At universities across Britain, anti-Israel bigotry is the new normal, but Professor Michael Ben-Gad refused to be cowed in his own classroom

IT

began as an ordinary Wednesday afternoon in October. Students filtered into a lecture hall at City University of London — takeaway coffees in hand, laptops open, chatting about upcoming essays and exams and the London winter weather outside.

At the front, Professor Michael Ben-Gad set up his slides for an economics class on monetary policy. He’d taught it many times before. He knew when to expect questions, where the jokes would land, which graphs made students groan.

Then the door was pushed wide open.

At first, students assumed it was latecomers. Then came the shouting. “Free, free Palestine!” “Zionist murderer!” “Nazi!” — that last word echoing through the lecture hall. Within seconds, around a dozen masked figures had forced their way down the aisles to the front of the lecture hall, filming on phones, screaming in Professor Ben-Gad’s face and waving flags.

The protesters surrounded the lectern, accusing Ben-Gad of being a “war criminal” for his compulsory service in the Israeli army four decades earlier.

One protestor urged students to walk out “if you don’t support genocide.” Another, according to both Ben-Gad and a university security guard, muttered that he should be “beheaded.”

For a moment, no one moved. The students stared forward, waiting for his cue. Would he back down, walk out, retreat?

He didn’t.

Ben-Gad stood his ground. He didn’t raise his voice or argue. He waited. A few minutes passed before the protesters drifted away, disappointed at not having elicited the reaction they had hoped for.

Only then did Ben-Gad speak. “I’m sorry for the interruption,” he said quietly. “Let’s continue.”

And he did. Two more hours of economics finished exactly as planned.

Ben-Gad’s story, while particularly dramatic, is a microcosm of the wider phenomenon happening in Britain today. In an increasingly alarming trend, radical forces rooted in ideology are spewing anti-Semitism on campuses countrywide and the government has yet to offer an unequivocal response.

When we later spoke, Ben-Gad dismissed suggestions of heroism.

“People in Israel face worse every day,” he said. “Confronting a few thugs in a lecture hall isn’t bravery or heroic. It’s just what needed to be done at the time.”

Days before the invasion, posters appeared across campus calling him a “terrorist” and a “war criminal.” They were signed by City Action for Palestine, which also ran an Instagram campaign demanding his dismissal. Then came the emails — one telling him to resign, another warning that students were planning a sit-in if he didn’t.

“They could have chosen someone more vulnerable,” he said to me. “In that sense, they made a mistake.”

Unapologetic Stance

A few days after the incident, Ben-Gad appeared on TV. Calm, sharp-witted, and utterly unbowed, he turned the intimidation he had faced into a lesson in moral clarity.

“I can have my life back if I apologize for my military service,” he said, before turning to the camera. “So, before we go any further, I’ve written an apology out. Where’s my camera? There? Okay.”

He looked straight ahead.

“Good evening, thugs. It’s important to be polite. As you’ve probably heard, we have compulsory conscription in Israel, so as a citizen I was obligated to serve. However, for most of us, conscription merely absolved us of the need to volunteer. Personally, I was born less than 20 years after nearly my entire family was gassed at Treblinka. And personally, I would have crawled over cut glass to get to that induction center, to put on the uniform and defend my people. Have a nice evening.”

Then, deadpan: “Notice the last bit. My manners have so improved since I moved to this country.”

The clip went viral, shared by people all over the world who saw in his composure something quietly heroic.

Born 20 years after most of his family were murdered at Treblinka, Ben-Gad is the son of Holocaust survivors. His father is a Litvak from Vilna; his mother, a Polish Jew from Warsaw. He served in the IDF, as a lone soldier, from the age of 18, completed his BA in Israel after the army, and then worked for the Bank of Israel. He came to Britain in 2007 and has taught economics at City for nearly two decades.

In his speech, Ben-Gad spoke about his love of Britain, even as he criticized its institutions for their cowardice. “I’ve come to really love this country because I’ve learned what kind of people the British are,” he said. “Not everybody in UK higher education is a lunatic — but the lunatics have come to run these places.”

He refused City University’s offer of paid leave, insisting he would return to the classroom immediately. “They said, ‘Until this blows over, you can stay home.’ But I told them I’d turn up to every lecture. That’s what they wanted — for me to disappear. I’m not going anywhere.”

And perhaps his most poignant line of all came when he spoke of his students. “I had a meeting last night with some Jewish students,” he said. “It’s not easy. I just want to say something to their parents: You should be very proud of them. I certainly am.”

A National Pattern

What happened to Michael Ben-Gad was shocking — but not unique.

Just last week at University College London, Jewish students attending an Israel Society event about the persecution of Yemenite Jews were blocked from entering by a masked mob chanting “Crush the Zionist settler state” and “Intifada revolution.” Police later told organizers they might need an armed escort to leave safely.

Across the country, Jewish Society events and Hillel Houses now require security guards at the door.

According to the Community Security Trust (CST), anti-Semitic incidents on UK campuses have risen 413 percent since October 2023, with 272 cases recorded in the last academic year, the highest on record.

Some involved graffiti or harassment; others involved threats or physical intimidation to Jewish students and professors on campuses across the UK.

“Every time we think it can’t get worse,” a Jewish student leader told me, “It does.”

Watching the videos of the protests, you see the rage, the faces hidden behind scarves and masks. These aren’t peaceful demonstrators. If they were, they wouldn’t hide. They know exactly what they’re doing.

Masks should be banned at protests on campus. No one proud of their words needs to conceal their face. The ceasefire in Gaza may now be weeks old, but their war on Jews continues.

Westminster, the heart of our democracy in the UK, has finally begun to wake up — but many fear it’s too little, too late, and too often just words without action.

Under the previous Conservative government, Education Secretary Gillian Keegan and Minister of State for Higher Education Robert Halfon had both called for tougher measures in the wake of October 7 and the protests that followed — including expelling foreign students found to have promoted anti-Semitism and banning hate-filled protests on campus. But since the general election in the summer of 2024, and the arrival of the new Labour government, many in the Jewish community — students, academics, and communal leaders alike — feel the urgency and the action has faded.

During a House of Lords debate on October 29, Lord Leigh of Hurley pressed the government on what steps it was taking to protect Jewish academics and students after the episode with Professor Ben-Gad.

“Anti-Semitic campaigns have no place in our lecture halls,” replied Baroness Smith of Malvern, the new education minister.

Words, but no action….

Peers and MPs from all parties have voiced concern. Lord Polak, a Conservative, put it bluntly “Enough of this standing side by side. Action must be taken, otherwise we are in for a real shock.”

It’s a point that many are now making — if real action is not taken, soon, we risk sleepwalking our way to a much worse incident involving Jewish students or academics on campus.

The subject may have reached the floor of the UK Parliament, but speeches alone won’t make Jewish students feel safe walking to class. Until universities face real consequences for allowing this hate to go unchallenged, and until the anti-Semites themselves face consequences and are expelled, the mobs will keep returning.

The Deeper Problem

Ben-Gad believes the problem runs deeper than a few radical and anti-Semitic students.

Across many universities, a culture of ideological conformity has taken root. Post-colonial and “critical” theories dominate entire departments. Rejecting the notion that Jews are “white settler-colonialists” can now be career-limiting. It’s not about scholarship anymore, it’s about ideology.

Ben-Gad said “the lunatics have taken over academia. Some of these philosophies are so completely ridiculous they can only be imposed by force — the only way they can get people to sign off on this is by threatening them.”

Professor Ian Pace, a colleague of Ben-Gad’s at City University, has been warning about this for months. “Across the higher education sector,” he wrote, “while there are a handful of deeply anti-Semitic students, I believe the issue is more with academics.” He described how “the ideological outlook which views Jews as ‘settler-colonialists’ and of ‘white privilege’ is so deeply entrenched… that to hold deeply negative views of Jews and especially Zionist Jews is almost a requirement for entry to some disciplines.”

In another post, he added: “I’ve been in circles where you need to go along with the idea of Israel as a ‘genocidal’ nation in order not to be ostracized. A lot of academic advancement relies on conforming with groupthink, which can itself be anti-Semitic.”

I’ve spoken to countless young Jews who now hide their Magen David necklaces or tuck their tzitzis inside their shirts before lectures. Most are frightened to let peers know if they visit Israel or even to divulge that they are Jewish. One told me she deleted Instagram posts about visiting family in Israel, “because you never know who’s watching.”

The Union of Jewish Students (UJS) has logged hundreds of harassment cases since October 7, 2023.

Still, though, Jewish life on campus persists. Friday-night dinners at Hillel Houses are packed. Jewish societies (JSocs) are thriving. One student told me: “It’s exhausting, but we’re not giving up.”

That resilience mirrors Ben-Gad’s own. “They can shout all they want,” a student said. “But we’ll still be here tomorrow.

Government Promises and Gaps

The government has promised action, but as Lord Harries of Pentregarth asked during the debate on the Ben-Gad event, “What disciplinary steps will be taken against universities that fail?”

The minister gave a non-answer.

Meanwhile, Jewish students continue to walk to Jewish events protected by security guards. University leaders issue statements about “balancing competing rights.” And Jewish parents — once proud to see their children at Britain’s best universities — now wonder if those campuses are safe for their children.

For Jews in Britain, higher education has always been a measure of belonging — proof that we are not merely tolerated but accepted, and part of the fabric of a nation.

If universities are no longer safe for Jews, what does that say about Britain? What does that say about the state of the West?

Ben-Gad still insists that most Britons are fair-minded. “Britain is still a decent, fair society,” he said. But he warned that something had “gone badly wrong inside our institutions.”

There’s a line that Holocaust survivors often repeat: “Never again begins with education.” But what happens when education itself becomes the problem?

When mobs surround Jewish students shouting “Intifada!” and “From the river to the sea,” when lectures are invaded and Jewish events need police protection, “Never again” starts to sound like an empty promise.

The Holocaust didn’t begin with violence. It began with boycotts, basic hatred, caricatures, and silence — the same silence now echoing in lecture halls where students who preach tolerance look away when Jews are attacked in public.

Since that day, Ben-Gad has received messages of support from colleagues and strangers around the world.

Each week, he returns to the same lecture hall. He opens his slides and begins again. The mob came once. They may come again.

But he’ll be there waiting.

In an age when shouting mobs drown out thought, sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is stay in the room and keep teaching, just as Ben-Gad did. His response might be the most important lesson he’ll ever teach.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1087)