Chaos continues at Oxford Union as protestors succeed in cancelling Olmert event
Days after members present vote that Israel is a greater regional threat than Iran, screaming protestors succeed in cancelling talk by former Israeli Prime Minister
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was prevented from speaking at the Oxford Union on Sunday, after protestors blocked the entrance to the debating society’s building, as well as invading the union’s premises itself.
Security were forced to physically eject protestors from the union’s grounds, with the entire event cancelled as a result. Some of the anti-Israel protestors present, had painted their hands red to symbolise the accusation that those attending the event had “blood on your hands”.
For those with actual knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, however, red hands symbolise the lynching of two Israelis by Palestinians in the West Bank during the second intifada, with one of the murderers holding up bloodied hands to the acclamation of crowds outside the building where the killings took place.
Those ejected from the building screamed about “complicity in genocide” and chanted the “from the river to the sea” slogan. Olmert has been a vocal public critic of the current Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
The incident comes days after the debating society voted ‘overwhelmingly’ to support the notion that Israel was “a greater threat to regional stability” than Iran, with speakers including the Executive Director of UN Watch, Hillel Neuer. Neuer told the crowd that he had “hesitated before agreeing to debate this evening. To do so risks dignifying a proposition so disconnected from basic facts that it verges on the satirical: that Israel, of all states, poses a greater threat to regional stability than the Islamic Republic of Iran.
“But we now live in an age where people will believe almost anything. Nearly one in four people in this country aged 18 to 34 believe that the 7/7 terrorist attacks were ‘probably a hoax.’ And here in this Oxford Union, we saw just three weeks ago that no less than 501 members believe it is right to vote in support of the incoming president, after he had publicly celebrated the killing of Charlie Kirk.”
Two of Neuer’s opponents on the evening were the former Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, Mohammed Shtayeh and Iran’s former Minister of Culture, Ata’ollah Mohajerani. Shtayeh referred to Israel as a “pariah state” and said that some of its lawmakers believe its borders should extend from the Nile to the Euphrates. Neuer, who detailed the Iranian regime’s interference in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, took the opportunity to call out Mohajeranie for statements appearing to publicly justify the fatwa against the author Salman Rushdie.
Neuer described how he said that: “I would be remiss not to mention that a human rights lawyer from this university, from Oxford, has filed a complaint and legal dossier with the police against my opponent in this debate, Mr. Ata’ollah Mohajerani, for his role in the assassination of dissidents…Moreover, the complaint points to Mr. Mohajerani’s 1989 book, ‘A Critique of the Satanic Verses Conspiracy,’ in which he endorses and justifies the fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1999 against the famed novelist Salman Rushdie, who was stabbed 15 times in 2022 — as a result, presumably, of this Fatwa.
“And in the book, Mr. Mohajani writes in his book that Rushdie is, ‘an absolute apostate, and the punishment of an apostate is execution.’ And so, Mr. Mohajarani, tonight you say you stand for regional stability, but you have once blessed the idea that an author, a citizen of this country, should be killed for writing a book. So please tell this house: Do you still believe that writers deserve death, or will you finally retract and renounce your support for that Fatwa?”
According to Neuer, Mohajani failed to answer the question when it was his turn to speak. The Oxford Union members present are understood to have voted “overwhelmingly” in support of the idea that Israel was a greater threat to regional stability than the Iranian regime. Neuer’s organisation, UN Watch, said that “the outcome was known in advance”.
Last year, the Oxford Union voted that “Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide” by a majority of 278 to 59.
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