Cambridge academic bragged about relishing Hamas attacks

Shortly after October 7, he said, he was in college with fellow academics when he heard one professor remark that he had been relishing videos of Hamas attacking Israeli soldiers.

“He said the clips ‘gave him reassurance about the world’,” the Jewish academic recalled. “Whenever he felt down about the conflict, he went and watched videos of Israeli soldiers being wounded. I was repulsed that he could derive any type of gratification from human suffering.”

The academic, who lost a family member in the October 7 massacres, said there was “atmosphere of extremism that has come to surround this issue” at Cambridge, adding: “The voice of moderation, of civility, of co-existence between Israelis and Palestinians has been lost.

“In the most conspicuous of places, faculty members on social media will consistently lend credence to the view – it’s a view reiterated consistently – that Israel is a genocidal state, a pariah, indistinguishable from the Nazi regime”.

On Monday, the Community Security Trust reported that antisemitic incidents at British universities had increased by an unprecedented 117 per cent over the last two academic years. The period saw a total of 325 antisemitic incidents, a record high.

Two weeks ago, an overwhelming majority of students attending an Oxford Union debate revealed they would not have tried to prevent the October 7 massacres, had they had prior knowledge of them.

D4RJD8 John Peet debates at The Oxford Union Society formal Debating Chamber founded in 1823, Frewin Court, Oxford, England, UKAlamy Stock Photo

Academics at both Oxford and Cambridge said the universities had been engulfed by a culture of antisemitism and Israel-hate that one described as “totalitarian”, while Jewish students there told the JC about being abused on the street and on campus as academics established a “chilling” atmosphere of anti-Zionism in classes.

Others spoke of their distress over the anti-Israel “herd instinct” that dominated lecture halls, classes and common rooms.

Netanel Crispe, a Jewish student from Yale University who spent two terms at Cambridge this year, said he had been called an “effing Jew” while returning home from Chabad one night this year.

He said that one of his Jewish friends who was doing a master’s at Cambridge was “spat at” on their way to class while wearing a Star of David necklace.

In January, one Israeli student at Oxford claimed to have been “targeted” with anti-Israel material stuffed into their mailbox.

The offender reportedly wrote a letter of apology, but allegedly kept their student welfare position at the college, leaving the Israeli feeling “frustrated”.

On the morning of Simchat Torah this year, the Hebrew anniversary of October 7, a swastika was scrawled on the front of the Chabad student centre in Oxford.

Several students also spoke about of being “muzzled” in class around conversations to do with Israel.

On one occasion, a law lecturer at Oxford raised South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice and made the assumption that there was “general agreement” that Israel was committing genocide.

Members of the Pinsker Centre, a campus-based foreign policy think tank which facilitates productive dialogue about the Middle East at UK universities, told the JC they had received reports of students at Oxford altering their work for fear of being marked down due to their opinions about Israel.

“I could talk to you for a while about specific examples of students not feeling comfortable identifying as Israeli in lectures and seminars and not feeling comfortable to express their views,” said Mackenzie France, director of strategy at the Centre.

“We’ve had reports of people changing what they are going to write in their essays and their dissertations because they’re afraid of their supervisor’s views on Israel.”

David Abulafia CBE, Professor Emeritus of Mediterranean History at Cambridge, accused the university of adopting a policy of “appeasement” towards pro-Palestinian activists, who he says have supported acts of “criminal damage within the collegiate university”.

In March this year, a member of Palestine Action vandalised a 1914 portrait of Lord Balfour in Trinity College with red paint before slashing it with a box cutter and pulling apart the canvas.

In June, the university’s graduation building, Senate House, was sprayed with red paint by the same activist group to reflect what they called “Palestinian bloodshed”.

After mounting pressure from the Gaza student encampment – a separate protest group to Palestine Action – the university announced in July that it would collaborate with student activists in a dedicated task force to address their divestment demands.

Writing to the university authorities in August, Professor Abulafia – the former chairman of the History Faculty, who has been a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College since 1974 – voiced concerns about the move.

“You have not explained why it is permissible to negotiate with a party that has supported acts of criminal damage within the collegiate university and shows its vocal approval for the genocidal programme of proscribed terrorist organisations,” he wrote.

In late November, the Gaza encampment re-emerged in Cambridge, this time on the Senate House lawn, where Professor Abulafia witnessed “a very loud demonstration” involving the controversial chant “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”. It was “screeching through a megaphone”, he said.

“I find it intimidating, and I’m sure a great many Jewish students find it intimidating. I’ve spoken to academics who find it intimidating,” he said, and wrote again to the university.

Professor Abulafia has not received a response to his latest complaint. “To me, the really big problem is the way that the university is just avoiding the issue,” he said.

“They student activists are motivated by this obsessive hatred of Israel, which at times spills over into what many of us regard as overt antisemitism. And the university cannot possibly be associated with this.

“There is a sort of herd instinct among academics. One tends to think that academics are intelligent people who can make up their own minds. But actually, a great many of them seem to be incapable of doing this when it comes to political issues. They tend to follow their leader and in this case, it will generally be a leader who is on the left, sometimes quite far to the left.

“There’s something rather totalitarian about the way academics often act over political issues in which, to be regarded as fully human, you have to agree with the current ideology. The term Orwellian is being used so often, but it does apply.”

Professor Abulafia added that he had had conversations with students who had expressed “fear” over writing openly about Israel in their university work.

Doctor Miri Freud-Kandel, a Fellow and lecturer in Modern Judaism at Oxford, told the JC that “we need to teach better”.

Amid the rise in antisemitism and the escalation of campus tensions since October 7, she said, academics in Oxford have recognised the need to teach the history of Israel with more “nuance and context”.

She recently finished teaching a new lecture course, adapted from a pre-existing one on modern Judaism, called “Modern Judaism through the Lens of October the 7th”, that was taken by a broad range of students across the humanities and the social sciences.

This step was an attempt to rectify the framing of Israel in critical theory as a “setter-colonial state”, a portrayal which she said was “frightening” because “it’s so misguided, it’s so counterfactual”.

She said: “It’s a simplification of historical reality that fails to acknowledge the complexity and distinctiveness of the Jewish experience. It reflects the dominant influence that an American academic framing exerts over an awful lot of scholarship in the Anglophone world, and there is a requirement to address that and complicate it.

“What I argued in my Zionism lecture is that actually Zionism is best understood as its own version of the ‘revolt of the colonised’. Rather than seeing Zionism as a form of settler colonialism, it’s actually quite the opposite. It’s an embrace of the experience of being colonised through dispersion and exile.”

Last week, the JC revealed that Jewish philanthropist, Ivan Berkowitz, had refused to grant £300,000 to fund a Rabbinic Book Project at Trinity College Cambridge because of an “infestation” of anti-Israel bias at the university.

In the wake of the chaotic Oxford Union debate, which descended into anti-Israel abuse, Sir Vernon Bogdanor CBE, who was Professor of Government at Oxford from 1996 to 2010 and now has the same position at King’s College London, told the JC that “a crisis of antisemitism has gripped elite universities”.

He said that the “appalling” environment at the university today did not resemble the atmosphere a few years ago.

His view was echoed by Baroness Deech DBE, the former principal of St Anne’s College, Oxford. She accused the university of not taking firm enough action to abate the “disgraceful” spread of antisemitism on campus.

More than 300 academics – including Baroness Deech and Sir Vernon – signed an open letter condemning the “inflammatory rhetoric, aggressive behaviour and intimidation” during the Oxford Union debate, at which a majority of 278 students voted in favour of the motion, “This house believes Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide.”

One speaker at the event, Miko Peled, a pro-Palestinian activist, argued that the events of October 7 were “not terrorism” but “acts of heroism”.

Baroness Deech told the JC: “For a great university like Oxford, with students from all over the world, which has been home to some of the most distinguished Jewish professors, scientists, Nobel Prize winners, and of course, students over the last century and a half, it is absolutely disgraceful and unbelievable that antisemitism and the denial of free speech and the failure of action on the part of the authorities should be allowed to prevail.”

She added: “It’s a failure. The university has put out statements, but they’re like the statements you get all over the place, like ‘there is no place in Oxford for racism, Islamophobia, etc’. It doesn’t mean anything. We want action. We want training for the army of equality and diversity officials in the meaning of antisemitism. We want students to be disciplined when they are behaving in an antisemitic way. We want gestures of support at every college.”

She added: “It’s only when Jewish students are persecuted that there’s a failure of action.”

After the Oxford Union debate, the Union of Jewish Students issued a statement calling on Oxford to take “urgent action” to combat the spread of antisemitism, citing increased harassment, intimidation and the glorification of violence over the last term.

A spokesperson for Cambridge University said: “We abhor antisemitism and any form of racism. Senior members of the University have been in regular contact with Jewish groups. Our priority is, and will remain, the safety and wellbeing of our staff and students. We will not tolerate unlawful discrimination, bullying, intimidation or harassment of any individual or group. Where staff or students have faced racist incidents, we will support them to report them to the police and raise a complaint through the university where appropriate.

“The working group (set up to look into investments in and research funded by companies belonging to the defence industry) was developed to reflect a broad range of relevant experience and views. It was agreed the group would include student membership. We remain keen to move forward with this important process and want to ensure the full range of views on these complex and vital issues are represented.”

A spokesperson for Oxford University told the JC: “The Oxford Union is not part of the University and must speak for itself about its events, which are neither regulated or recognised by the University.

“Oxford University thoroughly rejects and condemns antisemitism, and has clear policies spelling out there is no place for unlawful discrimination of any kind here. As our website states, we have adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism in support of our work. We are committed to ensuring that all students feel safe, included and free to express lawful views. We investigate all formal complaints made about harassment or discrimination at the University and have taken steps to urge Jewish students in particular to report such incidents when they occur.

“The University has worked hard with our Jewish and Israeli students and staff over the past year to strengthen our response to harassment and discrimination. In the past term alone, we have together implemented a wide range of practical actions and many Jewish students and staff have acknowledged the progress made.

"Measures include new training for student leaders, freshers and staff, reinforcing to all students our expectations that they adhere to our disciplinary code and with our equality and harassment policies, and working with the Oxford Jewish Society to help students in reporting incidents and concerns. We have also established a task and finish group to consider student experiences with racial and religious discrimination, and which will recommend ways in which we can further improve our response. Throughout, we have made clear to all members of our University that they must conduct themselves with respect, civility and empathy.”