News
Anti-Israel encampments erected in Cambridge and Oxford
Organisers target universities and the Pitt Rivers museum
May 6, 2024 14:27
Organisers target universities and the Pitt Rivers museum
May 6, 2024 14:27Pro-Palestinian encampments have sprung up on the campuses of Oxford and Cambridge on Monday morning.
Students occupying the lawn of King’s College at the University of Cambridge, said they erected the camp because the university “supports Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.”
In footage posted to social media on Monday, participants can be seen marching onto the green with tents, supplies and sleeping bags.
The University of Cambridge supports Israel's genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. We refuse to sit idly by. Join as at the encampment! pic.twitter.com/5lZqxIEdTS
Organisers of Cambridge for Palestine said their demands of the university include disclosing financial and professional ties to Israel, divestment from such organisations, reinvesting in Palestinian students academies, and protecting “all forced migrants and protesting students.”
Another post said: “As students of the university of Balfour, who initiated the UK’s support for the colonial Zionist project, and of the vast majority of the prime ministers who have since continued it, we feel a particular obligation to stand with Palestinians in ending this historic injustice.”
We demand that the University of Cambridge: discloses and divests from its financial and professional support for Israel's genocide of Palestinians in Gaza; re-invests in affected academics; and protects all forced migrants and protesting students. pic.twitter.com/B2sNqv3kIf
— Cambridge for Palestine (@cam4palestine) May 6, 2024
Tents have also been assembled outside the University of Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum, which the organisers claim is hoarding “artefacts stolen from colonised peoples across the world.”
Demands of the Oxford encampment include “stop banking with Barclays”, help rebuild Gaza’s education system and “divest from Israeli genocide, apartheid and occupation.”
Organisers said in a statement: “There is no university in the history of human civilisation that is more complicit in violence, dispossession, and the building of destructive colonial empires than the University of Oxford.”
Students on the grass chanted, “Stop the bombing now, now, now. We are the people. We won’t be silenced.”
Encampments in protest of Israel’s war in Gaza have been springing up at multiple British universities in recent weeks, echoing the phenomenon taking place across the United States. Encampments have been established in Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield, Leeds, Warwick, Bristol, and Leeds.
Last week Goldsmiths capitulated to the demands of students who barricaded themselves in a library demanding among other things that the university scrap the IHRA definition of antisemitism and offer more scholarships for Palestinian students.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will meet with university vice-chancellors later this month during which they will be asked to explain what they are doing to combat antisemitism and intimidatory behaviour on campus.