London - The British government’s review of antisemitism in schools has come under fire from critics who say it rests on flawed evidence, undeclared pro-Israel affiliations, and a contested definition that conflates hostility toward Jews with criticism of the Israeli state.
Education Secretary Lucy Powell this month adopted all 27 recommendations of the review authored by Sir David Bell — a former Ofsted chief and Department for Education permanent secretary who now heads the University of Sunderland — calling it a “generational moment.” The review was commissioned by her predecessor, Bridget Phillipson. Both Powell and Phillipson are members of Labour Friends of Israel.
But critics who have picked the document apart say the government has handed schools a framework for silencing discussion of the genocide in Gaza.
The page 30 problem
The review’s own evidence, buried on page 30, contradicts its headline narrative. Anti-Jewish attitudes in Britain, it acknowledges, are “typically less prevalent and have remained more stable,” while anti-Israel sentiment is “more prevalent and has been increasing.”
Its central exhibit is a YouGov poll in which 45 percent of British adults in 2025 agreed that Israel treats the Palestinians the way the Nazis treated the Jews — a belief the review says could be regarded as antisemitic under the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition it wants schools to adopt.
What the review does not foreground: the poll’s published tables show it was commissioned by the Campaign Against Antisemitism, a pro-Israel advocacy group. The same polling put the figure at 33 percent in August 2024 — a 12-point rise over a year of genocide in Gaza — while answers about Jews themselves barely moved. The review does cite other research suggesting both types of attitude have grown since 2020, but elsewhere presents a chart labelled 2025 that is credited to a report from 2017.
“Most people understand the difference between hating Jews as Jews and despising the genocide in Gaza,” said academic David Miller on Press TV’s Palestine Declassified, the program on which the criticisms were aired. The report, he said, is “first of all, ideologically loaded, biased from the beginning and, of course, also intellectually shoddy and incoherent.”
Seventy respondents
The review’s headline finding — that almost three in five young Jewish people have experienced or witnessed antisemitism — rests on fragile ground. The review itself warns its survey is not representative, and its evidence annex shows just 70 Jewish respondents answered the question. Twenty-nine said they had experienced antisemitism themselves.
Meanwhile, in the review’s call for evidence, nearly nine in ten respondents said they were confident they could tell antisemitism apart from criticism of Israel — a finding absent from the review’s narrative. Some 158 submissions used a template criticising the review process. None is quoted.
A doctored definition
When the review does answer its critics, it misquotes the very definition it promotes. The IHRA text states that criticism of Israel “similar to that levelled against any other country” cannot be regarded as antisemitic. The Bell review renders this as “any other democratic country” — an insertion that narrows the protection and, Miller said, “hardens the example.”
The definition was fixed before any evidence arrived: the terms of reference, published in March, required the use of IHRA; the call for evidence opened at the end of April.
Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, warned that IHRA’s contested framing risks blurring the line between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of the Israeli government and the genocide in Gaza.
Undeclared affiliations
The terms of reference declare that the reviewer has no conflicts of interest. They do not mention that the Academic Study Group on Israel and the Middle East — a charity whose only firm policy is opposition to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement — lists Bell on its National Council.
Miller called the no-conflict declaration “a lie.” Broadcast journalist Basil Valentine added that the report “might as well have been authored in Tel Aviv,” citing what he described as Phillipson’s heavy funding from pro-Israel lobbyist Stuart Roden.
Marking his own homework
Under the accepted recommendations, Bell will next year assess how well his own review is being implemented. Host Chris Williamson, a former Labour MP, noted that the government’s updated Magenta Book guidance stipulates that policy evaluations be carried out by independent panels.
“That’s like marking his own homework,” Williamson said. Valentine called the arrangement “completely irregular, to say the least, and indeed potentially judicially reviewable.”
Classrooms and Gaza
For the review’s critics, the stakes are what British pupils are permitted to learn. A UN Commission of Inquiry report issued this week found that Israeli authorities are still committing genocidal acts in Gaza with the intent to destroy the Palestinian population in whole or in part, and that the situation in the occupied West Bank continues to deteriorate — the same week British lawmakers were refused entry by the occupation authorities.
“One of the so-called examples of antisemitism in the IHRA definition is singling out Israel for criticism,” Valentine said. “But if, as the UN says it is, Israel is committing genocidal acts, then of course it has to be singled out.”
Schools, he argued, should be “places where that silence is broken, and pupils are properly informed about what’s going on in the world, not places where existing propaganda norms are reinforced.”
Valentine also pointed to the growing number of anti-Zionist Jews — among them former Israeli soldier turned activist Haim Bresheeth-Žabner, who spoke at a joint Jewish-Palestinian press conference this week — whose voices, he said, are “simply disregarded, ignored completely” by government and media alike.
Reference: PressTv