Half a mile from my home in Oxford there is a so-called “liberated zone”, where pro-Palestinian students have set up a camp of about 40 tents.
Yesterday morning I visited the camp, which is spread out on a large expanse of grass belonging to the University of Oxford, opposite the Pitt Rivers Museum. It has become boggy and is full of folded black garbage bags, which I fear may contain excrement.
A student brochure claims that the “infamous” museum, which “acquired its items around the world through imperial expansion, reflects the current struggle of the Palestinian people and connects [sic] us to the colonized peoples.” You get the message. These are strange people.
Pro-Palestinian student protests broke out in the United States last month. Now they have spread across the Atlantic and are taking hold at Oxford, Cambridge and other British universities.
In principle, I like the idea of ”liberated zones”. But it would be difficult to find a less liberated place than this field adorned with Palestinian flags. There are banners accusing Israel of genocide and denouncing it as an apartheid state.
Protesters hold signs at Oxford University, opposite the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.
Pro-Palestinian protesters stand outside Oxford University’s Natural History Museum, as students occupy parts of British university campuses to protest in support of Palestinians in Gaza.
A student activist waves a Palestinian flag at a pro-Palestinian camp at Oxford University on May 6, 2024.
This is an area of sectarian prejudice and intolerance, where about half of the students wore masks to hide their identity. Many, most of whom were white, wore Arab keffiyehs on their heads.
Where is this latest American cultural import headed? Will it fade when summer comes and the students disperse? Or will it grow in size and end in a confrontation with the university authorities who, as we will see, cannot satisfy the demands of the students even if they want to?
At first glance, the field does not seem like a particularly threatening place. Groups of students were sitting, chatting. Reclining bodies could be seen sleeping in a pair of pop-up tents. A student gave a discreet speech in which he enumerated Israel’s latest infamies. There was a generally apathetic air.
There were no police present. There was also no evidence that Jewish students or other students organized a counterprotest.
The students I approached were polite and welcoming. But when they found out that I was a journalist, they lowered the blinds and in some cases showed their claws.
An American graduate student objected to my writing for the Mail. She had evidently been upset by an article in Mailonline about Kendall Gardner, a fellow American graduate and protest organizer, who had previously posted photos of her rather ample body in bikini on social networks.
My American student (not Kendall, who was possibly sulking in her store) declared that she “didn’t like him” “very much.” She added that she was “privileged” to be allowed to visit the camp. I told her I had lived in Oxford for 30 years (against her three). I could have added that this was university land.
When I asked him how long the protest would last, he replied that they would not leave until the University authorities expelled them. This sounded like a provocative invitation. Dare to come find us.
Pro-Palestinian protesters cover their faces outside the Oxford University Museum of Natural History
Students occupy parts of British university campuses to protest in support of Palestinians in Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Oxford, Britain, on May 7.
Two other students, one of them American, fell silent when I said I was a journalist. Another, also an American, offered to find someone from the “press team,” but returned empty-handed. She said she didn’t want to “commit.” She spoke in the slightly numb tone of a cult member.
Then an aggressive young man, masked and with a kufiya wrapped around his head, approached me, who ordered my interlocutor (another journalist) not to talk to me. Although this character’s face was practically invisible, his accent suggested that he was English.
No one wanted to give their name or background. My impression is that many of the protesters were Americans (there are 2,025 of them at the university, according to their website), while there were a few Palestinians.
I realize that students of all ages have spoken out, and I naturally support their right to do so. However, there is something threatening about this protest.
What would you feel if you were a Jewish student? There are more than 700 of them at Oxford University, according to the Union of Jewish Students, of whom the overwhelming majority must be British citizens. I think I would be afraid.
This week it was reported that a Jewish student was refused entry to the pro-Palestinian camp at Oxford because he had refused to sign a document condemning the “Zionist entity”.
In Cambridge, where a similar encampment sprang up outside King’s College, a Jewish student was pushed while unfurling an Israeli flag, which was torn from his hands. What he did was brave and possibly reckless.
Yes, if I were a Jewish student, at Oxford or Cambridge or any other British university where the protests are gaining momentum, I would be afraid, in the same way that some of my Jewish friends are afraid to venture into central London on weekends. week due to the pro-Gaza protests. demonstrations.
Being afraid of suffering abuse or racial attacks in your own country is a terrible thing. If I am correct in believing that many of the Oxford protesters are Americans (and they are certainly copying an American phenomenon), we must ask ourselves by what right they seek to destabilize and alarm the citizens of this country.
Pro-Palestine student activist participates in a camp in front of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History
Pro-Palestinian supporters with their faces covered by a keffiyeh stand behind a Palestinian flag at Oxford University in Oxford, eastern England, on May 7, 2024.
Palestine supporters hold an emergency rally outside the Sheldonian while an event takes place inside
Gaza is a foreign war. One can think about it however one wants. (Like many, I am increasingly concerned about the Israeli action.) Whatever one’s opinion, it is certain that nothing anyone does in this country (from the British government to the most evil American protester) will have the most minimal effect in Israel.
These fields cannot have any practical use. They are expressions of a latent power that is sure to intimidate Jewish students, who are likely to be British citizens. That seems inconceivable to me.
University authorities are also unlikely to give in to the students’ demands. The Oxford rabble have a standard shopping list. End relations with Israeli universities. Liquidate all investments Oxford has in companies that deal with Israel or make weapons. Stop banking with Barclays.
Some senior officials at Oxford University may sympathize with the students (more than 300 of 15,000 academics and staff have already signed an online letter in support of the protesters), but the University cannot, and surely will not, bow to these unreasonable demands. This could end with the authorities removing the stores.
In the 1970s, when I was at Oxford, far-left students were certainly capable of causing a scandal. Some of them occupied the exam schools for several weeks because they wanted to have their own student union. There is a photograph of Chris Huhne (later a Liberal Democrat cabinet minister who got into trouble with the law) trying to break down the door.
As egregious as it was, they did not attempt to terrorize their fellow students. And they were local thugs.
I realize that we live in a global village. But the spectacle of bigoted foreign students threatening British citizens in the Palestinian cause (not to mention desecrating a pleasant part of Oxford) marks a sinister departure.
This is one American import we can do without. Take your intimidation tactics back to where you came from and let Oxford get back to what it is.