Lucy Powell wants every school in England to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Seven of its eleven examples are about Israel.

The reality of the Bell review published this week: the Education Secretary, Lucy Powell, will write to every school and college in England to say she expects them to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism, a definition whose examples are mostly about the State of Israel.

Antisemitism in English schools is real, and Jewish children must be protected from it. The review is full of it. A year 7 pupil said he wanted to "build a gas chamber and chain up Jews". A 14-year-old girl was called a "Jew bitch" on a bus. Jonathan Frisher, a Jewish student from Cheshire, was told he belonged in a gas chamber and watched Nazi salutes become normal at his school. None of that needs the IHRA definition to be recognised as racism. Any teacher knows it when they see it.

What the definition adds is Israel. Seven of its eleven examples are about the Israeli state. Calling Israel "a racist endeavor" is one. Comparing Israeli policy to the Nazis is another. That is dangerous, because it treats a state and Jewish people as the same thing. A policy that cannot tell Jewish children apart from the Israeli state only benefits the Israeli state, by conflating the two and misrepresenting real antisemitism.

So we read the whole review, its terms of reference, its evidence spreadsheet, the government's response and the Commons statement, and every report on it we could find in the first 48 hours.

What we found:

• The review says a belief held by 45% of British adults, that "Israel treats the Palestinians like the Nazis treated the Jews", "could be regarded as antisemitic according to the IHRA definition".
• Its terms of reference said in March that it "will be using" the IHRA definition. The call for evidence opened eight weeks later.
• 158 of the 587 responses used a template that criticised the IHRA definition. The review's answer to the worry that IHRA limits criticism of Israel misquotes the definition.
• 526 of 590 respondents said they were confident they could tell antisemitism from criticism of Israel. Eleven said they were not. The review leaves that answer out.
• "Three in five Jewish pupils" rests on 70 Jewish UCAS applicants. 29 of them said they had experienced antisemitism themselves.
• The longest single section of the review is about Palestine badges and flags. It gives political impartiality 2,407 words, and supporting the victims of antisemitism 267.
• A charity whose "only issue on which ASG has firm policy is opposition to BDS" lists Sir David Bell on its National Council. The terms of reference say he "has no conflict of interest".
• Of 37 reports from 23 outlets, 4 quoted any of the definition's examples about Israel, 2 said how many Jewish pupils were surveyed, and 0 mentioned the 45% passage.

What the government has told schools to do

Powell accepted all 27 recommendations on Wednesday 21 October. She told the House of Commons:

The definition cannot be made compulsory, and the review itself says it is "not a proxy for the legal test" a court would apply. But the government has built it into almost everything else it is changing:

• A new online antisemitism training package for every school and college leader and safeguarding lead, which "will include content on the IHRA working definition".
• Antisemitism written into Keeping children safe in education, the statutory safeguarding guidance, in 2027.
• A separate antisemitism category in every school's incident records by the end of the 2027/28 school year, covering "wider manifestations of antisemitism" where there is no identifiable victim.
• New Prevent advice from the Home Office on when antisemitism "may be indicators of radicalisation risk".
• Teachers' Standards rewritten so that antisemitic behaviour breaks them "within and outside the school, including online".
• A survey of every school and college in 2027/28 "to assess levels of adoption".

The same letter will ask schools to adopt the government's definition of anti-Muslim hostility.

Put two of those together. The review says every time it uses the word antisemitism, it means "the IHRA working definition and its accompanying examples". It then asks every school to record "wider manifestations of antisemitism", even when nobody is the victim. Under those examples, a pupil who says the State of Israel is a racist endeavour could be one.

What the IHRA definition says

The definition itself is two sentences. It calls antisemitism "a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews". The work is done by the eleven examples that come with it.

Whilst some of the Israel examples, like holding Jews collectively responsible for what Israel does, describe real antisemitism, others describe what people believe about a state: that it is a racist project, or that its policies can be compared to the Nazis.

Karon Monaghan KC, the equality barrister the National Education Union asked to investigate antisemitism inside the union, looked at exactly this. She found that the belief that the State of Israel is a racist endeavour is a protected belief under the Equality Act, and wrote:

The man who led the drafting of the definition, Kenneth Stern, told the US Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2024 that it is "energetically used to target speech regarding Israel".

Parliament saw this coming. When the government adopted the definition in December 2016, the Home Affairs Committee had asked for two safeguards to go with it, the first of them: "It is not antisemitic to criticise the Government of Israel, without additional evidence to suggest antisemitic intent." The government refused. It said the definition's own line on criticism of Israel was "sufficient to ensure freedom of speech".

That line is the definition's one written protection for criticism of Israel. In the passage where the review answers its critics, Sir David Bell rewrote it.

How the review itself uses the definition

The review does not treat the definition as a guide to be weighed. It makes it the meaning of the word.

Then it applies it to the country.

Notice what that does. A view about how Israel treats Palestinians, held by almost half of British adults, becomes a measure of antisemitism, in a 107-page report that never once uses the word genocide about Gaza.

The 45% comes from the Campaign Against Antisemitism's Antisemitism Barometer, a YouGov poll of 2,245 British adults carried out online on 1 and 2 September 2025. The review cites it in a footnote as "YouGov (2025) Judaism & Jewish People (Antisemitism Barometer)". The charity calls that statement "one of the most common antisemitic tropes that we see", and says 60% of young people agree with it. Those are the young people the review wants schools to teach.

The same section lists "anti-Israel attitudes" next to anti-Jewish ones, and counts the 25% of adults who disagree with the statement "I am comfortable spending time with people who openly support Israel".

The review also gets the definition's own standing wrong:

The review chose IHRA before it heard any evidence

The review was announced on 4 March 2026. Its terms of reference had already decided the question at the centre of the row.

When people did respond, more than a quarter of them objected to exactly that.

The review does not name the organisation. In July the Jewish Chronicle reported that Parents for Palestine, a parents' group backed by a section of the NEU, had circulated a template response. It ran the story under the headline "Teachers blocking plan to tackle antisemitism 'have no place in the classroom'", and quoted the shadow education secretary, Laura Trott: "Any teachers actively undermining efforts to combat antisemitism have no place in our classrooms." Objecting to a definition was reported as objecting to tackling antisemitism.

When the review answers the worry that the definition limits criticism of Israel, its reply begins "However" and says the definition protects criticism "similar to that levelled against any other democratic country". That is the sentence with the word the definition does not contain.

The review's own call for evidence asked one question that goes to the heart of all this: "Are you confident that you can effectively distinguish between antisemitic comments and comments about, and criticism of, actions of the State of Israel?"

526 of 590 said yes, very or fairly confident. Eleven said no. That answer is in the evidence spreadsheet the government published. It is not in the review. The review's executive summary says instead that the evidence suggests "confusion around the boundary between legitimate political expression and antisemitism".

This was a self-selected consultation, not a survey of schools. Of the 568 who answered the question, 41% said they were Jewish. Half of all responses came from parents, and half related to London.

The figure in every headline

Three in five Jewish pupils. Nearly every report led with it. Here is where it comes from.

• The review commissioned a survey of England's UCAS applicants aged 16 to 19. 5,847 answered.
• 92 said they were Jewish. 70 of them answered the question about antisemitism.
• 29 of the 70 said they had experienced antisemitism themselves. The "three in five", 59%, adds those who said they had witnessed it: about 41 young people.
• The review says the sample of 92 "should be treated with caution" and that the survey is "not representative".

Two of the 37 reports we read told readers how many Jewish pupils were surveyed. Three went further than the survey did, and said three in five Jewish pupils had been "targeted" or had suffered "abuse".

What the review spends its words on

We counted every word of the review's own text, 30,287 words once the footnotes, headings and contents page are left out, and sorted every paragraph by what it talks about.

What the count shows:

• Half the review, 51%, is about antisemitism and never mentions Israel, Palestine or politics. That half covers abuse, reporting, recording, training and Holocaust education.
• 23% is about Israel, Palestine, Zionism or political expression: badges, flags, slogans, protest and impartiality.
• In the chapter on staff conduct that rises to 60%. In the chapter on keeping Jewish schools safe it is 0%.
• The longest single section of the review, 1,073 words, is headed "Political expression and pupil wellbeing in schools". It is about pupils and teachers showing support for Palestine with badges, flags and slogans. It uses the word antisemitic or antisemitism twice: once to say that support for or criticism of Israel "is not antisemitic", once in the title of another review.
• The review gives political impartiality 2,407 words. It gives supporting the victims of antisemitism 267.

That is the job the review was given. Its terms of reference told it to look at how staff stay "politically impartial, in particular related to Israel/Palestine". Every political symbol it describes on a pupil or a teacher is a Palestinian one: a badge, a flag, the words "Free Palestine". The Ukrainian flag appears once, as the comparison respondents made.

Whose words it quotes

• The review quotes 51 passages. Jewish pupils, parents and teachers describing the antisemitism they faced are among them, and they should be heard.
• None criticises the IHRA definition. The 158 responses that did are counted, not quoted.
• It quotes the NEU's own Monaghan report four times, and never on the definition.

What it says about Palestine solidarity

The terms of reference asked how staff "remain politically impartial, in particular related to Israel/Palestine". On the badges, flags and slogans, this is what the review concluded:

In the next paragraph it says it does not want a blanket ban. It records that respondents described schools banning the Palestinian flag while allowing the Ukrainian flag, and asks for policies "applied consistently across different political issues". Then it tells schools that where a pupil wears a badge that "may express a political view", the school "should provide pupils a balanced account of opposing views".

Powell went further than the review in the Commons:

On Holocaust Memorial Day, the government's response says the day is for pupils to reflect on "the Holocaust, subsequent genocides, and the dangers of antisemitism, hatred and prejudice". In the same paragraph it says some schools have stopped marking it for fear that pupils or parents "may seek use the occasion to draw links with ongoing events in Israel/Palestine", and that the day "should not be used to advance political or partisan views". Read together, that leaves one genocide a pupil is not meant to bring up.

On the unions, the review says some Jewish members feel unsupported "when unions overwhelmingly focus, in a well-documented way, on a pro-Palestine, anti-State of Israel position". Its footnote for that says "since 2023, the NEU has passed national motions on Palestine at every annual conference and at executive level". It opens that chapter with a line from the NEU's own Monaghan report, and cuts it:

It asks the Home Office for new Prevent advice on when antisemitism may signal radicalisation, and wants teachers' conduct judged "within and outside the school, including online". The review gives its own example of where the line falls: a teacher may attend a protest, but "displaying an antisemitic sign at the protest could breach Teachers' Standards". Under the IHRA examples, a placard comparing Israel's bombing of Gaza to the Nazis could be that sign.

What schools were already doing

The review describes a "chilling effect" on teachers. It cites research by Alison Liddle in which teachers described "a censorship of discussion" about Israel and Palestine. One assistant head in that research put the fear plainly: "There is a fear that the school will be accused of antisemitism and supporting terrorism."

That fear has a record. In November 2023, after pupils wore Palestine colours and badges, Barclay Primary School in Leyton wrote to parents that "extremist or divisive comments can and will lead to formal meetings with the school, referrals to the PREVENT Team or the Hate Crime Team in Waltham Forest". The trust later said it had never reported anyone to Prevent.

In July 2024 UK Lawyers for Israel announced that a Cambridge sixth-form college had told a sociology teacher his Palestinian flag was not appropriate at an open day: "We are pleased that the school has taken action to ensure that its staff do not wear inappropriate political badges on school premises."

The review heard about that climate, named it, and then recommended a definition, a recording category and new Prevent advice that all point the same way.

What the Education Secretary said in the Commons

Labour MP Peter Prinsley told her he is a Zionist and asked her to agree that "we must refute other spurious definitions of Zionism fabricated for political purposes". She answered:

That is the conflation, in the Education Secretary's own words, on the day. A motion about a political ideology, passed at a party conference, is antisemitic, and that is why the IHRA definition must go into schools. Monaghan KC found that anti-Zionist beliefs are protected by the Equality Act.

Sixteen MPs asked questions after the statement. The Liberal Democrat Munira Wilson said some young constituents had not been allowed to discuss the Middle East at school. Not one raised the definition's critics. The shadow education secretary, Laura Trott, asked Powell to investigate union members who opposed an MP's school visit and, "when warranted, have them removed from schools".

Powell opened the statement with an apology. The report had leaked. Sky News published the recommendations at 9.29pm on Monday 19 October. By the time Powell stood up, the BBC, the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Times, the Daily Mail, LBC and Jewish News had all reported them from the leak, before anyone could read the review. Powell told MPs she had ordered a leak inquiry.

Who wrote it, and who will put it into practice

Sir David Bell is a former permanent secretary of the Department for Education, the department that commissioned him, and a former chief inspector at Ofsted. He is vice-chancellor of the University of Sunderland.

The Academic Study Group on Israel and the Middle East lists him on its National Council. It listed him in October 2025, five months before he was appointed, and it still did when we checked on 21 October 2026.

The charity says its mission is to build links between UK academics and "their counterparts in Israel". It says it "presses no political line", and in the next sentence that "The only issue on which ASG has firm policy is opposition to BDS", the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel. It runs a speakers service giving "pre-University students" a background to Israel and the Arab world. Its director, John Levy, joined the Zionist Federation in 1970 and also runs the Friends of Israel Educational Foundation, according to his profile on the charity's own site.

None of that appears in the terms of reference. A review whose central decision is how schools should treat speech about Israel was led by a man listed on the council of a charity whose one firm policy is opposing the boycott of Israel.

The government's implementation group includes the Partnerships for Jewish Schools, the Antisemitism Policy Trust and the Union of Jewish Students, whose campaign to get universities to adopt IHRA the review cites in a footnote. £2.3 million of the government's antisemitism education programme has been awarded to Palace Yard and the Union of Jewish Students to deliver training.

Powell told MPs the chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust "sits on the implementation taskforce". That chief executive, Karen Pollock, wrote in the Jewish Chronicle the same day: "The spurious, unfounded and legally illiterate charge of genocide against Israel achieves one thing only: it puts a target on the back of every Jew."

What the press told you

We read every report on the review we could find from the Sky News leak on 19 October to the evening of 21 October: 37 reports from 23 outlets, from the BBC and the Guardian to GB News, the Jewish Chronicle and Middle East Eye. We coded every paragraph by whose words it carried.

• 27 of 37 named the IHRA definition. 4 quoted any of its examples about Israel, and one of those four was Powell using it against the Green Party.
• 9 reported any criticism of it. In six of them the only critic was the NEU. Kenneth Stern, who led its drafting, appeared in one report, in Middle East Eye.
• 1, Middle East Eye, told readers the terms of reference had committed the review to IHRA from the start.
• 0 mentioned the 45% passage, the 158 critical responses, or Sir David Bell's place on the Academic Study Group's council.
• Only one, a blog, mentioned a Jewish group that opposes the definition.

Named critics of the definition were quoted for 883 words across 37 reports, and 828 of those came from one NEU statement. The Community Security Trust alone got 1,119.

The badge story

Eight reports put badges, flags or political symbols in their headline or standfirst. LBC: "Teachers to face ban on Palestine badges in schools amid rising antisemitism". The Telegraph: "Teachers face ban on wearing Palestine badges". The Independent: "Antisemitism review settles debate over banning pro-Palestine badges in schools". The review does say that political identifiers "do not have a place in our schools". But it recommends no ban, and Powell told MPs that Bell found political symbols "not to be a widespread issue". Palestine solidarity became the story. The definition it will be judged by did not.

What the Times did to the union's words

The NEU's general secretary, Daniel Kebede, used the word genocide three times in his statement. Most outlets that quoted him printed it. The Times printed this:

How the critics were described

• Jewish News called Kebede a "left-wing leader" and wrote that it "seemed inevitable that hard-left activists would raise concerns about the IHRA definition".
• The BBC told readers in its own voice that the definition "is supported by mainstream Jewish organisations", and that some of its examples "have proven controversial", without saying what any of them are about.
• The Times called it "the internationally recognised definition".
• The Daily Mail reported that the review "was set up after a Jewish MP was stopped from visiting pupils in Bristol". The terms of reference do not mention him, and the review itself records the independent finding that the school's decision "was not made for reasons of antisemitism".

Jewish children are being abused in English schools, and they deserve protection. A definition that treats what people believe about Israel as antisemitism gives them none, and teaches every other child that Jewish people and the Israeli state are the same thing.

How we counted

Every report we read