When a new student organization tried to push six anti-Israel bills through the student union at London's Kingston University over the weekend, Muslim and Jewish students banded together to vote them down.

In a rare alliance, they argued that if their campus supported one political position over another, the university's ideal of diversity would be damaged.

British universities have become increasingly known for taking action against Israel, either in student unions or through academic boycotts, and it seemed last week that Kingston would become yet another school on the growing list of anti-Israel institutions.

When the freshly-founded Friends of Palestine (FOP) set out a package of six anti-Israel resolutions for the student union to adopt, the 15 members of the university's Jewish society thought they had no chance at fighting the legislation on a campus with thousands of Muslim students.

"I heard that the motions were put forward only 36 hours before the vote," Sammy Kalmanowicz, an International Law student and president of the Kingston Jewish Society, told The Jerusalem Post...

...Help also came from a less expected quarter. Shermarke Salah, Kalmanowicz's Somali-born, Iraqi-raised Muslim flatmate decided to join in the struggle.

"It was the underlying principle of the proposals which I opposed," said the soft-spoken Salah.

"Me and my flatmate Sammy have political differences, but we didn't feel that the student union was the right forum to discuss them. The SU is there to serve the student body in a neutral position," he said.

Salah characterized Friends of Palestine's initiative as "a campaign from people outside of the university to impose politics on the campus."

Salah, whose family left Somalia for Iraq, and then fled Iraq immediately prior to the first Gulf War, said he had strong views about diversity.

"Right now we have a good university. It's tolerant and it's calm, but it just takes one spark to set off an explosion. We must make it clear that we won't accept such attitudes on campus," he said, adding that his father had frequently reminded him that "the difference between tolerance and intolerance is just two letters."

Salah's message eventually carried the day. In the end, even the head of the university's Islamic Society opposed the propositions because of the possibility that they would divide the student body...