Roy Shinar Cohen | News Contributor
Early in the morning on May 6th, the historical Pitts River Museum bore witness to raised fences and flags as the Oxford Liberated Zone was established. Students disclosed the news of the camp through social media in a call for solidarity with the people of Palestine. Approximately 100 students gathered to read, chant and draw signs, standing amongst tents of different shapes and colours and unified by flying Palestine flags. Most people wore COVID-19 masks or other facial covers, and many wore keffiyehs - traditional Middle Eastern black and white headdresses mostly associated with the Palestinian cause.
The Oxford Liberated Zone with the backdrop of the Pitt Rivers Museum
Across the camp hang signs and posters reading different messages; “Welcome to the People’s University for Palestine”; “Jews for a free Palestine”; “Israel has destroyed every university in Gaza”, and “Oxford men wrote Balfour. Divest now!”. These signs underscore the general tone of the protests, emphasising two narratives: the protest’s nature as part of a global student movement and the uniqueness of the University of Oxford’s history. Oxford Action for Palestine (OA4P), a newly formed student-led group, created the Liberated Zone. They put out a statement laying out the camp’s demands. Within a day, it received nearly 30 thousand likes on Instagram. It reveals that OA4P joins “145 universities around the globe who refuse to continue business as usual while our institutions profit from and facilitate genocide”. The students’ demands are primarily aimed at their university and are like those made by students around the world.
A poster declaring the protesters’ demands from the University of Oxford
By the entrance to the camp stands a check-in point designed to prevent hostile people from entering. Anyone interested in going in must download “Signal”, an encrypted messaging app, receive a face mask, and confirm they align with “Thawabit”, “the inviolable national rights of the Palestinian people”. Next to the check-in point stands the camp’s list of demands. The protesters marry their rage against the war in general and their anger toward by calling for divestment, overhaul, and a boycott of Israel and its oppression of Palestinians with a call to “Support Palestinian-led rebuilding of education in Gaza”.
Uniquely, the protesters highlight Oxford’s history, in particular its ties to the British Empire as well as British imperialism and colonialism. Both the chosen location and the language used are directed at this past. First, the OA4P’s statement declares the Pitt Rivers Museum “a materialization of the relationship Oxford has to colonial projects”. The students describe the Museum’s artefacts and display as “erasure, dispossession, scholasticide, epistemicide, and cultural pillaging”. Furthermore, OA4P points a finger at Oxford Graduate Alfred Milner, who served as the chief author of the Balfour Declaration. Fittingly, the students’ sign reads “Oxford men wrote Balfour. Divest now!”
A sign reading “Oxford men wrote Balfour. Divest now!”
The camp is often filled with chants and cheers, some of which have been at the centre of recent controversies. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, “From the sea to the river, Palestine will live forever”, and “Free Palestine, stop the genocide; free Palestine, end apartheid”. The most famous of these chants, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, has long been considered controversial and regarded by some as antisemitic. Recently, the United States House of Representatives has deemed this chant antisemitic by a substantial majority. Earlier, in January 2024, the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, tied the phrase to promoting terrorism and antisemitism.
A Jewish student-protester, Kendall Gardner, rejects notions of antisemitism. Gardner sees the pro-Palestine camp as a “beautiful safe space” and accusations of antisemitism against it and others like it as harmful and distracting attention from “the real antisemitism in the world”. Gardner feels proud to “uphold a legacy of Jewish resistance to oppression wherever it may be. I am proud my ancestors were fighting against these exact same policies, and I can stand here today fighting against genocide”.
A sign reading “Jews for a free Palestine”
Gardner finds “the way the Jewish community has aligned itself with Israel” troubling. As our interview continued the word “intifada” was chanted. Gardner explained that she could only speak for herself on this matter, but that for her “the word intifada is inspiring”, and she sees its context of Palestinian resistance to “Israel’s 75 years of brutal oppression, apartheid and ethnic cleansing”. Moreover, Gardner explained that she associates “intifada” with her Romanian ancestors’ participation in Ghetto uprisings and resistance to pogroms. However, many students, Jewish and Israeli, understand the word very differently. They see it as a call to arms against them and a glorification of violence against Israel.
Another student, who agreed to speak on the record on the condition of anonymity, thought protesters being tagged as antisemitic is “an inevitability” because it has been “a crucial tool of Israel’s war propaganda machine and Netanyahu’s government”. Yet, she rejected the notion that the camp is antisemitic, hateful, or unsafe to anyone. The same student emphasized the desire to protect Jewish, Muslim, and Palestinian students equally, and the fact that “Jewish students in this University have played a massive role in the struggle against this war”. However, soon after saying this, she added “I personally know Jewish students who will stay far away because they have heard in the media and the news time and again this is an unsafe place for them”.
To those Jewish students who feel unsafe, Gardner says “Rock up and come chat”. She believes it is the role of Jewish people, not “our Palestinian comrades” to try and have conversations about antisemitism, Israel, and Palestine. According to her, the camp is an open space and showing up to talk might change their minds about it and lead to positive exchange.
May 6th, the morning the students chose to vacate their rooms for the tents was also the morning a hundred thousand Palestinians in Rafah were forced to flee again, as Israel’s attack on the city began. And yet, during my visit to the camp, this development, the most substantial in recent months, was missing from the signs, chants, and conversations. When I asked Amy Tess, a DPhil student camping, about this dissonance she emphasized this protest “is not just about Oxford”. According to Tess, student activism is challenging “all the systems of power it is embedded in. That starts with the university and where it’s placing its money, but it’s also pressuring the government”. Tess continues and explains that many of the current protest movements are based on university campuses around the world, and the Oxford camp stands with protests “wherever they may be”.
When asked about the protective measures – including encrypted messaging and face masks - the camp is taking, Tess explained that “unfortunately, when you speak truth to power, they will come down on you”. She mentions threats such as doxing (exposing people on the internet and urging actions against them), arrests, unjustified searches, and campaigns exposing protesters to get them fired. On the same issue, I spoke with Andrew, a GP who teaches medicine at one of the Oxford Colleges who “deliberately wore a ‘Just Stop Oil’ T-Shirt” because he does not have a Palestine shirt or flag. He joined the protest because “We can’t stand for this nonsense anymore, it's just crazy what’s happening around the world, and this wildfire of protests just spreading is so impressive”. Andrew, who stood out for being much older than most protesters, was also unique for not covering his face. “I am not afraid in the slightest. If they want to pick on me, let’s talk about it face to face, person to person - what’s your problem?”
Like Andrew, nearly 200 of the University of Oxford’s staff have signed an open letter supporting the student camp. The staff members declared they considered the students’ demands “entirely reasonable” given Oxford’s ideals and global leadership and joined in demanding transparency and change regarding financial investments. Additionally, the open letter urged the University to condemn the killing of professors and the destruction of universities, educational institutions, and archives in Gaza. Lastly, they asked the University to “immediately commit resources” to creating opportunities for Palestinian scholars and rebuilding Gaza’s universities.
According to reporting by Cherwell, a spokesperson for the University commented on the camp by saying Oxford respects the students’ and staff members’ right to free expression in the form of peaceful protests. They added a plea to express themselves with “respect, courtesy and empathy”, since “there is no place for intolerance at the University of Oxford”. It should be noted that according to protester Kendall Gardner, who was interviewed for this article, the University and the students have not spoken as of May 6th.
Students do not know when or how the camp will end. They all expressed hope that the University would deliberate and change its financial policy, instead of calling the police. However, they are not optimistic. At the end of the day, the students’ and campers’ eyes are on Gaza. A student mentioned anonymously that he did not know if the camp “will make a difference on the number of bombs that are dropped”. But she hoped it empowers young people and students to feel like they can fight against injustices.
