Oxford Union declares Israel an ‘apartheid state responsible for genocide’
Inside the Oxford Union debating chamber
Imran Mulla and Mohammad Saleh report in Middle East Eye on 29 November 2024:
The prestigious Oxford Union voted by an overwhelming majority that Israel is an “apartheid state responsible for genocide” at a fiery event in which the society’s president denounced Israel’s war on Gaza as a “holocaust”, and a pro-Israel speaker was ejected from the debating chamber.
The exclusive debating society, founded in 1823, held an unprecedented debate on Thursday night on the motion: “This house believes Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide”. The motion was carried with a thumping majority of 278 to 59.
The packed debate on Thursday evening, observed by Middle East Eye and largely attended by Oxford students, was often raucous and heated, with nearly every speaker interrupted several times by students raising objections. At one point, the debate became so fiery that opposition speaker Yoseph Haddad, an ardent supporter of Israel, was told to leave the chamber.
Haddad, who produced several props and posters during his speech, wore a T-shirt displaying a photo of killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrullah and the caption: “Your terrorist hero is dead! We did that.” At one point during Haddad’s speech, a Palestinian student who grew up in Gaza stood up and said he felt personally insulted, asking the union president that Haddad be removed. Haddad responded by shouting at him and was issued a warning.
The Palestinian student, who said he studies mathematics and physics, later volunteered to give an impromptu speech to the chamber in an intermission between the scheduled speeches. Another student, a young Palestinian woman, also gave an impromptu speech in which she explained that she was a cousin of Maisara al-Rayyes, a Palestinian doctor recently killed in an Israeli air strike on Gaza.
Both speeches received long-standing ovations. But afterwards, Haddad was seen waving posters near the young woman’s face, at which point the president ordered him to leave the chamber, and he was escorted out by two security guards as audience members shouted, “shame!” and “collaborator” and “wanker.” On Friday, Haddad took to the social media platform X to post that he was “removed from a hostile event surrounded by anti-Israel rioters because I wasn’t willing to accept the humiliation of the Israeli hostages!”
Israel supporter calls students ‘terrorists’
Further chaos erupted during another opposition speech, delivered by Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a Hamas leader who provided information to Israel’s Shin Bet for 10 years before fleeing to the United States. Yousef demanded to know if the audience would have exposed the Hamas-led attack of 7 October 2023 if they had known of it beforehand. Many in the crowd seemed confused, and only some people raised their hands.