A pro-Palestine group at Oxford University invited a Hamas sympathiser and terror-supporting doctor to speak at a press conference and rally on campus yesterday.

The student-led group Oxford Action for Palestine (OA4P) posted a flyer to its Instagram page on Wednesday notifying students about an “emergency rally and press conference” at 6pm on 16 May featuring special guests Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a British-Palestinian surgeon, and Dr Tamim Al-Barghouti, a Palestinian-Egyptian poet, outside the Clarendon Building on campus, which houses the offices of the Proctor and Vice Chancellor.

Abu-Sittah, who was elected rector of Glasgow University in March, attracted criticism for previously delivering a tearful eulogy at a memorial event for Maher Al-Yamani, a terror group leader whose organisation was later involved in the October 7 attacks.

The JC has also revealed that in a 2018 a newspaper article, Abu-Sittah praised several terrorists who organised the murder of Israeli civilians, and the doctor was pictured in 2019 sitting beside notorious terrorist hijacker Leila Khaled at a memorial for a leader of terror group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

British-Palestinian plastic surgeon Ghassan Abu Sittah is scheduled to speak before protesters at Oxford University on 16 May, 2024, despite having expressed pro-Hamas sentiment. (Photo by HENRY NICHOLLS / AFP) (Photo by HENRY NICHOLLS/AFP via Getty Images)

However, Abu-Sittah’s lawyers told the JC at the time that Al-Yamami was one of their client’s patients and they later became personal friends when the surgeon lived in Beirut between 2011 and 2019.

They said their client had been asked to speak at Al-Yamani’s memorial by his widow and his distress reflected his personal friendship with him.

They added that Abu-Sittah is not a member of the PFLP, does not support Palestinian terrorist organisations or the Hamas attack, and condemns “that atrocity and all atrocities against civilians.”

The US-based activist Al-Barghouti, who did not end up attending the rally at Oxford, has also expressed support for Hamas, posting on October 7 that “the resistance is the sole legitimate representative for the Palestinian people”.

Reposting the video of bloodied Israeli hostage Naama Levy being transported in a jeep by Hamas terrorists on October 7, Al-Barghouti also wrote: “The female soldiers who were assaulting the elderly and children at the checkpoints, when the seriousness came, look what fear did to them.”

Al-Barghouti also reposted the words of Hamas’ Al-Qassam brigade spokesperson Abu Ubaida the day after October 7: “We call on our people in all arenas of the homeland and our nation to engage in this battle that will be immortalised in history.”

Ubaida was subsequently seen quoting lines from Al-Barghouti's poem, “My Soul, I Sacrifice for You,” during a speech marking 200 days since the war in Gaza began.

The event, organised by OA4P, comes over a week after the group began a Gaza solidarity encampment outside the Pitt Rivers Museum on Oxford University’s campus. Following the example of recent Gaza solidarity encampments at colleges across the US and Europe, OA4P’s announced its “liberated zone” in a post on social media on 6 May.

“We join over 145 universities across the globe who refuse to continue business as usual while our institutions profit from and facilitate genocide.

“We are here after exhausting every other means of protest at our disposal. We have organised demonstrations and marches, signed countless petitions, and made all possible efforts to work with the administration in realising our demands. We have been met with inaction. We have escalated accordingly,” it said.

The group, which describes itself as a “collective of members of the University of Oxford community who are dedicated to Palestinian liberation,” includes among its demands: “disclose all finances; divest from Israeli genocide, apartheid and occupation; overhaul university’s investment policy; boycott Israeli genocide, apartheid and occupation; stop banking with Barclay’s; support Palestinian-led rebuilding of education in Gaza.”

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The flyer advertising the emergency rally and press conference said: “The university refuses to meet with our coalition. We need all out for Gaza. We will not stop. We will not rest. Until our demands are met.”

A representative from Oxford University told the JC that the event had “nothing to do with the university” and took place on the street outside a university building.

The talk comes against the backdrop of rising discomfort among Jewish and Israeli students and faculty at the university, who last week submitted an open letter to the Vice Chancellor detailing over 70 antisemitic incidents on campus since October 7.

The allegations included instances of bullying, with one student being insulted over their ‘Jewish nose’ and later being dismissed by a student union rep when they reported the incident. Another student who had lost family in the October 7 massacre alleged that when they complained about intimidation on campus, they were told by a college official: “Oxford is often not a nice place for Israelis and Jews and there is nothing we can do about it.”

An Israeli postgraduate student told the JC that she is “not surprised” that Hamas sympathisers were invited to Oxford by a student group and said she is living off campus as a result of the ongoing atmosphere of intimidation against Jewish students: “I haven’t been to my college since last year because of this.”

A Jewish student at Oxford added: “We don’t feel safe, we don’t feel comfortable. The situation keeps escalating and there is a very alarming lack of action by the university administration.”

Al-Barghouti’s lawyer told the JC: “When our client referred to resistance, he meant the Palestinian people’s right, under international law, to lawful resistance against occupation and discrimination, and not any proscribed group. This does not include any acts of unlawful violence perpetrated by any person, Palestinian or otherwise. Our client condemns the targeting of civilians in all contexts.”