Billy Bragg’s song was of course wearing badges is not enough in days like these. He was and is right.
However for Spectator ranter Brendan O’Neill wearing badges is too much. For the unfamiliar O’Neill was once a Living Marxist but essentially deals in purveying contrarian opinions.
A survey has found that anti-Semitism in schools is rising. It would be surprising given anti-Semitism clearly exists in British society if it was not found in schools. However the suggestion it is rising sounds rather like those enthusiasts for the Israeli Government who think anyone expressing even the mildest sympathy for Palestinians is anti-Semitic. The current Government despite the words of Ed Miliband, clearly still contains numbers in this category.
Further investigation suggests that the survey was based on a rather small sample. Given a genocide has taken place in Gaza where thousands of children have been killed and injured teachers wearing a Palestine badge seems like an expression of humanity. Although not of course for Mr O’Neill
Leftie teachers are shocked that they might soon be prevented from wearing Palestine badges in the classroom. Spare a thought for the rest of us who are shocked that you were doing that in the first place. You taught kids, including Jewish kids, while adorned in the colours under which more than a thousand Jews were massacred by Islamo-fascists just three years ago? What the hell is wrong with you?What a testament to the infantilisation of our institutions that teachers now demand the right to coat themselves in the accoutrements of the Current Thing
The badge debate has been reignited by Sir David Bell’s review of soaring anti-Semitism in our schools. Sir David doesn’t actually propose a ban on teachers draping themselves in the bourgeois must-have of Palestine paraphernalia. But he does say schools should ‘consider the appropriateness’ of such sartorial sanctimony. It is ‘entirely reasonable’, he says, for individual schools to outlaw Gaza chic.
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