The article "Extremism at our colleges" (The Argus, September 23) bears no relation whatsoever to reality.

I am Jewish and a post-graduate student of the School of Law. Never, not once, have I experienced anti-Semitism at the University of Sussex.

Anti-Semitism, let us be clear, is not opposition to the Israeli state and its repression of the Palestinian people. A belief that Israel and Zionism, the ideology and movement which gave birth to the state, is racist is not anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism is sticks and stones. It is hatred of people because of something they can never change, the fact that they are or were Jewish. It is a form of racial hatred.

Support of Israel and Zionism is a political position. As Albert Luthuli, the great fighter against racism in South Africa, noted, politics can change, racial characteristics can never change. That is what makes racism a pernicious evil.

Like many Jews, I am also an anti-Zionist. The lessons I have learnt from the Holocaust is that if racism is wrong, it is wrong whoever the target is and whoever the perpetrator is.

I happen to believe that a state which allows me to "return" when I've never lived there but which denies the same right to Palestinian friends of mine who were born there is racist.

I believe a state which compensates Jewish victims of terrorism but which refuses Palestinians any compensation when they are the victims of terrorism, because anti-Palestinian terrorism doesn't harm the Jewish state, is racist.

Let us be clear. Students at the University of Sussex have always given support to the Palestinians.

I am proud to say that in more than 30 years' experience of fighting local racist and fascist groups, Sussex students have been at the forefront of fighting the real anti-Semitism that exists among certain fringe groups.

-Tony Greenstein, Brighton and Hove Unemployed Workers Centre, Hollingdean