Pro-palestine encampment continues 5th day in Oxford
Students from the University of Oxford continued an encampment for a fifth day in solidarity with the Gaza Strip to demand full divestment from Israel and a boycott of Israellinked companies.
Students have attended the encampment with dozens of tents outside the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford where people from different backgrounds are welcomed.
They continued protesting in an atmosphere of solidarity at the area where congressional Friday prayers were performed with the attendance of many.
Along with a prayer room, the encampment also includes a medical tent, snack area and meeting points, with many Palestinian flags and signs. One read: “Generation after generation, until total liberation.”
There is also a media room named after female Palestinian journalists killed by Israeli attacks and a memorial library, named after Refaat Alareer, a prominent Palestinian professor, poet and writer, who was killed in an airstrike in Gaza in December.
Despite Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s recent statement that urged university administrators to protect Jewish students from “harassment” and “anti-semitic abuse” at campuses, Jewish
I’ve been sleeping on campus since Monday and I would say that I feel safer here at this encampment than I usually do at the university A Jewish student
students are among attendees at the Oxford protest.
'I feel safer here at this encampment'
Kendall Gardner, a 25-yearold Jewish student, said she has “absolutely” no concern about being at the protest.
“I’ve been sleeping on campus since Monday and I would say that I feel safer here at this encampment than I usually do
at the University of Oxford as a Jewish student,” she told Anadolu.
Gardner said that protesters have invited other Jewish students from the university to come into the camp and have conversations, and they understand that some Jewish students feel very differently about what is happening in Gaza.
“But to us, that's really not the point. This is a genocide -1.7 million people are currently at risk of displacement during the current escalation in Rafah,” said Gardner. “We are more than happy for Jewish students from around the community to come in and chat with us about that,” she added. On their demands, Gardner said they want the university divest from all arms companies, specifically any involved in the “Israeli occupation apartheid in genocide currently happening in Gaza”.