Oxford student union officer criticised for antisemitic tweet

The racial awareness and equality campaign co-chair at Oxford University student union has come under fire for an allegedly antisemitic tweet.

Kiran Benipal was criticised by Oxford Jewish society earlier this week when she posted a tweet which read: “Loool what kind of Jews do you f**k with coz they don’t let a single joke slide b4 saying ‘antisemitism’.”

Ms Benipal, who is also Corpus Christi JCR Black and Minority Ethnic officer, has apologised for the tweet and said it was in response to another a tweet in the midst of an argument.

Ms Benipal told online student journalism publication Versa: “I apologise unreservedly for this tweet. Belittling anti-Semitism is never acceptable, so I profoundly regret what I wrote in the heat of an argument.

“I was replying to another tweet. I was rejecting the common racist claim that Muslims are uniquely intolerant of offensive comments. It was inappropriate to instrumentalise the threat that anti-Semitism poses to the lives of Jewish people in order to make my point. This I fully accept and deeply apologise for.

“I fully accept that it is neither helpful nor acceptable to try to address the liberation of one group by cementing the oppression of another. My tweet was flippant, thoughtless and inappropriate. This is a time of rising anti-Semitism in the UK, and anti-Semitism should never be trivialised or ignored. My tweet was intended to address pervasive Islamophobia, not to trivialise anti-Semitism. I am sorry that in attempting the former, I also became guilty of the latter.”

The original tweet read: “Make jokes about Jews: funny. Make jokes about Christians: hilarious. Make jokes about Muslims: WWII in your mentions”.

Reacting to the tweet, Oxford JSoc said in a statement: “Oxford JSoc condemns this blatant anti-Semitism in the strongest possible terms. At a time of rising anti-Semitism in the UK, it is shocking that a so-called Equality Officer in our own student union and in her college JCR would deem it acceptable to trivialise such discrimination in a public forum. We hope for a public apology and call on the relevant bodies to reassess her ability to represent students in light of these views.”