Oxford students, like others, are protesting about Palestine, but not so much when it rains. There’s an encampment outside the Pitt Rivers museum and once the rain starts the protesters in tents disappear inside them and the others disappear indoors. But when the sun is out, they re-emerge, though not if it’s too early. Welcome to the People’s University for Palestine, a placard says.
Quite a few of the tents have LGBT flags
It’s a mixed group; some of the demonstrators are Muslim, and there are enough oldies to explain the sign saying ‘Vietnam 1975 is Palestine now’. Just over half are women. Quite a few of the tents have LGBT flags; and there’s one placard that says, ‘Queers Support Palestine; don’t use us as an excuse not to support Palestine’. A couple of days ago, there was a Jewish student, who was chatting to friends.
There’s also a sign up saying ‘please tread carefully. We want to take care of the land and the space around us!!’ Too late; the lawn has been churned up and people pick their way across it on planks. Lots of the protesters have masks and some are starting to smell, notwithstanding the Portaloo. The bins are spilling over with the residue of junk food containers. Actually, there seems to be quite a lot of food around. There’s a family tent, and a pop-up coffee tent. In one, someone had donated a cupboard and TV; they seem to be there for the long haul.
This being 2024, there’s an app to register when you come in. If you ask individual protesters why they’re there, it’s hard to get an answer except that they’re against genocide. Do they know there’s genocide? ‘Everyone knows’.
When one female friend asked a group what the protest was about, a man intervened to tell her: ‘educate yourself’, which sounded a bit sexist. If you say you’re writing, they’ll ask you to meet their media representative…yes, they’ve got one, who asks for accreditation.
There is a wall made of cardboard and plywood where you can express how you feel about the situation and write messages to Palestine. ‘Write on the Wall if you want Apartheid to Fall’, it says. There’s also a medical tent run by student medics and for those feeling upset, there’s a wellness tent.
A large billboard displays their demands: ‘Disclose all finances; Divest from Israeli genocide, apartheid and occupation; Overhaul university investment policy; Boycott Israeli genocide; Stop Banking with Barclays; Support Palestinian…’ the rest is folded on the ground.
As regards their own education, it’s still going on, if not in the subjects the students are in Oxford for. Every day they have lectures relating to Palestine; there’s also a tent library filled with Palestinian and Arabic literature.
Every so often a car honks in passing, and the protesters cheer. Peter Hitchens turned up too. He got booed.
Oh, and why the Pitt Rivers museum? A flier explains, under the headling, Welcome to our Liberated Zone: ‘We have established a Liberated Zone on the lawn of the infamous Oxford University Pitt Rivers Museum. The museum, which ‘acquired’ items from across the globe through imperial expansionism, mirrors the ongoing struggle of Palestinian people and connect us to colonised peoples everywhere’. Another says, ‘The museum displays…the erasure, dispossession, scholasticide, epistemicide and cultural pillaging that defines Oxford’s legacy.’ Poor Pitt-Rivers. Actually, you can’t see the famous shrunken heads any more.
In other words, as with any student protest, there’s any amount of virtue signalling going on as well as genuine sympathy for Palestinians. A Muslim I met complained to one Catholic that: ‘You were more bothered by a rainbow flag than people being kicked out of their own homes at gunpoint’; there’s a bit of disjointed thinking going on here.
The buzzwords are what you’d expect: ‘imperial expansionism’, ‘All links to Capitalism…’, ‘It’s the Tories’ and (my favourite) a description of the encampment as ‘a public facing global education project‘.
When you try and ask what their argument is, you get slogans: ‘genocide, occupation and ethnic cleansing‘; either you support Palestine, or you support the butchering of innocent women and children. Everyone I spoke to suggests as much. As for the business of the university? ‘There will be no business as usual during genocide’, said the press release.
The university authorities had better hope it rains.
Comments