A heated and controversial discussion at the Oxford Union on Thursday, centered on whether Israel qualifies as an “apartheid state responsible for genocide,” descended into chaos, with heated exchanges between participants and attendees. Security was tight during the event, and protests took place outside the venue.

Following the debate, the union conducted a vote on the resolution: “This House Believes Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide.” The outcome saw 278 votes in favor and 59 against the proposition.

The Oxford Union, based in Oxford, England, is primarily composed of students from Oxford University, one of the world’s most prestigious institutions of higher learning.

The debate featured prominent figures on both sides of the issue. Those supporting Israel included Natasha Hausdorff, a British lawyer; Jonathan Sacerdoti, a journalist covering the UK and Europe for i24 News; Arab-Israeli activist Yoseph Haddad; and Mosab Hassan Yousef, a former Hamas member turned Israeli spy. The opposing side included Norman Finkelstein, a U.S. political scientist and anti-Israel activist; Miko Peled, an Israeli-American activist and author; Susan Abulhawa, a Palestinian-American author; and Mohammed El-Kurd, a Palestinian writer and poet.

According to Oxford University’s student newspaper, Cherwell, the debate was marked by significant heckling. During Sacerdoti’s address, an audience member shouted at him, calling him a “sick motherfucker” and a “genocidal maniac.”

Cherwell also reported that Peled defended the October 7th attacks by Hamas, describing them not as terrorism but “acts of heroism of a people who were oppressed,” and endorsed the creation of a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea.”

The October 7, 2023, massacre, which sparked the ongoing Gaza war, involved over 3,000 Hamas militants crossing into Israel through various means, killing roughly 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, mostly civilians, many of whom were subjected to horrific brutality and sexual assault.

Abulhawa addressed the audience by targeting Zionists directly, saying, “We let you into our homes when your own countries turned you away. You killed and robbed and burned and looted our lives, you carved out our hearts.”

El-Kurd, a Palestinian poet, took aim at Zionism, calling it “irredeemable and indefensible.” He stated that if the union voted in favor of the resolution, it would be a reflection of “the moral clarity of the global majority,” adding, “It is about time and about 70 years too late.”

In contrast, Haddad, arguing against the resolution, was removed from the debate for inappropriate conduct after calling the audience “terrorist supporters” following their boos during his speech. As he was escorted out, he donned a shirt emblazoned with the face of slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, bearing the caption, “Your terrorist is dead.”

Hausdorff, a pro-Israel speaker, called the debate “a dark moment in the Oxford Union’s history,” stating that the claim of genocide against Israel was “a slur being alleged against the real victims of genocide in this case.”

Yousef, the son of a Hamas co-founder who became a pro-Israel activist, stirred controversy by telling the crowd, “Palestinians are the most pathetic people on planet Earth,” and arguing that Palestinians are “a false identity.”

The final vote at the end of the debate saw the resolution pass, officially declaring Israel an apartheid state and responsible for genocide, with a tally of 278 in favor and 59 opposed.

The Oxford Union has a history of divisive debates on Israel. In 1962, the union debated whether “The Creation of the State of Israel is One of the Mistakes of the Century,” and, decades later, students debated whether Israel has a right to exist, with a motion in 2008 posing the question, “This house believes that the State of Israel has a right to exist.”

Over the years, the union has also supported motions accusing Israel’s supporters of “stifling Western debate.”

However, anti-Israel activists haven’t always had the upper hand. In 2015, U.S. lawyer Alan Dershowitz triumphed in a debate on whether the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel was wrong. In 2013, the union rejected a motion that claimed Israel is “a force for good in the Middle East,” though pro-Israel students were encouraged by the fact that they garnered nearly 40 percent of the vote, viewing it as a significant achievement given the prevailing atmosphere in British universities.

{Matzav.com}