Miko Peled & Naila Kauser
Mondoweiss / December 31, 2024
Editor’s note: On November 28th, the Oxford Union held one of its famed debates on the motion: “This house believes Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide.”
In November, the Oxford Union held a debate on the topic of Israeli apartheid and genocide. It sparked a backlash from Zionists and even an investigation by British police. A speaker and audience member who attended tell us what really happened.
For the proposition were Palestinian poet Mohammed El-Kurd, Palestinian novelist and poet Susan Abulhawa, and Israeli-American writer and activist Miko Peled. Norman Finkelstein was expected as a fourth speaker, reporting on X that he was invited with the understanding Israeli professor Benny Morris would argue for the opposition. Morris refused and was replaced by Palestinian collaborator Mosab Hassan Yousef three days before the debate, causing Finkelstein to withdraw. Others opposing the proposition were Israel advocates Jonathan Saccerdoti and Yoseph Haddad, and British barrister and Israel advocate Natasha Hausdorff. With just three days’ notice to replace a speaker for the proposition, Oxford Union’s President, Ebrahim Osman-Mowafy stepped in to replace Finkelstein.
The following are two perspectives reflecting on the strange events of that night and its aftermath.
Debating Zionists is an issue some of us may struggle with. Lately, many show hosts and event organizers like to have Zionists face off against people who speak for justice and liberation for Palestine, so there is a constant barrage of requests to debate them. Whether or not to debate Zionists is in and of itself a contested topic within the Palestine movement. On one hand, debating Zionists can elevate their arguments and give legitimacy to people who deny the Palestinian genocide, or worse, support and justify it. On the other hand, debates provide a platform for people who are unsure about how to answer Zionist arguments and wish to learn.
In early 2024, an invitation for me to participate in an Oxford Union debate arrived, and although it wasn’t clear who was going to be on the Zionist side, I accepted immediately. The proposition to be debated was “Israel in an apartheid state engaged in genocide.” The fact the Oxford Union was initiating a debate on this issue already signified an important step of historic proportions. Oxford and Cambridge Union debates often go on to become historic records, featuring the likes of James Baldwin and Malcolm X, to name but two. These speeches and debates, dependent on how popular or controversial, can live on for others to hear for eternity.
Below is a recounting and reflection on the debate, from both myself, and an observer in the audience. As the following will show, despite the frequent disorderly conduct from the Zionist camp, the proposition passed by a huge majority. The ensuing fallout by those who lost the debate has resulted in a smear campaign from Zionists online and in media, as well as an investigation by British counter-terrorism police into statements I made. While we work to counter the slanderous claims expressed in some publications, we will not fall into a trap of detracting from the result that was achieved that night in the Oxford Union chamber: The results were 278 to 59 in favour of the proposition. In other words, the Oxford Union, with a significant majority agreed that Israel is an apartheid state engaged in genocide.
– Miko Peled
Miko Peled, the speaker’s experience
I spoke in favour of the motion, sharing my experiences and insights as one with personal connections to the founding of the Israeli state. My co-author Naila Kauser attended the debate as a witness in the chamber, and to the subsequent unfolding drama. Together, we aim to reflect on the night’s experience and significance.
Palestine has been governed by an apartheid regime since May of 1948, when the state of Israel was established. Whether within the original borders of the 1949 armistice agreements – which Israel violated – or in those created after the 1967 Israeli assault on its neighbours, one set of laws existed for Jews, and other sets of laws for Palestinians, which differ from one region of Palestine to another.
As an example, the Palestinian Bedouin community in the Southern half of Palestine, the Naqab, is governed by a separate bureaucracy from those living in the north, although all carry Israeli citizenship. The 300,000 strong Naqab Bedouin are governed by the Agency for the Development of the Negev (Negev being the Israeli name for Naqab). About half of these people live in abject poverty without access to electricity, running water, roads or medical services, while Jewish settlers in the region enjoy what is considered one of the highest living standards among Israeli Jews. The Bedouin, who are semi-nomadic farmers, are forbidden from engaging in agriculture, while Jewish settlers are encouraged to do so.
Of the approximately 10,000 homes demolished in the Naqab over the last five years, for not having permits or violation of codes, not one was owned by Jewish settlers. Are we to believe that Israelis never build without a permit or in violation of codes? The difference is that when Jewish settlers violate codes they receive a fine or go to court, but never experience the destructive force of the Israeli police demolition unit.
Jerusalemite Palestinian families with roots in the city that go back 500-800 years have a permanent residency – which they are in constant danger of losing. Palestinians must regularly show what is called “their center of life” is the city of Jerusalem in order to maintain their status. Israeli Jews need to show no such proof. Jewish settlers enjoy full citizenship whether they reside in the city, or anywhere in the world and never risk their status being taken away. Then there are the ghettos of what is commonly referred to as the West Bank, where close to 3.5 million Palestinian live without rights, governed by a de-facto military dictatorship.
The evidence of apartheid in Israel’s occupied territories is systemic, where Jews live under civil laws while the rest of the population live under separate military law and a brutal occupation. This is obvious and cannot seriously be disputed. As for genocide, this was put to rest by the United Nations. It’s Special Rapporteur in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese and her team, in the conclusion of a recent report confirmed “There’s no question that a genocide is taking place,” and “The overwhelming nature and scale of Israel’s assault on Gaza and the destructive conditions of life it has inflicted reveal an intent to physically destroy Palestinians as a group.”
In the debate chamber in Oxford, I said accusations of terrorism against the Palestinian people are unfounded. I further said that the actions taken by Palestinians on October 7, 2023, were heroic, and what the Israeli state has done prior to that day and since is terrorism. Israel is responsible for the events and the tragedy that October 7 has come to signify. Furthermore, the Israeli response to the Palestinian acts of October 7 are acts of terrorism on a massive scale.
My statement about Palestinian heroism has been subject to criticism and reported to British counter-terror police. At the debate, one speaker of the opposition demanded I be arrested by police there and then, while another claimed my comments were “unlawful”.
Several British and even Israeli papers reported on my comments, claiming I was glorifying terrorism by calling Palestinian resistance against their occupation, “heroic.” Perhaps the most egregious being The Telegraph, which falsely claimed in a headline that I “Expressed Support for Hamas” and “Faces Counter-Terror investigation.” No such support for any group aside from Palestinians was expressed, and as far as I know, I am not the subject of any police investigation.
For clarification purposes, it is worthwhile to look into British law in this regard. There is a clause in its anti-terrorism legislation that penalizes people for expressing an opinion.
According to the British Terrorism Act 2000, section 12,
(1A)
A person commits an offence if the person—
- expresses an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organization, and
- in doing so is reckless as to whether a person to whom the expression is directed will be encouraged to support a proscribed organization.
The list of proscribed organizations is long and I have looked through it thoroughly and found not one to which I expressed support to in Oxford.
The comment I made is not only my opinion, but one recognized by international law, which defends the right of the Palestinian people to resist against their occupation, including with armed struggle. As I view it, the Palestinian people have withstood decades of oppression and violence, to the point where their oppression today is defined as crimes of apartheid and genocide.
Since my comment on heroism has made it to the headlines, many people expressed their thoughts on it. Some expressed disdain while others supported it. However, I would like to clarify and add some context to my comment.
Recognizing the heroism of the Palestinian people and their rights to resist is often conflated with the glorification of senseless violence. This conflation is a gross misrepresentation of the truth.
When it comes to the events of October 7, 2023, too many people were sacrificed, many of whom had no say in the matter. The images of young Israelis running in fear trying to escape machine-gun fire, and then, the horrific images of death and destruction from within Gaza since then, will continue to dominate and haunt our collective minds for many years to come, as they do today.
My own family was caught in the crossfire in both Be’eri and Zikkim settlements which are very near Gaza. Members of my family who live as far as Jerusalem and Haifa were living in fear for weeks on end and their sense of security has not yet returned to them, perhaps it never will. However, for the Palestinians who were engaged in the operation, there can be no doubt that this was seen as an act of sacrifice for a greater good: freedom.
I made it clear during the debate, and I stress this here as well, we who spoke for the proposition abhor the loss of life without reservation. What separates the two sides is that, unlike the opposition, we do not call for, wish for, or condone the death of any human being. As I stated then, even if the devil himself was to reside in Gaza, under a hospital, it does not does not justify harming a single child.
Naila Kauser, From the audience: a witness’ observations
I was witness to a debate at the Oxford Union. Having never attended such an event, I was a little excited to see three writers I enjoy supporting a motion I wholeheartedly agree with, that Israel is committed to apartheid and genocide against the Palestinian people.
I entered the chamber unsure what the response of the students would be to the proposition. Being an elite university, I accepted there could easily be parity in the vote, since many British and US universities are complicit with and profit from Israeli crimes.
In the chamber that night, speakers for the proposition entered to cheers and standing ovations. The room was packed out along with a line of people waiting outside in case anyone left. Opposition speakers entered to subdued cheers as well as a chorus of jeers. The room, I realized, like most university settings since October 7, seemed to be overwhelmingly pro-Palestine.
I report on the speeches in order.
Mohammed El-Kurd
El-Kurd opened the debate in favour of the proposition, making light of the setting with its black tie dress-code, which he joked “doesn’t really look like a union, you guys don’t look very proletariat.” He began his speech pointedly to the “absurdity, insensitivity and cruelty” of debating this issue as Palestinians are being “burned alive and incinerated.”
El-Kurd highlighted Zionist debating tactics which distract from the crimes against Palestinians, including apartheid and genocide, favouring Hasbara (propaganda) and hypothetical talking points which speak of throwing “Jews into the sea,” or accuse Palestinians of homophobia and misogyny, attempting to appeal to Western liberal identity-politics. El-Kurd said such propaganda is “simplistic, stupid, silly,” and “easily refuted,” saying it is nothing but “recycled, colonial talking points,”:
We’ve heard them from white Afrikaners, we heard them in Rhodesia, we heard them all over the world from white supremacists, when slavery was getting abolished, when Jim Crow was getting abolished.
To deflect from:
The material policy about systemic things that Israel, the country of genocide commits. The policies of discrimination, subjugation, police brutality, ethnic cleansing, land theft, decapitation of children. We have seen, in the past year, children, their limbs hanging from ceiling fans.
El-Kurd’s family in Sheikh Jarrah – under Israeli occupation in East Jerusalem – had their home stolen by Israeli settlers.
“They tell us all kinds of bullshit” about Palestinian resistance fighters using civilians as human shields or hiding weapons in hospitals. Even if this were true, he said, “that still does not give you the excuse to kill civilians and bomb hospitals.” He said:
There is nothing that the Palestinian people can do that will make these people no longer want to exterminate us, because their issue is not with how we exist, but rather, their issue is that we exist at all.
Jonathan Sacerdoti
First speaker for the opposition Jonathan Sacerdoti identifies as a journalist, but has spent most of his life doing “advocacy” for Israel. Once, following many complaints, the BBC was forced to admit Sacerdoti is a pro-Israel campaigner and acknowledging it breached impartiality rules by inviting him.
Sacerdoti has worked for pro-Israeli campaign groups, including the Campaign Against Antisemitism which weaponizes antisemitism against critics of Israel and has been awarded the Herzl Award by the World Zionist Organization for his “exceptional efforts on behalf of Israel and the Zionist cause.”
Sacerdoti attacked the wording of the propositions and called the speakers in favour of it, “the most aggressive people the president could have invited.” He then went on to patronize members of the debating society with a schooling on the form and purpose of debates, saying when studying at Oxford University some 23 years prior, he “experienced overt and explicit antisemitism in the form of jeers and laughter,” implying he was now reliving this trauma.
Those for the proposition, Sacerdoti said, were not “interested in conflict resolution and peaceful co-existence,” causing an audience member to quip back, “Does the speaker think killing 40,000 people is conflict resolution?” causing the room to erupt in cheers.
Sacerdoti described October 7 as “genocidal attacks” while Israel “has no such aim, no such plan, no such action.” He raised a common Zionist talking point, asserting Israel goes “to extraordinary lengths to try to avoid civilian deaths.”
After raising the importance of criminal intent, the speaker was asked by an audience member if, “while murdering Palestinians,” Israel is not committing genocide because it didn’t “mean to?” Sacerdoti responded saying Israel is not committing murder, describing it instead as “collateral damage,” which “however ugly, is not the same thing.”
Sacerdoti ended by speaking about an interview he conducted with an American woman living in the Nahal Oz settlement whose home was attacked on October 7. She told Sacerdoti her husband employed Palestinians from Gaza “who entered Israel every day and earned five times what they could in Gaza,” an audience member responded, “Sounds like apartheid!”
Ebrahim Osman-Mowafy
Ebrahim Osman-Mowafy, a third-year law student and the first Arab to preside over the Union was the second speaker supporting the motion.
Osman-Mawafy began “since October 2023, a Palestinian civilian has been murdered every fifteen minutes. I put it to you tonight that they have been murdered by an apartheid state intent on genocide.”
He quoted a press release by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres a month after October 7, describing Gaza as “a graveyard of children, journalists and aid workers.”
The Union President cited 40,000 confirmed deaths in Gaza since October 7 and highlighted individual cases of the horrific killings of teenagers and children; Shaban al-Dalou, Sidra Hassouna and Hind Rajab.
Osman-Mowafy cited further Israeli crimes against Palestinians; cutting off food and water, killing aid workers and torturing civilians in Israeli prisons “by forcing rods into their private parts.”
He returned to the issue of intent as a prerequisite for crimes of apartheid and genocide by citing former Israeli minister of defense Yoav Gallant’s comments describing Palestinians as “human animals,” and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s descriptions of Gaza as “the city of evil,” and of how the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for both, for war crimes
Osman-Mowafy evoked the comparison of Oxford University’s 26,000 students being bombed to death and reminded the audience Israel’s genocide of Palestinians preceded October 7:
Look back at the Great March of Return when Palestinians in Gaza peacefully protested along the fence separating the strip from Israel, demanding the right to return to their ancestral land. Israeli snipers opened fire and they killed indiscriminately, leaving over 266 people dead and injuring 30,000 others, including women, children and people with disabilities, all of this before October 7!
He suggested that South Africa “leads the international condemnation of Israel” because, “They know it best! And they say it is an apartheid state and they say it is committing genocide,” going on to describe Israeli apartheid. Its “barriers, barbed wire, walls, laws, checkpoints.”
Osman-Mowafy quoted language of erasure used by Israel’s first prime minister and the current prime minister, who said, “Israel is not a state of all of its citizens, it is the nation state of the Jewish people and only them,” and asked the chamber to “remember the litany of organizations from the International Court of Justice to Amnesty International to the United Nations that have condemned Israel for genocide and for apartheid.”
Osman-Mowafy came under a lot of attack from the opposition and their supporters during the debate and after. He wrote his account of his experience and responded to attacks against him here.
Yoseph Haddad
The third speaker for the opposition believes being Arab offers credence to his views on Palestine. Haddad opened by playing an audio recording of a Hamas fighter celebrating the killing of “ten Jews,” on October 7, after which, with palpable contempt, he accused Palestine supporters in the audience of defining the killer “a civilian,” if the Israeli army “eliminates” him. He then attacked the Union president, who is of Egyptian heritage, because Egypt did not maintain control of Gaza after Israeli attacks and subsequent capture of the territory in the 1967 war. Haddad posed it as a rhetorical question to the president “because I really don’t care about your answer.”
He went on to complain about protesters chanting outside, and attacked Palestinian sympathizers in the audience as “terror supporters”. He also labelled the president a “coward” for refusing to take a point of information during his speech. In defence of the attacks on the president, one student walked out of the chamber in protest.
Another student asked, “Can the speakers of the opposition please avoid the hostility towards members of the house just for the sake of continuing this debate?”
Haddad continued to goad the audience and said he was here to, “confront all those anti-Israeli liars who twist the facts and lie time and time.” He recounted his biography, saying he had friends from all Monotheistic faiths during his time in Israel’s army. He condemned his opponents in the audience for having the “audacity to tell me I live under an apartheid regime, shame on you!”
Haddad claimed that being an Arab and a commander over Jewish soldiers in the Israeli army meant apartheid in Israel does not exist, “..take that apartheid!” he said, accusing Amnesty International of lying and claimed apartheid could not exist because he is the recipient of an honorary degree – from an Israeli university based in an illegal settlement in the West Bank – which he was awarded for propaganda on behalf of Israel, otherwise described as his “relentless efforts in combating anti-Semitism,” and “presenting Israel’s true face to the world.”
Sensing the general bewilderment in the chamber after his constant attacks, he promised he would “try to be less intense,” after calling speakers of the proposition “useful idiots.”
Haddad ended with a defiant condemnation of Israel’s opponents for “crying” about the genocide because “you are losing!”
After his speech, the floor opened for two students, one for and against the proposition. The student for the proposition – who spoke tearfully about the recent killing of her cousin, a doctor in Gaza, which was followed with the “wiping out” of a “whole family line from,” her this side of her family – was obstructed by Haddad when returning to her seat, which resulted in his ejection from the chamber, when Hadded pulled his final stunt to signal the end of his performance; with a Superman-like change into a t-shirt which celebrated the assassination of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Miko Peled
Miko Peled, the third speaker for the proposition and my co-author, began by congratulating the students protesting outside, describing their chants, which were audible in the chamber – “From the river to the sea” and “In our thousands in our millions, we are all Palestinians” – as “beautiful.”
Instead of discussing the motion, Peled said we should speak about values which separate anti-Zionists and Zionists. He offered an example of Israeli claims of missiles in hospitals justifying their bombing of them. Assuming it were true, Peled asked, “Does it justify harming a child? Does it justify harming a civilian? If it means harming a hair on the head of a child, you do not do it.”
A member of the opposition shouted something about terrorism, causing Peled to speak on the terrorism against Gaza:
The Gaza Strip is a concentration camp that was created by the Zionists almost as soon as the Zionist apartheid state was established. It was created by them … into which they herded hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the southern part of Palestine as the ethnic cleansing campaign was going on.
As Peled took a sip of water, he held up his glass to say, “This was a luxury,” in Gaza, going on to catalogue attacks and massacres following the blockaded coastal enclave’s creation, “Massacres upon massacres, every year the weapons become more effective…more deaths and more deaths and more deaths…for decades,” resulting in October 7, when:
Palestinian fighters came out of this concentration camp. One of the poorest and most depressed places in the world, they came by air, they came by sea, they came by land, they showed once again that the entire Israeli military apparatus and intelligence apparatus is no more than a paper tiger…They shut it down.
Peled reminded the room of demands at protests to ‘shut it down’ when confronting oppression, “If we don’t get justice, we shut it down. That’s what we have been calling for and that’s exactly what was called for.”
Members of the opposition jeered, accusing Peled of “glorifying terrorism.” He responded saying, “Terrorism is what followed! The vengeance! The sadistic cruelty of the Israeli response is terrorism.” He was again interrupted, this time by a cheering room. He continued:
Terrorism is what Palestinians have been experiencing since the apartheid state was established. That is terrorism! What we saw on October 7 was not terrorism! Those were acts of heroism of a people who have been oppressed for decades.
Following this statement, members of the opposition disrupted the speaker to threaten him with charges under Britain’s Terrorism Act where the glorification of proscribed political organizations. risks a sentence of up to 14 years imprisonment. In the last year, British journalists including Richard Medhurst, Tony Greenstein and Sarah Wilkinson, as well as many activists, particularly from the heroic organization Palestine Action – as well as the mother of one activist! – have been detained or charged under this law.
Welcome to British freedom and democracy, where your opinion may imprison you!
While Peled may be unfamiliar with the Terrorism Act, the accusation he violated Section 12 within it makes no sense since this part of the Act states an offense is committed if a person “expresses an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organization.” Peled did not name any proscribed group, but Palestinians in general, whose right to resist is enshrined in international law.
As American-Jewish lawyer Stanley Cohen reported:
Long ago, it was settled that resistance and even armed struggle against a colonial occupation force is not just recognized under international law but specifically endorsed.
And how this occupation is what violates the law, “as early as 1974, resolution 3314 of the UNGA prohibited states from “any military occupation, however temporary”.
Since the event, members of the opposition have repeatedly claimed in media that Peled expressed support for Hamas, reporting him to Britain’s Counter Terrorism Policing South East who reported that they are “making enquiries.”
At the event, Israeli advocate Sacerdoti requested Thames Valley Police be brought in to arrest Peled, claiming his comments were a “criminal offense.” When threatened with arrest, Peled responded rhetorically and amusingly, “Arrest me!”
One audience member arose, at this point, to remind opposition speakers that “we are not in the West Bank,” and that they do not “have the right to order us around or threaten us.” Once again the room erupted in cheers.
Peled went on to speak about Jewish settlement Be’eri where his relatives live, which borders Gaza and which Palestinian fighters breached on October 7, “I used to go there in summers and holidays. Never once did anybody talk about the fact that there is a concentration camp three kilometers away…not once!” He went on:
Not once did anybody talk about the fact that the people living in that concentration camp, their land was stolen, their water was stolen. Not once did anybody reckon with the fact that we stole that land … by the way, why are they living in a concentration camp? Every now and then people would ask, what’s wrong with these Arabs, why are they so miserable? What’s wrong with them? What’s wrong is the apartheid state!
Peled also spoke of the Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term ‘genocide.’ Lemkin campaigned for the implementation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide – which he drafted – into law. The United Nations adopted it on December 9, 1948.
Speaking about Lemkin’s autobiography, Peled said:
Three years after the end of the genocide of the Jews in Europe, this country along with many others allowed for a genocide to take place in Palestine, allowed for an apartheid regime to take place in Palestine and allowed for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Palestine. THREE SHORT YEARS after the end of the genocide of the Jews.
Peled then spoke of his sorrow that “we are still discussing this after almost eight decades of these heinous crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians,” saying we should speak about how we can “dismantle apartheid and how quickly we can allow for a free democratic Palestine to be established from the river to the sea.”
He expressed sadness for Palestinians who continue to “see their families, their nation, still being exterminated,” and Arab opposition speakers who have been “reduced to becoming traitors and collaborators with Zionist oppression.” More cheers and disruption filled the room.
Peled concluded that genocide is being committed against Palestinians, citing a recent UN report, stating “There’s no question that a genocide is taking place. There’s no question that the crime of apartheid is being perpetuated,” saying this is “not a theoretical conversation. There is an obligation to act!”
Mosab Hassan Yousef
Mosab Hassan Yousef, the third speaker for the opposition started by sharing his biography; the son of a Hamas commander Sheikh Hassan Yousef – who has said Yousef’s story is untrue – who he blames for killing Palestinians, rather than the occupying Israeli army doing the bombing and killing. He is known for collaborating with Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet “on suicide bombing attacks,” which he claims has saved “human lives,” and for reporting significant resistance leaders such as his father and Marwan Barghouti to Israeli authorities.
He started off by antagonizing the audience, asking the chamber, as I discovered later – it was unclear what was happening at the time – if we had information on attacks Hamas was planning, if we would report this to authorities.
“Less than five percent in this room raised their hands!” Yousef cried out, which meant, according to the speaker, 95 percent of the room were “taking the side of terrorists.” This, a schoolyard trick, like saying ‘hands down who is mad!’ and claiming a failure to raise your hands shows you are mad. He went on to provoke members of the audience, describing Palestinians as “the most pathetic people on planet earth!”
One Palestinian student asked the president to remove the speaker. Hausdorff, the British barrister amongst the opposition, interjected on grounds of free speech, saying since Yousef was speaking about “his own people,” removing him would bring “this union into disrepute.” The Union President asked the speaker to stop “making disparaging references to any population,” and allowed him to continue.
Yousef continued to attack Palestinians; referring to them only as “Arabs” to deny them their right to their homeland and claiming “apartheid, colonialism, genocide, occupation,” were “false narratives,” that Palestinians have a “colonial identity” which he again called “pathetic” saying Palestinians accepted it as a “national identity,” and of how he found it “really unbelievable that the Palestinians continue spreading this lie and millions of people around the world are believing them.”
He regurgitated claims that the Palestinians use human shields, something of which there is overwhelming evidence of Israelis doing, during this genocide and previously, when Israel’s Supreme Court ruled against Israel’s military use of Palestinians as human shields, although the army sought to appeal this decision.
Yousef then condemned the speakers for the proposition as “..a bunch of people [who] come here crying as victims or as the saviours of the Gaza children. Who authorized them to speak on behalf of the children in Gaza?” he asked, calling those who seek to save children in Gaza as having “a very severe state of mental illness,” at which point the Union President interjected and requested that he focus on his statement rather than, again, insulting others.
Yousef denied Israel is an apartheid state, said supporters of Palestine seek to “dismantle” it, and those who seek this, “wants to wipe out a nation, the most ancient nation in the Middle East, the most authentic nation in the Middle East, the only Jewish state.”
He ended by repeating Zionist talking points other speakers of the opposition made, including how Israel does its best to minimize casualties and that Palestinian identity began in “1964 with the kuffiyeh and the Palestinian flag.”
Susan Abulhawa
The final speaker for the proposition was Palestinian novelist, poet and activist Susan Abulhawa, who drew the greatest applause of the night even before she began speaking. Her soft spoken and petite demeanour contrasted with the chaotic atmosphere in the room, and the content of her speech added poignancy to her words, which moved some in the chamber to tears.
Abulhawa spoke of the explicit candour of the colonization of Palestine and the annihilation of her inhabitants by early Zionists, using their own words, and of how they disguised their European names to “sound relevant to the region.”
She spoke of Zionist policies to destroy the Palestinian people, their history, their culture, their roots to their land and the attempts and failure to erase this, and of Palestinian resilience against their oppressors despite such brutality and destruction for a century.
Abulhawa addressed Zionist projections against those they oppress, while not only claiming to be the victim, but acting as though anyone paying attention to these crimes would so easily believe such lies aimed at them:
They expect you to suspend fundamental human reason to believe that the daily sniping of children with so-called ‘kill shots,’ that the bombing of entire neighbourhoods that bury families alive and wipe out whole bloodlines is ‘self defense.’
Abulhawa went on to state the debate in Oxford was not really about whether Israel was committing the crimes of apartheid and genocide, but about whether Palestinians have the right to exist, especially during the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
She then went on to detail the many crimes against Palestinians, as if the victims were Zionists and this brutality was perpetrated by Palestinians, and spoke of how Palestinians had protected European Jews “when your own countries tried to murder you and everyone else turned you away,” saying:
We fed you and we clothed you, we gave you shelter and we shared the bounty of our land with you and when the time was ripe, you kicked us out of our own homes and homeland, then you killed and robbed and burned and looted our lives.
Abulhawa said despite all the crimes by Zionists against Palestinians, despite the enormous power they yield, those foreign to the land could never understand what it is to belong to it; they would never understand the reverence by its people for its history, arts, nature and the sacredness within that:
Those who come from that land do not desecrate the dead; that’s why my family for centuries were the caretakers of the Jewish cemetery on the mount of olives, as labourers of faith and care for what we know is part of our ancestry and our story. Your ancestors will always be buried in your actual homelands of Poland, Ukraine, and elsewhere around the world whence you came.
She reminded Zionists of how little support they receive from the masses worldwide, from people willing to lose their livelihoods and reputations in defense of her people, for justice for the oppressed and not:
..because you are Jewish – as you want everyone to believe – but because you are violent colonizers who think your Jewishness entitles you to the home my grandfather and his brothers built with their own hands, on lands that had been in our family for centuries.
Abulhawa ended on a defiant note, telling Zionists that despite their “epic forgery,” and attempts to erase her people, Palestine will be free and “restored to her multi-religious, multi-ethnic pluralistic glory.” The Oxford chamber erupted in cheers and standing ovations.
The publication of Abulhawa’s speech, which quickly received the largest amount of views and shares, became the subject of controversy after it was removed from the Oxford Union’s YouTube page and later re-uploaded, with the removal of over a minute’s worth of what Abulhawa had said that night.
Below are the sections that were removed:
And in the 1980s and 90s, Israeli soldiers had left booby-trapped toys in southern Lebanon that exploded when excited children picked them up.
If Palestinians were systematically raping Jewish doctors, patients and other captives with hot metal rods, jagged and electrified sticks and fire extinguishers, sometimes raping them to death, as happened with Dr Adnan Al-Bursh and others.
You carved out our hearts because it is clear that you do not know how to live in the world without dominating others. You have crossed all lines, you have crossed all lines and nurtured the most vile of human impulses.
When speaking about why she came to the Oxford Union, Abulhawa said it was “in the spirit of Malcolm X and Jimmy Baldwin,” who also faced “finely dressed, well-spoken monsters who harboured the same supremacist ideologies as Zionism:” with included the following line cut from the original speech:
..these notions of entitlement and privilege, of being divinely favoured, or blessed, or chosen
The final section that was removed was when Abulhawa spoke of how the world has awoken to “the terror we have endured at your hands for so long,” removing:
..and they are seeing the reality of who you are and what you’ve always been.
A video recording and transcript of the speech in its entirety can be viewed here.
Natasha Hausdorff
The final speaker of the room for the opposition was British barrister Natasha Hausdorff, who has previously worked for the president of Israel’s Supreme Court and who like all speakers of the opposition, campaigns for Israel.
Hausdorff began in typical Zionist-projection fashion, by absurdly blaming Hamas “for all of the destruction,” in Gaza.
She accused proposition speakers of sharing “falsehoods and their “support for terror,” of “Hezbollah, the Houthis, other Iranian proxies in Iraq and in Syria,” while claiming these members of the Axis of Resistance “oppress Palestinians and Israelis alike.”
Hausdorff claimed Jewish students “felt intimidated from attending,” and called it a “dark moment of the Oxford Union’s history,” saying “as a member of this institution and a committed attendee at my time in this university, I think it is a very sad day on that front too.” As a member, Hausdorff would have been well aware the event was not ticketed and open to all on a first-come-first-served basis, as all debates at the Oxford Union are.
She went on to accuse Finkelstein and El-Kurd of fleeing “like cowards,” and said “red lines had been crossed,” citing the Terrorism Act and saying calling October 7 “heroic” is “unlawful.”
The speaker continued in a similar trajectory as previous speakers of the opposition, jumping from one Zionist talking point to another.
When finally addressing the proposition, Hausdorff said “apartheid and genocide” accusations against Israel are “blood libels,” alongside “colonialism, ethnic cleansing, occupation,” and claimed apartheid doesn’t exist because Palestinians “self-govern” in the West Bank, despite living under a military occupation ruled, illegally, by Israel.
She went onto accuse human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch of lying about Israel committing the crime of apartheid and called the “allegation of genocide” against Israel “obscene” and a slur, while calling the events of October 7 a genocide because they “deliberately targeted Jews because they were Jews, for rape, slaughter, torture, mutilation and kidnap.”
Hausdorff accused speakers for the proposition of being supportive of it because of anti-semitism, adding Jews are “indigenous” to a Biblical land called “Judea,” and called “laughable” the “notion that Israel is a colonial entity,”
She then repeated earlier Zionist talking points, blaming some peculiarity of Palestinian culture on why they resist occupation, rather than acknowledging that throughout history, every occupied people have resisted. Here are some examples of such resistance within Europe.
Hausdorff went on to justify the theft of Mohammed El-Kurd’s family home by Jewish settlers:
So that Jordanian custodian of enemy property, err, issued a couple of leases over it. Now, leases require rent and they require compliance with conditions. Neither of those have been forthcoming from the first speaker from the opposition and his cohabitant. Illegal squatters that have been given time after time, in fact fifty years by the courts in Israel, an opportunity to get their house in order, but of course they have no regard to the law, they have no regard to the facts.
Hausdorff, an “expert in international law,” failed to mention that international law considers Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem illegal and that placing Israelis into occupied territory is considered a war crime “under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and many national laws.”
She ended with attacks on the audience for “making plain” where “your allegiances lie” before repeating the baseless claim that Jewish students were “too intimidated to come tonight,” conflating Judaism with Zionism, despite many Jews in Britain today opposing Zionism. She said more about “lies” and “falsehoods” and the “shame of this evening,” which she hoped “will be overcome.”
Aftermath
Following the debate, speakers of the opposition complained about their experience in media reports and social media, claiming they were the victims of the event, despite the fact that they were recorded insulting the audience, the speakers, and the university.
Sacerdoti told pro-Israeli TalkTV the “audience was hand-picked by the president,” and the event was “members only,” while demanding “somebody should be held to account.” In an article in The Spectator titled “The Oxford Union has disgraced themselves,” Sacerdoti accused Union President Osman-Mowafy of being “openly biased,” saying he fostered “an environment of unchecked hostility,” and claimed that Finkelstein’s withdrawal was “due to the strength of the team we had managed to assemble despite the Union’s best attempts to stop us.”
A source from the Oxford Union told me Mr. Sacerdoti’s comments were “a series of misrepresentations and for the most part, flat out lies.”
Responding to his article, I was told:
“Every Union President has organized and spoken on a debate they care about, and that was no different in this case … and is not in any way a deviation from normal practice.
It is rather ironic that Mr. Sacerdoti is claiming the Union sought to stop the opposition speakers from assembling a team, given that they had more guest speakers (4) than the proposition (3). The Union is under no obligation to invite a particular speaker, and despite that, and in order for the debate to proceed, Mosab was allowed to come under threat that opposition speakers would drop out. Because the opposition insisted on having Mosab and therefore having four speakers, a student speaker for the proposition had to be found at very short notice and the President volunteered.”
Finkelstein confirmed his withdrawal was due to his refusal to debate the “certified psychopath” Yousef, whose inclusion on the debate took place just three days before.
Hausdorff reiterated the false claim that Jewish students were prevented from accessing the chamber, telling GB News they were too intimidated to attend. When asked for evidence of this, she said she and the speakers for the opposition “sought to arrange a pre-debate event with the Oxford-Israel Society,” and “departing from usual practice, the union refused to allow this student society to book a room at the venue for this purpose.”
She claimed that President Osman-Mowafy “ordered” Mosab “out of the chamber in the middle of his speech,” despite footage of his speech showing that the Union President allowed Mosab to continue despite members of the audience requesting his removal after his repeated casual racism against Palestinians. Hausdorff also claimed the Union was “stacked with supporters of Hamas,” but admitted the result of the vote was a “crushing defeat.”
On Hausdorff’s claims the chamber was stacked with people against the opposition or “supporters of Hamas”, the Union confirmed:
“Union debates are never ticketed, and the event was, as all of our debates are, open to all members on a first come first serve basis.”
And that the opposition was invited to “provide a shred of evidence” for their claims, but so far, has not been able to.
Conclusion: two voices, one call to action
We leave the debate with a shared belief that it is undeniable Israel is an apartheid state engaged in the genocide of the Palestinian people. This has been demonstrated by countless reports, video footage, and hundreds of documented threats by Israeli politicians and members of the Israeli military. Human rights organizations and world courts have accused Israel of the crime of apartheid and genocide, while hundreds of lawyers and human rights experts, including genocide scholars, have reached the same conclusion.
We urge all who read this to join the movement to take action and speak out to end these crimes of apartheid and genocide in Palestine, as it is our duty, so that Palestine will be free.
Miko Peled is an Israeli writer and activist living in Washington, DC.; he was born in Jerusalem to a prominent Zionist Israeli family, and in 2012 he published his first book, The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine
Naila Kauser is an editor and activist based in London
