Student Triumphs Over Anti-Semitic Attack at Scottish University

Two inebriated students entered a classmate's dormitory room and exhibited gross and insulting behavior regarding the Israeli flag hanging on the wall. Seeking justice, the student brought the two miscreants to trial. To their chagrin and everlasting embarrassment, the court ruled that they had indulged in aggressive, racist behavior, and fined one of them $500, to be paid to the plaintiff. Without any further prompting, the administration of St.Andrews University expelled one student and suspended the other, which sent a loud and clear message that anti-semitic acts will not be tolerated.

Chanan Reitblat: Donates compensation from bias incident
 in Scotland to family of terrorist victims.

"To me, this attack struck a deep chord because in our history,  attacks on the Jewish people always began with attacks on Jewish symbols but never stopped there. By way of example, before they killed six million Jews, Nazis started by burning Jewish books — which are symbols of our identity and culture. The Israeli flag and the Star of David is a symbol representing the Jewish state and the Jewish people, and any pretence that attacking it is “political debate” or “free speech” or “defense of Palestinian rights” is a facade.
         -Chanan Reitblat, Exchange Student, St. Andrews University

Enduring Anti-Israel Sentiment At St. Andrews

Steve Lipman, Staff Writer, THE JEWISH WEEK
Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Chanan Reitblat, a Lithuanian-born and American-bred post-graduate student at Yeshiva University, went to Scotland’s historic St. Andrews University earlier this year to study chemistry and learned a lesson in contemporary politics. An undergraduate exchange student at the school, he hung in his dormitory room a large Israeli flag — a gift from his brother, who served in the Israeli army's Marva basic training program; in March, a pair of fellow students attacked the flag, one of them rubbing          his genitals before wiping his hands on the flag.

That student, 19-year-old Paul Donnachie (a member of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign) was expelled from the university and sentenced to perform 150 hours of community service; afterwards he posted a Facebook notice that “I got into s*** for disrespecting [an Israeli flag]. F*** them.” His partner was suspended for a year — they were, it was ruled, guilty of a racially motivated, rather than a political, crime. The moves by the school preceded by several months the conviction of 10 students at the University of California at Irvine for disorderly conduct for repeatedly interrupting a speech by Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren.

Reitblat, 21, has subsequently left St. Andrews and returned to his studies at Yeshiva University. He said he will donate the nearly $500 he received from Donnachie in compensation on court orders to the Fogel Family Fund, which was established to assist the surviving children in an Israeli family, whose parents and three children were killed in a terrorist attack the same day as Reitblat’s flag was desecrated.
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