Oxford Union: Israel is an Apartheid State Responsible for Genocide

This report is written to to show what really happened at the debate - which resulted in much controversy - and to correct some lies, threats and slander that followed it.

On November 28, 2024, I attended an Oxford Union debate - held every Thursdays - on the proposition:

“This house believes Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide.”

For the proposition were Palestinian poet Mohammed El-Kurd, Palestinian novelist Susan Abulhawa and Israeli-American writer and activist Miko Peled. On the opposition were Israel advocates Jonathan Sacerdoti and Yoseph Haddad, and British barrister and Israel advocate Natasha Hausdorff

Norman Finkelstein was scheduled to be a fourth speaker. He reported on X that he was invited with an understanding Israeli professor Benny Morris would be arguing for the opposition. Morris demanded former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert be invited. Olmert refused, saying he would not debate Finkelstein, so Morris withdrew. Three days before the debate, Morris was replaced by Palestinian collaborator Mosab Hassan Yousef, who Finkelstein described as a “certified psychopath” and refused to debate with, so he too withdrew from the debate.

According to a source at the university, at this point the debate could have continued with three speakers for the proposition and three against, but Yousef’s inclusion was demanded by members of the opposition who threatened to cancel the event if it was refused. This was confirmed by proposition speaker Abulhawa, who said her initial reaction to was to cancel her attendance, “but in the time-honored tradition of Palestinians holding things together against zionist sabotage and destruction,” the debate went ahead.

Due to the opposition having an extra speaker, at the last minute, Oxford Union’s President Ebrahim Osman-Mowafy stepped in to replace Finkelstein.

Much has been reported by members of the opposition in Britain’s right wing gutter press and Zionist media following the debate, including libellous claims by some newspapers demanding charges against one speaker under Britain’s Terrorism Act, which during this age of a live streamed genocide, sees fit to persecute those protesting it and for defending those who resist it.

The Debate

I entered the university grounds unsure what the response of the students would be. I accepted there could be parity on the vote. Many British and U.S. universities are complicit in the genocide and I wondered if their students, at least in elite universities like Oxford, may share the views of the institutions they are a part of.

The chamber where the debate would take place was packed out, along with a line of students waiting outside in case anyone left. Extra chairs were added at the front of the room.

Speakers for the proposition entered the chamber to cheers and standing ovations. Opposition speakers followed to some subdued cheers as well as a chorus of jeers. The room, I then realised, like most universities since October 7, was overwhelmingly pro-Palestine.

I report on the speeches in the order they were made:

Mohammed El-Kurd

El-Kurd opened the debate making light of the fancy setting with its black tie dress-code, joking that it “doesn’t really look like a union, you guys don’t look very proletariat.” He began his speech pointing to the “absurdity, insensitivity and cruelty” of having this debate as Palestinians are being “burned alive and incinerated.” He asked the audience:

What more do we all need to see to be convinced that this is a genocidal regime waging a genocidal war? Have we not seen enough fathers carrying their childrens’ remains in shoe boxes and plastic bags?

El-Kurd highlighted Zionist debating tactics which distract from the century-long crimes against Palestinians in favour of hasbara (Israeli propaganda) and hypothetical talking points which speak of “throwing Jews into the sea” or accuse Palestinians of homophobia and misogyny (in an attempt to appeal to Westerners interested in liberal identity-politics). El-Kurd said such tactics are “simplistic, stupid, silly,” and “easily refuted,” and are nothing but “recycled, colonial talking points,” because:

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. ‘What happens to the settlers?’ What happens to the slave owners? What happens to the prison guards?’ We hear these arguments over and over again.

These talking points, he said, deflect from:

The material policy about systemic things that the Israel 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 apartheid and occupation in East Jerusalem - have 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 true, he said, “that still does not give you the excuse to kill civilians and bomb hospitals.”

He was interrupted on numerous occasions by speakers of the opposition and responded to one, advising the excitable disruptor to “take a Xanax” and “relax.”

Nothing, El-Kurd said, Palestinians did or could do, justify their genocide:

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. Their issue is with our existence.

El-Kurd said if the motion passes “it means that this body is catching up to the moral clarity of the global majority,” only “70 years too late.” Rejecting it, he said, would confirm the university is “another Western institution complicit in genocide.”

El-Kurd called Zionism “an ideology based on ethnic supremacy, on killing, on brutalization, on land theft,” and that there is “no debating that.” He appealed to students to consider direct action: “What we need is material action to challenge the complicity of our own institutions.”

After speaking, El-Kurd exited the room because of “dishonour” he said he felt at the inclusion of opposition speaker Yousef, who “for decades collaborated with Israeli intelligence agencies that have killed Palestinians, that have besieged them, that have given people’s information and addresses and have so much blood on their hands.”

Before walking out to cheers and a standing ovation, El-Kurd said, “Zionism is indefensible and we will see it end within our lifetime.”

Jonathan Sacerdoti

First speaker for the opposition, Jonathan Sacerdoti, identifies as a journalist but has spent much of his life doing “advocacy” for Israel. Once, after many complaints, the BBC was forced to admit Sacerdoti is a pro-Israel campaigner and acknowledged it had breached impartiality rules by inviting him on.

Sacerdoti has worked for pro-Israeli campaign groups such as the Campaign Against Antisemitism which weaponizes antisemitism against critics of Israel, and has been awarded the Herzl Award by the World Zionist Organisation for “exceptional efforts on behalf of Israel and the Zionist cause.”

He opened by telling the audience he would “confront lies that masquerade as truths,” which accuse Israel of being a genocidal, apartheid state and which “appeal to prejudice rather than reason.” He attacked the wording of the motion and speakers for the proposition, calling them “the most aggressive people the President could have invited.”

Sacerdoti went on to patronise members of the audience, schooling them on the form and purpose of debates and said when studying at the university some 23 years prior, he “experienced overt and explicit antisemitism in the form of jeers and laughter,” implying he was reliving that trauma.

He complained the Union invited “psychopath” Norman Finkelstein, who Sacerdoti said was “too scared” to attend, accusing the scholar of justifying “the atrocities of October 7” because Finkelstein has said he was unsurprised that Palestinians resisted given the conditions in Gaza that they are forced to live in, conditions which Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling - in 2003, before Hamas won the election - described as “the world’s largest concentration camp.” Finkelstein has also likened the Oct. 7 revolt to Nat Turner’s slave revolt in 1831.

Sacerdoti said speakers for the proposition were not “interested in conflict resolution and peaceful co-existence,” causing one student to quip back, “Does the speaker think killing 40,000 people is conflict resolution?”

Sacerdoti went on, calling accusations of apartheid and genocide “grotesque” criticisms which “twist history’s darkest crimes” into “weapons against Israel,” borne out of “hatred directed at Jews” because, in Israel, “there is no policy of racial discrimination, no intent to destroy.”

What were “genocidal attacks” according to Sacerdoti were the events of Oct. 7, while Israel “has no such aim, no such plan, no such action,” adding a common hasbara talking point, saying Israel goes “to extraordinary lengths to try to avoid civilian deaths.”

He regurgitated more hasbara about airstrikes in Gaza being justified because of the Israeli military’s warnings to Palestinians to leave the area before bombing it and of Hamas hiding weapons in schools and hospitals.

Sacerdoti claimed 700,000 tons of food have entered Gaza since Oct. 7, “a daily average of 3200 calories per person” which is “above the NHS recommended amount for men in this country.” One student accused the speaker of “making things up,” while another shouted “LIES!” The latter was ejected from the chamber.

The speaker’s claim about food aid in Gaza has been countered by the United Nations, when its aid agencies reported on a starvation campaign following the first month of the genocide. The World Food Programme at that time confirmed “Supplies of food and water are practically non-existent in Gaza.”

In February 2024, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Michael Fakri, said Israel was “intentionally depriving people of food,” and:

The speed of malnourishment of young children is also astounding. The bombing and people being killed directly is brutal, but this starvation – and the wasting and stunting of children – is tortuous and vile.

In March 2024, Oxfam reported on “a real risk of famine” in Gaza, while in October 2024, it said Israel is using starvation as a weapon.

Human Rights Watch in April 2024, confirmed children in Gaza were dying from starvation and in November 2024, the United Nations concluded Israel is intentionally starving Palestinians to death.

Sacerdoti drifted further into absurdity and faced jeers after claiming the “declaration of the state of Israel enshrines equality” to all of its citizens, despite documented evidence of discriminatory laws against 21 percent of Israelis.

After raising the importance of criminal intent, Sacerdoti was asked by an audience member if “while murdering Palestinians” Israel is not committing genocide because it does not “mean to?” The speaker responded by saying Israel is not committing murder, describing it instead as “collateral damage,” which “however ugly, is not the same thing.”

Sacerdoti claimed that the “culture” of Palestinians “instils from children hatred, while Israeli children are taught in schools of a fantasy time...when they can live in coexistence with their Arab neighbours.”

In her book “Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education,” Israeli professor Nurit Peled-Elhanan made an analysis of racism in Israeli textbooks, citing examples. She reported on the early indoctrination of Israeli school children - in order to prime them for military service - where depictions of Palestinians represent them only as “refugees, terrorists or primitive farmers.”

Sacerdoti ended by speaking about an interview he conducted with an American-Israeli woman living in Kibbutz Nahal Oz which was attacked on Oct. 7. She told Sacerdoti her husband employed Palestinians from Gaza “who entered Israel every day and earned five times what they could in Gaza,” causing one student in the audience to respond, “Sounds like apartheid!”

Ebrahim Osman-Mowafy

Union President Ebrahim Osman-Mowafy, a third-year law student and the first Arab to preside over the Oxford Union, was the second speaker supporting the proposition.

Osman-Mowafy 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 Oct. 7, describing Gaza as “a graveyard of children, journalists and aid workers.”

Osman-Mowafy cited 40,000 confirmed deaths in Gaza since Oct. 7 and highlighted individual cases of horrific killings of children and teenagers:

Shaban Al-Dalou, the 19-year-old engineering student living in a tent for the displaced in a hospital courtyard, which was set ablaze by Israeli airstrikes. With that bomb, Osman-Mowafy said, “Shaban and his mother burned to death. He was filmed trying to claw his way out of the fire!”

Sidra Hassouna, whose small body was flung out of her home after the Israeli army bombed it, leaving her hanging off a wall, mutilated. “Her legs severed and blown off, despite it being in an area designated by Israel as a so-called ‘temporary safe zone.’”

Hind Rajab, who was fleeing in a car with her uncle, aunt and four cousins, when Israeli tanks fired on them, killing everyone but the six-year-old girl. Hind was surrounded with the corpses of her relatives while on the phone with the Palestine Red Crescent - a call made by her 15-year-old cousin right before she was killed - begging to be rescued. The car, Osman-Mowafy said, “had 335 rounds fired” at it and asked, “How many bullets do you need to kill one family? 335? A six year old girl! Hind was killed along with the two paramedics who were there to save her.”

Osman-Mowafy spoke of Israel’s 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 the crime of genocide, citing former Israeli minister of defence Yoav Gallant’s comments describing Palestinians “as human animals,” and calling for a siege of Gaza, as well as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s descriptions of Gaza as “the city of evil,” and how Israel’s attacks on Gaza are “a fight against monsters.” Osman-Mowafy added the International Criminal Court had issued arrest warrants for both Israeli politicians, for war crimes.

In January 2024, Israeli historian and genocide scholar Raz Segal and Australian criminologist and professor Penny Green wrote:

The crime of genocide has two elements – intention and execution – both of which have to be proven when accusations are made. In Israel’s case, the apparent devastation of Gaza makes for a powerful argument that it is indeed carrying out genocide.

Intention is usually harder to prove when accusations of genocide are made. But in Israel’s case, intention too has been laid bare by an ample amount of evidence – as the South African legal team pointed out.

In arguing the case, they were able to draw on a comprehensive database, which meticulously documents 500 statements that embody the Israeli state’s intention to commit genocide and incitement to genocide since October 7, 2023.

Osman-Mowafy reminded the chamber that fifty percent of those languishing in Gaza are children and noted that the conservative estimate of “40,000 civilians dead or beneath the rubble,” does not “begin to account for the tens of thousands who have died by starvation, malnutrition, lack of medication and unsanitary living conditions.”

He evoked a comparison of Oxford University’s 26,000 students being bombed to death and reminded the audience Israel’s genocide of Palestinians preceded Oct. 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!

The Union President said 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!”

He went on to describe Israeli apartheid, its “barriers, barbed wire, walls, laws, checkpoints, all of these continue to segregate Palestinians in their own land where they’re forced out of their homes and forced into a state of continuous fear and insecurity,” and about how in Israel, second-class citizenship of Palestinians is “entrenched in their Basic Law, which is their constitutional document.”

Osman-Mowafy touched on the language of erasure used by Israel’s first prime minister and its current prime minister, who has said, “Israel is not a state of all of its citizens, it is the nation state of the Jewish people and only them.”

He ended asking 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.”

Yoseph Haddad

Third speaker for the opposition Yoseph Haddad, a professional Israeli advocate, believes being of Arab origin offers his views on Palestine some credence.

Haddad opened by playing an audio recording he said was of a Hamas fighter celebrating the “killing of Jews" on Oct. 7, after which, with palpable contempt directed at the audience, said would consider “a civilian” if the IDF were to “eliminate” him.

He continued his attack, next on the Union President - who is of Egyptian heritage - asking why Egypt never “offered” Palestinians a state between 1948 and 1967. Haddad posed the (rhetorical) question to Osman-Mowafy “because I really don’t care about your answer,” going on to complain about the protesters chanting outside and accusing Palestinian supporters in the chamber of being “terror supporters," attacking the Union President once more by calling him a “coward” for refusing to take a point of information when he spoke.

Due to Haddad’s repeated attacks on the Osman-Mowafy, one student walked out in protest, prompting another to ask speakers of the opposition to, “..please avoid the hostility towards members of the house just for the sake of continuing this debate.”

Haddad continued to goad the audience, saying he was there to “confront all those anti-Israeli liars who twist the facts and lie time and time.” He recounted his biography, claiming to have had friends from all monotheistic faiths growing up and during his time in Israel’s army, and went on to attack proposition speakers and 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” meant apartheid in Israel does not exist, “..take that apartheid!” he yelped. He then went on to accuse Amnesty International of lying and before stating apartheid could not exist, because he is a recipient of an honorary degree - from an Israeli university based in an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank - which was awarded to him for his propaganda in service to Israel, or advocacy as Zionists prefer to call it. The award he received is for Haddad’s “relentless efforts in combating anti-Semitism,” and “presenting Israel’s true face to the world.”

The speaker continued along a bizarre line of reasoning, suggesting Israel’s rare appointments of non-Jews to its Supreme Court, and having Jewish Knesset members who speak negatively about Israel, disqualifies the state from the crime of apartheid. Perhaps sensing a general bewilderment in the chamber, Haddad 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!”

When he had finished, the floor opened for two students to comment, one for the proposition and the other against. The student for the proposition, when returning to her chair, was obstructed by Haddad, which resulted in his ejection from the chamber, at which point he pulled a final stunt to signal the end of his performance where he, Superman-like, changed into a t-shirt emblazoned with the words “Your Terrorist Is Dead!” before being escorted out.

Miko Peled

Miko Peled began by congratulating the students protesting outside, describing their chants which were audible in the chamber as “beautiful” (From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free & In our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians)

Instead of discussing the motion, he said, we should speak about the values which separate anti-Zionists and Zionists. He offered an example of Israeli claims of missiles stored in hospitals that Israeli politicians say justify bombing them. Assuming it were true, Peled said, “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 bench shouted “terrorism,” causing Peled to ask, “What is terrorism? How do we define it?”

He said condemning Palestinians of terrorism distracts from Israel’s crimes and proceeded to outline terrorism committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip ever since its creation:

The Gaza Strip is a concentration camp that was created by the Zionists almost as soon as the Zionist apartheid state was established...into which they herded hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the southern part of Palestine as the ethnic cleansing campaign was going on. Palestinians have been living in that concentration camp for over seven decades!

As Peled took a sip of water, he held up his glass to say, “This is a luxury,” in Gaza, going on to catalogue attacks and massacres following Gaza’s creation, “Massacres upon massacres, every year the weapons become more effective. more deaths and more deaths…for decades,” resulting in Oct. 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!”

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, threatening the speaker with arrest under Britain’s Terrorism Act, where glorification of proscribed political organisations risks up to 14 years imprisonment.

Amongst the proscribed list are neo-Nazi and Islamist groups, such as Al-Qaeda and its offshoot Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (an organisation recently celebrated in Western states, including Britain, following its successful coup in Syria).

Other organisations on the list are those resisting the illegal occupation of their land by Israel, such as Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Since Oct. 7, British journalists including Richard Medhurst, Tony Greenstein and Sarah Wilkinson, as well as many activists - including the mother of one activist - have been detained or charged under this law.

While Peled may be unfamiliar with this Terrorism Act, the accusation he violated it for “expressing support for Hamas” is absurd, since he was accused of glorifying a proscribed group. Peled, as can be seen in the quote above - or viewed in the recording of the debate - did not state any proscribed group, but Palestinians in general, whose right to resist is enshrined in international law.

As American lawyer Stanley Cohen has reported:

Long ago, it was settled that resistance and even armed struggle against a colonial occupation force is not just recognised under international law but specifically endorsed.

And how colonial 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 debate, members of the opposition repeatedly claimed in media and their social media that Peled expressed support for Hamas, reporting him to Britain’s Counter Terrorism Police South East, who have said they are “making enquiries.”

Earlier in the debate, Israeli advocate Sacerdoti requested police be brought in to arrest Peled, calling his comments a “criminal offence.”

When threatened with arrest, Peled responded rhetorically, “Arrest me!”

A student arose at that point, to remind opposition speakers that “We are not in the West Bank,” and they do not "have the right to order us around or threaten us,” causing the chamber to erupt into applause.

Peled went on to speak about Kibbutz Be’eri where his relatives live, which borders Gaza and where Palestinian fighters breached on Oct. 7, “I used to go there in summers and on holidays. Never once did anybody talk about the fact that there is a concentration camp three kilometres away…not once!”

He went on:

Not once did anybody talk about the fact that the people who live in that concentration camp, their land was stolen, their water was stolen, we are on their land, we have taken their resources - people say the Naqab is a desert, it's nothing! The Naqab is a desert that was inhabited by Palestinian Bedouin who are farmers. The reason the Israeli settlements in the Naqab are so successful, are so prosperous, is because the land there is prosperous. Not once did anybody reckon with the fact that we stole that land and it belongs to the people over there, and by the way, why are they living in a concentration camp? People would ask from time to time, ‘What’s wrong with these Arabs, why do they live in such crowded areas? Why is it so crowded in the Gaza Strip, what's wrong with them?' Nothing is wrong with them. What’s wrong is the apartheid state!

Peled 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 and the definition, the creation of this new law, of this new definition of the crime of genocide

Peled then spoke of his sorrow he felt because, “we are still discussing this after almost eight decades of these heinous crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians,” saying instead, we should speak of 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 of Arab opposition speakers who have been “reduced to becoming traitors and collaborators with Zionist oppression.”

Peled concluded that genocide is being committed against Palestinians, citing a recent United Nations report, saying “There’s no question that a genocide is taking place. There’s no question that the crime of apartheid is being perpetuated,” and how this is “not a theoretical conversation. There is an obligation to act.”

Mosab Hassan Yousef

Yousef, the third speaker for the opposition started by sharing his biography. His story goes: he is the son of Hamas commander Sheikh Hassan Yousef who he blames for killing Palestinians. He collaborated with Israel’s intelligence agency Shin Bet to report “on suicide bombing attacks,” which he claims saved “human lives,” as well as for his reporting on significant resistance leaders, such as his father and Marwan Barghouti, to Israeli authorities. His father has said Yousef’s story is untrue.

Yousef started off antagonizing the audience by asking the chamber as I discovered later - it was unclear what he was demanding at the time - to raise our hands if we would report to authorities information on attacks Hamas was planning.

“Less than five percent in this room raised their hands!” he cried out, which meant 95 percent of the room was “taking the side of terrorists!” This, a schoolyard trick, like saying “Hands down who is mad!” and claiming failure to raise 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 Union President to remove the speaker because of this casual racism. Hausdorff, the British barrister speaking for the opposition, interjected on the grounds of free speech, saying since Yousef was speaking about “his own people,” and removing him would bring “this Union into disrepute.”

The Union President requested Yousef stop “making disparaging references to any population,” and allowed him to continue.

Yousef continued to attack Palestinians; referring to them as “Arabs” to deny them connection to their homeland and claiming “apartheid, colonialism, genocide, occupation,” were “false narratives,” that Palestinians have a “colonial identity” which he again called pathetic, after which he said 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 Palestinians use human shields, something of which there is overwhelming evidence of Israelis doing, during the genocide and previously, which decades ago had resulted in Israel’s Supreme Court ruling against the use of human shields, although the army sought to appeal this decision.

Yousef condemned 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 called 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 insulting the audience.

Yousef denied Israel is an apartheid state, said supporters of Palestine seek to “dismantle” it, and “want 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 already stated by previous speakers of the opposition and claimed Palestinian identity began in “1964 with the keffiyeh and the Palestinian flag,” despite saying elsewhere this happened in 1936.

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 demeanor 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 neighborhoods 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,” and:

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 laborers 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 who are willing to lose their livelihoods and reputations in defence of her people, for justice and for the oppressed, which is 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.”

At the end of her speech, 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 - likely at the behest of Zionist complainers - and later uploaded, with the removal of over one 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 harbored 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 favored, 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 seen here. Following Abulhawa’s speech, the room erupted into cheers and standing ovations.

Natasha Hausdorff

The final speaker for the opposition was British barrister Natasha Hausdorff, who has previously worked at Israel’s Supreme Court and is employed to campaigns for Israel.

Hausdorff began by blaming Hamas “for all of the destruction,” in Gaza.

She accused proposition speakers of sharing “falsehoods” and for “supporting terror” of “Hezbollah, the Houthis, other Iranian proxies in Iraq and in Syria,” while claiming these resistance organisations “oppress Palestinians and Israelis alike.”

Hausdorff then claimed Jewish students “felt intimidated from attending,” calling it a:

Dark moment of the Oxford Union’s history and 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.

She went on to accuse Finkelstein and El-Kurd of fleeing “like cowards,” and claimed “red lines had been crossed,” citing the Terrorism Act, because calling Oct. 7 “heroic” is “unlawful,” despite no proscribed organisation was mentioned by the accused speaker.

One would think a barrister would be aware of the significance of wording in law?

Hausdorff continued in a similar trajectory as previous speakers of the opposition by jumping from one Zionist talking point to another without addressing fundamentals of the debate; on the crimes of apartheid and genocide, while accusing arguments by proposition speakers as, again, being full of “falsehoods” and “lies.” Hausdorff said the word ‘falsehood(s)’ a grand total of 12 times during her speech, perhaps believing repetition would make her claims true.

She called “apartheid and genocide” accusations against Israel “blood libels,” along with “colonialism, ethnic cleansing, occupation,” and claimed apartheid does not exist because Palestinians “self-govern” in the West Bank, despite living under an illegal military occupation ruled by Israel.

Hausdorff went onto accuse aforementioned human rights organisations of lying about Israel and called the “allegation of genocide” against Israel “obscene,” while claiming the Oct. 7 operation was “genocide” because it “deliberately targeted Jews because they were Jews, for rape, slaughter, torture, mutilation and kidnap.”

The barrister accused speakers for the proposition of being supportive of the Oct. 7 and were antisemitic, adding Jews are “indigenous” to “Judea” and called “laughable” the “notion that Israel is a colonial entity,”

Hausdorff repeated hasbara talking points mentioned by other speakers of the opposition and blamed some peculiarity of Palestinian culture for why Palestinians resist their occupation, rather than acknowledging that throughout history, occupied people have always resisted. Here are some examples of such resistance within Europe.

She then went on to justify the theft of El-Kurd’s family home by Israeli 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.

This “international law expert” seemingly forgot that international laws considers Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem illegal and settling Israelis into occupied territory a war crime “under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and many national laws.”

Hausdorff ended with attacks on the audience for “making plain” where “your allegiances lie,” before repeating claims of Jewish students being “too intimidated to come tonight,” conflating Judaism with Zionism, and saying a bit more about “lies” and “falsehoods” and the “shame of this evening,” which she said she hoped “will be overcome.”

The result

The proposition: This house believes Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide passed with 278 votes in favour and 59 votes against after the audience and speakers placed their vote by walking through two sets of doors, marked ‘Ayes’ or ‘Noes’.

Aftermath

Following the event, speakers of the opposition complained of the night in media reports and on social media, claiming to be victims of racism and aggression despite doing all they could to attack, insult and goad the audience, proposition speakers and Union President, as documented above and in recordings of the debate.

Letters of complaint were written to the university, claiming the opposition speakers were subject to attacks, rather than being responsible for them.

Sacerdoti told pro-Israeli TalkTV the “audience was hand-picked by the president,” claiming the event was “members only” and 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 absurdly claimed 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 university told me Sacerdoti’s comments were a “a series of misrepresentations and for the most part, flat out lies.”

Responding to Sacerdoti’s article, I was told:

Every Union President has organised 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.

Haddad, who was ejected from the chamber for repeatedly attacking students and speakers, claimed he too was persecuted, promising to reveal his side of his story in an upcoming book.

Hausdorff reiterated the claim students were prevented from accessing the chamber, telling GB News they were too intimidated to attend. When asked for evidence, she said she and the other speakers “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.”

Hausdorff also claimed the Union President “ordered” Yousef “out of the chamber in the middle of his speech,” something clearly a falsehood, as she might like to say, since the recording of his speech shows the Osman-Mowafy allowed Yousef to continue, despite members of the audience requesting his removal after repeated attacks on them.

Hausdorff also claimed the Union was “stacked with supporters of Hamas,” and admitted the result of the vote was a “crushing defeat.”

Responding to Hausdorff’s claims of the chamber being stacked with people against the opposition, the Union told me:

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.

As a member of the Union, Hausdorff should have been well aware of this.

The source from the university said opposition speakers were invited to “provide a shred of evidence” for their claims.

When recording of the event were published on the Oxford Union YouTube page, there was a slight delay in two of the eight speakers being shared. The university said this was due to its interest in avoiding legal problems, due to threats at the debate relating to the Terrorism Act.

The publication of all speeches was eventually made, with the university cutting out some snippets from some speakers.

For some inexplicable reason, this included Abulhawa’s speech - the most popular and most viewed - whose talk was initially uploaded in full, and later taken down and re-published with parts removed, in violation of an agreement made between the speaker and the university that her remarks “not be altered in any way.” Legal action may now follow.

Following the event, this writer received attacks and threats for attending the debate, by the deranged Zionist doxing organisation known as GnasherJew, accusing me of being an ‘antisemite’ and ‘terror supporter’ for my activism in defence of Palestinian human rights. It seems when Zionists are unable to hasbara their way out of a debate, all they are left with are attempts to intimidate and fascistic censorship campaigns.

This conduct by Zionists, as well as crying wolf by speakers of the opposition, demonstrates ever-growing weaknesses of Zionism. Threats and intimidation may be one way to deal with an inability to defend an apartheid and genocidal state, but accusations of racism, violence and terrorism by supporters of a state responsible for all of these things, are unbelievable and increasingly ineffective.

Attempt to normalise Israel as it occupies and oppresses Palestinians, including recently with the Abraham Accords, is proving to be a failure. Even before Oct. 7, Zionists, when stepping out of the settler-colony, have been shown the masses worldwide continue to support Palestinian liberation. This was demonstrated well at the UEFA football tournament in Qatar two years ago, and more recently, with the backfiring of a silly Zionist psyop courting victimhood in Amsterdam, while again, Zionists were the aggressors of the story.

Israel, today, may well best be described using the idiom, you can’t polish a turd, since there is little to nothing that can prettify the ugliness that comes with colonialism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide.

The Oxford Union, like much of the world today, including an increasing number of human rights organisations and world courts, has accepted that Israel is indeed an apartheid state responsible for genocide.

(Credit to Faisal Saleh of The Palestine Museum for some of the photos here)