Ministers vow action after Hamas chant at Cambridge
V MASKED DEMONSTRATORS at Cambridge University burned flares and screamed Hamas slogans during the Israeli ambassador’s visit on Tuesday – prompting outraged government ministers to demand action.
The shameful scenes at one of the country’s top universities came in a torrid week on British campuses. At Sheffield Hallam University, Jewish students branded the institution a “hostile environment” after it employed Palestinian activist Shahd Abusalama to teach a course on “postcolonial media culture”, despite her praise for terrorists and provocative statements about “Zionists”.
And a report by the Community Security Trust revealed a record 128 antisemitic incidents at British universities in 2021.
The 100-strong mob gathered outside Cambridge Student Union on Tuesday, chanting “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”. Last month, Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi told the JC that universities must alert police if they hear the chant. But in Cambridge, officers looked on.
Demonstrators also called Israel an “apartheid state,” echoing last week’s inflammatory claims by Amnesty International. The crowd lit flares, blew whistles and beat pans to intimidate Ambassador Tzipi Hotovely and drown out her speech.
Andrew Percy, chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism, said he would raise the incident with university officials. “Cambridge University needs to investigate the use of this to determine if any of their students were involved and, if so, what action they plan to take against students using a slogan so beloved of terrorists,” he said. Amid the growing crisis, Universities Minister Michelle Donelan told the JC: “Universities should have a zero tolerance attitude to anti-Jewish racism on campus. At our antisemitism summit, we set out clear actions, including spot- ting patterns of incidents, spreading good practice and training from the Union of Jewish students and I urge the higher educations sector to take forward these commitments so they have the right tools to tackle these issues.” Cambridge University was approached for comment.
JEWISH STUDENTS branded Sheffield Hallam University a “hostile environment for Jews” after it employed an activist who praised terrorist killers as “heroes” and wrote that “Zionist lobbies… buy presidents”.
Shahd Abusalama was reappointed last week as an Associate Lecturer by Sheffield Hallam after she was investigated and then cleared over her defence of a “Stop the Palestinian Holocaust” poster.
The JC can reveal that Ms Abusalama’s father is a convicted terrorist, sentenced to life imprisonment by Israel in 1972.
She was due to celebrate her reinstatement this week alongside the notorious sociologist David Miller, who was sacked by Bristol University he referred to its JSoc as “political pawns [used] by a violent, racist foreign regime”.
The Palestinian academic, who is due to teach a course on “post-colonial media culture”, was investigated by her university after she said she could understand why a student had used the hashtag “#holocaust” to refer to “Israel’s repeated bombardment of Gaza”.
“Maybe she thought she’d garner European sympathy for Palestine by evoking the ‘Never Again’ slogan,” she added.
Ms Abusalama has also urged her social media followers to watch a disturbing video which claimed the Talmud permitted Jews to kill and steal from non-Jews — which she later claimed she “found offensive”.
Sheffield Jewish Society President Dora Hirsh told the JC the university was “now a hostile environment for Jews”.
Ms Hirsh added: “I can’t imagine that if this was bigotry against another group that after an investigation Sheffield Hallam wouldn’t act.
“I would call upon Sheffield Hallam to apply the same standards and procedures for antisemitism that they do for other forms of discrimination.”
A spokesperson for the Union of Jewish Students said:
“We are shocked and this has the potential to normalise the misappropriation of the term ‘Holocaust’.
“There appears to be a refusal to take responsibility for how the comments isolate Jewish students and create a hostile environment.”
They urged Sheffield Hallam University to consider taking further action against Ms Abusalama.
“There is a problem bubbling under the surface of university academia that must be addressed,” they added.
“Jewish students deserve to feel safe
I call upon them to treat antisemitsim as they do other forms of discrimination
She is due to celebrate her reinstatement alongside David Miller
in whichever university they choose to study.”
A Sheffield Hallam spokesperson told the JC that specific concerns were raised in relation to an individual’s proposed appointment but the university had conducted a “robust HR process”. The spokesperson declined to comment on whether Jewish groups had been consulted.
After completing an undergraduate English literature degree at Gaza’s AlAzhar University, Ms Abusalama moved to the UK and studied for a ‘Media and the Middle East’ masters degree at SOAS from 2014 to 2015. In 2017, she started a PhD at Sheffield Hallam University.
Ms Abusalama has said her research sought to examine how “colonial and humanitarian narratives of PalestineIsrael ‘conflict’ can be disrupted and countered”.
In 1972, before she was born, Ms Abusalama’s father, Ismail Abusalama, was convicted of planting bombs at several sites within Israel, including BarIlan University, and sentenced to life in prison, according to a book released by his lawyer. Mr Abusalama was released under the 1985 Jibril agreement, brokered by the Israeli government.
Over the last decade, Ms Abusalama has repeatedly indicated her admiration for terrorists who have killed Israelis.
In 2014, she posted a photo of killer Dalal Mughrabi alongside a Palestinian flag to Facebook.
Ms Mughrabi participated in the 1978
Coastal Road massacre in which — after she personally shot and killed an American wildlife photographer — Palestinian militants hijacked a bus and massacred 38 of its occupants, including 13 children.
Ms Abusalama said that the terrorists “managed to establish a republic of Palestine in a bus, and their republic lasted four hours. It doesn’t matter how long this republic lasted, the important thing is that it was established.”
In 2013, Ms Abusalama described Samer Issawi, who was convicted during the Second intifada of opening fire indiscriminately on civilian vehicles, as “our Palestinian legend”.
Ms Abusalama is due to celebrate her reinstatement this week at a Socialist Labour Network (SLW) meeting alongside sacked sociologist David Miller, who was fired by the University of Bristol after he repeatedly made inflammatory statements about Jewish students.
Also set to appear is Sheffield Hallam lecturer Peter Jones, one of Ms Abusalama’s supervisors.
The meeting will call for the internationally agreed upon IHRA definition of antisemitism to be scrapped.
Goldsmiths University Senior Lecturer, Dr David Hirsh, furiously criticised Sheffield Hallam University for failing to speak out against a University and Colleges Union (UCU) motion that said Ms Absualama’s public campaigning against Israel “fall[s] entirely within the boundaries of acceptable political commentary”.
Dr Hirsh told the JC: “The two [Sheffield Hallam University] UCU motions, defending David Miller and Shahd Abusalama, are defending the same antisemitic worldview: that Zionism is at the centre of all that is bad in the world, and is symbolic of all that is bad.”
Ms Abusalama did not respond to a request for comment.