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Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK and expressing support for it is a violation of counter-terror legislation.
Jewish KCL students described Baker’s classes as “hostile”, dominated by a “culture of anti-Israelism” and examples of “indoctrination”, while Baker herself was said to be “almost overtly pro-Hamas”.
Thursday’s demonstration, organised by Stop the Hate, a grassroots Israel advocacy organisation, was to intended protest the “indoctrination of students with Hamas propaganda” and to demand the Baker’s dismissal.
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A Stop the Hate organiser told the JC: “Jewish and non-Jewish students are here with us today wanting to voice their concern that they don’t feel safe when a lecturer employed by KCL can disseminate Hamas’s own narrative about October 7 to students, and we’re here to support them.”
He added: “It should be beyond dispute that regardless of what you think of the Israel-Palestine conflict, you know, Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organisation. You can support Palestine and a two-state solution without supporting Hamas. The fact that there is a group across from us demonstrating against us shows what they really think.”
One KCL student who is half-Palestinian and was among the pro-Israel group, said: “It’s nice to come with an open mind, hear both sides and be peaceful about it.”
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The demonstrators waved Israeli and UK flags, danced and chanted “sorry you don’t like the war you started” and “bring them home”.
Separated by police presence, the pro-Palestinian counterdemonstration directly outside the entrance to KCL, chanted, “Rana, Rana, Rana” in support of the lecturer, “Zionism, shut it down”, and “there is only one state: Palestine ‘48” [in reference to the borders in the region as they were in 1948 before the establishment of Israel].
They also demanded that KCL “divest” from Israel and “pick a side”.
A KCL student and an organiser of the anti-Israel group, did not want to discuss the specifics of Baker’s case but claimed she is being “targeted” and that her “academic freedom is being stifled.”
He told the JC: “This is not about Jews, or about students on campus, this is specifically about the university’s complicity in what’s going on right now [after] 500 days of genocide.”
KCL, he said, “needs to play its part in not only condemning, but helping with the active rebuilding of the education sector in Gaza”.
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He added that the pro-Palestinian delegation demanded that KCL condemn “Israeli war crimes the same way it condemned Hamas after October 7, and the same way it condemned Russia after it invaded Ukraine”, while also divesting from Israel in “the same way this university divested from Russian companies and Russian academic institutions”.
Expanding on the equating of Israel with Russia, another organiser and speaker in the anti-Israel group said it is “ahistorical” to think of the conflict as having begun on October 7, but instead “in 1948 with the annexation of Palestine”.
He went on: “The people of Gaza have been kept in the world’s largest concentration camp since 2006 when the Israelis closed off the border and prevented anything from entering.
“That situation creates violence. If any of us were in a situation like that, desperate to get out, we can’t blame them for that. What’s why Israel and Russia are one in the same in this instance.”
A spokesperson for King’s College London said “This individual complaint is ongoing and following the same practice as we follow for any complaint, in line with our robust policies and procedures.
“In response to your questions about divestment, King’s maintains an ethical investment policy and specifically invests in funds that proactively screen to avoid controversial and unethical sectors and industries – like tobacco, controversial weapons and fossil fuels as well as investing in funds that actively target positive social and green investments."
An earlier version of this story said that the investigation into Dr Baker had ended with the case dismissed. The investigation is in fact ongoing, and the article has been amended.
