, what Ms. Bouattia actually did was erase any reference to persecuted religious minorities in the NUS motion. The blog explains:
“It is hard to imagine how it is possible to ignore the religious aspect of Daesh’s murderous campaign against the Yazidis but Bouattia decided to do so. Rather than condemn Daesh as, for example, nothing to do with Islam, she chose to ignore the religious basis entirely”.
Meanwhile, the NUS Vice President, Richard Brooks, has said that non-whites have more “rights” and more access to “free speech” in so-call “safe spaces” on campus.
“Everyone has an equal right to freedom of speech, however some people have more equal rights than others”, he told the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire show.
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