“Put the Zios in the ground” student charged with stirring up racial hatred

A student videoed during a pro-Palestinian demonstration chanting a call to “put the Zios in the ground” has been charged by the police with stirring up racial hatred.

Samuel Williams was arrested on Wednesday 15 October after footage of a speech he had given the previous Saturday at an anti-Israel rally in London circulated widely on social media. The video showed Williams appearing to praise what he described as “an upright, a steadfast and a noble resistance in Palestine and in Gaza to look to, to be inspired by.”

In the video, Williams went on to say that he doesn’t want “to yap for too long”, and then refers to “a chant we’ve been workshopping in Oxford that maybe you guys want to join in, it goes ‘Gaza, Gaza, make us proud, put the Zios in the ground’.”

A statement from the Metropolitan police confirmed that on Tuesday 16 December “Detectives investigating allegations of antisemitic chanting at a demonstration in central London in October have charged a man.

“Samuel Williams, 20, of Oxford has been charged with stirring up racial hatred contrary to Section 18(1) of the Public Order Act 1986. He will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday, 27 January.”

Williams was a Politics, Philosophy and Economics undergraduate at Balliol College at the time of the video. He had previously been pictured in videos shared by Oxford Students Palestine Society. Social media pictures showed Williams wearing a keffiyeh, while another featured the student brandishing a replica AK-47 assault rifle. He also featured on a language-tutors site in which he described himself as “native German” with “a passion for German culture both old and modern”. He described his family as coming “from northern Bavaria, the town of Bayreuth (Wagner’s home town).”

Oxford university suspended Williams on the same day as his original arrest, with the institution saying at the time that it was “unequivocal: there is no place for hatred, antisemitism or discrimination within our community, and we will always act to protect the safety and dignity of our students.”