Pro-Palestine demonstrators are disrupting open days at Cambridge as Britain’s leading Jewish student group calls on universities to do more to tackle “antisemitic hatred” on campuses.
Activists are telling prospective undergraduates and their families they will be “complicit in Israel’s genocide” in Gaza if they apply to Trinity College, which is said to have invested in an Israeli arms company last year.
Students across the UK have started to gather in protest against the war in Gaza, with encampments set up in cities including Manchester, Newcastle and Leeds.
This follows a series of violent clashes at campuses across the US, most prominently at Columbia University in New York.
Activist group Cambridge Stop The War shared a video on social media with the caption “No Open Day As Usual for Trinity College Cambridge!”
Criticism is focused on a reported investment last year of £61,735 in the Israeli arms company Elbit Systems, one of the largest defence suppliers to the Israeli military.
Demonstrators have called on the college to end its “complicity in genocide” and divest from Israel in response to its military operation in the Gaza Strip.
They have not yet set up an encampment but have started to target open days for the mathematics course at Trinity, arguing the highly regarded course and college will be “extremely vulnerable to bad publicity”.
The Union of Jewish Students has called on British universities to “take their duty of care” to Jewish students seriously.
A letter published on the group’s X page said: “Jewish students are angry, they are tired, and they are hurt by the continuous torrent of antisemitic hatred on campus since October 7.
“And as Jewish students begin their exams, their peers seek to replicate scenes of hatred from US campuses, with protesters already having called to ‘globalise the Intifada’, to support the Houthis in Yemen, and to not ‘engage with Zionists’.
“While students have a right to protest, these encampments create a hostile and toxic atmosphere on campus for Jewish students.
“Let us be clear, we will not stand for this hatred.
“It is time that universities take their duty of care to Jewish students seriously.”
Calls to divest from Israeli businesses and support the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions movement have become common on British campuses.
Several groups have said they will stay on campus sites indefinitely until university leaders discuss demands.
Protest organisers across the UK have said pro-Palestinian demonstrations will spread, but they do not expect to see any repeat of the violence witnessed at US campuses.
According to The Guardian, David Maguire, the vice-chancellor of the University of East Anglia (UEA), said protests at UK universities had been generally peaceful but agreed that events like those in the US “could happen here”.
Trinity College has been contacted for comment.
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