Up until a few months ago, I lived in a small part of Edinburgh called Scotland. I lived there for 7 years – and during those 7 years, I and the other Jewish friend of mine experienced a sure, steady rise in antisemitic discrimination inside our separate schools, which I will detail in this blog.

My Experiences at Fettes College

In my most recent school, the bigotry towards me was mainly much quieter, implied, and manipulative, save for one case. The last school I was at, Fettes College (though I was in middle school), acted very strangely. I was their only Jewish student out of a thousand, which seemed to irk them, as they were a traditionally Christian school, and my family only chose it due to its prestige.

I was given certain “benefits”, though they all seemed basic and practically expected – I was allowed to skip chapel and evening prayer. However, in return I was made to go in on Shabbos – this school had a 6-day week – would have to sing choir for prayers and had to go into the school chapel.

All of these were a silent attempt to stifle my Judaism and freedom and get me to conform to their standards of which they had simply no right to force upon me. Additionally, Fettes also had only one Jewish teacher, who, quite suspiciously, came in on all holidays, even Yom Kippur, and from what I was told by my close friends frequented the Christian prayers.

All of those antisemitic actions were somewhat subtle, if only comparatively to their most flagrant acts of prejudice. As soon as I left Fettes, the school immediately started pushing out pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel books on their social media, which I had read and were clearly very biased.

This was obviously not an accident, because, as I previously stated, I was their only Jewish student, and also one known to be very knowledgeable about the conflict and history, so it was beyond suspicious.

Also, the school has a class that I’ve never had anywhere else, Current Affairs, which is always run by the current headmistress or headmaster and in which we would look at the current news and do assignments based on them.

The teacher we had, the headmistress, was quite obviously left-wing. This was bad, as, although she preached to have a non-biased outlook on the media, she forced us to only use the BBC as a news source. This was incredibly hypocritical, as the BBC is known to be one of the most biased outlets on the planet, yet she used her power to make it our only channel.

This also applied to our research of the Israel-Palestine conflict, which, as is known, the BBC constantly omits and shifts the narrative of, for example reporting on the “famine” in Gaza, but never mentioning the unused 2 million tons of aid distributed by COGAT, or how the IPC lowered the bar massively exclusively for Gaza so it could qualify as a famine.

In short, the time spent at Fettes was that of my Jewish identity and character as a Jewish person being covered up, suppressed, and omitted, witnessing the Jewish people being caricaturized and having their history rewritten, and my status as a student being the only thing stopping them from showing their true colors as antisemites.

My Experiences at Flora Stevenson’s

However, these discriminatory actions paled in comparison to my time at Flora Stevenson’s Primary School. In my years there, I faced threats, blatant injustice, and even outright violence due to my status as a Jewish person.

I was also the only Jewish student there, but unlike at Fettes, I was more actively discriminated against – of course the majority of my bullies was students, but also some members of staff.

The bigotry was quiet at first – normal bullying from the stereotypical bully kids you’d expect, but as the months went by, it became larger and larger – it was as if the grade decided to excommunicate me. I was isolated, my only non-abrasive interactions being with one or two very close friends. Other than that, it was simply outright verbal assailment.

One notable example of this was one kid in class known for misbehavior and a frequent tormentor of mine had strangely been avoiding me for a while and constantly on his iPad. The reason why was revealed a week later when on a trip, he not only outright said he didn’t like Jews, but revealed he had been on his iPad so much because he was building Auschwitz in Minecraft and planned to invite me to that world.

He went without punishment.

All of this came to a climax, when one break time, I was dragged out of the football field by one of my bullies, a more physically belligerent one, slammed against a wall by the neck in a choke. I myself have asthma, meaning that because of this, I was sent into an asthma attack and nearly died.

After this, the police had to get involved, as this was potentially a case of aggravated assault. But as you might have guessed by now, the assaulter went away scot-free from both the discipline of the police and the school. Thankfully, this was the last time anytime I was physically abused, but the verbal bullying continued.

The Scottish education system as of now is deteriorating, becoming more and more biased and outright unjust against Jews and Zionists by the day. It is fundamentally broken, expressing its clear bigotry both through its teachings and its treatment of students.

Edinburgh is also slowly but surely losing its Jewish population, as more and more Jewish individuals realize that it is not a safe place to live. One day in the future, nearly all the Edinburgh Jews will be gone, and the city will have free reign to spew as much antisemitic nonsense it wants. If no action is taken, the day will come much sooner than expected.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)