National Union of Students apologises for leaving Judaism off form

The National Union of Students has apologised for omitting Judaism from an internal application form, after users on social media highlighted the blunder.

The student body, whose former president Malia Bouattia was a prominent critic of Israel, hurriedly sought to atone for its error when Twitter users pointed out that one of the three main monotheistic religions was absent.

Students were instead offered to identify as Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Spiritual, Agnostic and Atheist, with other options such as ‘prefer not to say’ and ‘another religion or belief’.

Embarrassed NUS representatives offered to make immediate amends when a Jewish student pointed out that Judaism – and students of that religion – “appear to have been forgotten again”.

The omission was made on an internal application form for volunteers of NUS who wanted to apply for a position on one of the internal NUS Services Direction and Oversight Boards.

It follows a year in which relations between NUS and the Union of Jewish Students deteriorated to such an extent that Jewish students were asked to vote on whether to continue working relations at their annual conference.

A spokesperson for the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) said: “Judaism should never be absent from any form regarding religion, faith and ethnicity, but we believe that this was a genuine mistake from NUS Services and we are glad that the NUS leadership dealt with issue swiftly and NUS staff corrected the form quickly.”