ON a manicured Cambridge lawn, the bundle of placards at the student protest camp provocatively reads, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.
Walking in spring sunshine past this so-called “liberated zone” for Palestine, Jewish student Raphael Cohen says the signs are “terrifying to me”.
First-year Land Economy student Raphael, 25, said the slogan “means death to me and all my family”.
The 40-tent encampment pitched outside elite King’s College, Cambridge — which has nurtured eight Nobel prize winners — is part of a wave of campus protests across Britain.
Started in the US, the pro-Palestine demos have spread to Cambridge’s gilded twin Oxford, as well as Manchester, Bristol, Sheffield, Newcastle and Edinburgh.
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The move has led to Jewish students saying they face a “hostile and toxic atmosphere” on campuses.
This week I witnessed a Jewish student wearing a kippah, or skull cap, being turned away from a protest camp pitched outside Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum.
I wanted to wear an Israeli flag armband but changed my mind. I don’t want to end up in the hospital.
Jewish student
Their faces obscured by medical masks and Middle Eastern keffiyeh scarves — a symbol of Palestinian nationalism — protestors insist those entering the camp sign up to their radical manifesto.
It includes a demand that millions of Palestinians be allowed to take back what they claim is their ancestral land in Israel, effectively meaning the country’s collapse.
And the manifesto talks of the “right of colonised people to resist against occupation”.
Golden tickets
The Jewish student, who declined to give his name “for my own safety”, said: “I wanted to wear my kippah to show there is another viewpoint.
“I wanted to wear an Israeli flag armband but changed my mind.
“I don’t want to end up in the hospital.”
In his 30s and studying for a PhD in Computer Science, he said of the protest: “I hope it stops in this beautiful city.
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“I hope they don’t use it to intimidate Jewish students”.
Yesterday in Downing Street, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak held a meeting with 17 university vice chancellors, urging them to take a “zero-tolerance” approach to anti-Semitism.
Last year there were 182 university-related anti-Semitic incidents recorded by the Community Security Trust — a rise of 203 per cent on 2022.
Sunak said that “universities have a profound duty to remain bastions of tolerance”.
Two of the most prominent campus protests are in Oxford and Cambridge.
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Of Britain’s 57 Prime Ministers, 44 attended Oxford or Cambridge.
In Oxford — the oldest university in the English-speaking world, dating from 1096 — students have pitched 30-odd tents on a patch of lawn.
They chose the site outside the Pitt Rivers Museum, claiming items in its collection were acquired “through imperial expansionism” and that “cultural pillaging” defines “Oxford’s legacy”.
Visitors to the encampment are greeted with “Welcome to the People’s University for Palestine” daubed on a white bedsheet.
Other banners accuse Israel of “genocide”, “apartheid” with another stating “Divest from death”.
Students draped in their black and white keffiyehs sat in a circle intently listening to a speaker.
Sessions this week have included a “liberation fellowship teach-in” and “physical wellness”.
One of the leading protesters is 26-year-old Kendall Gardner, who made headlines this week when footage emerged of her peeling off a black university gown to reveal a bikini underneath.
The American, who is a politics student, said the video she posted on Twitter/X last year was an audition for Love Island.
Posing in college grounds, she said on the social media post that it was “time to put down the books and pick up the boys”.
My efforts to speak to Kendall and other Palestine campaigners here were rebuffed this week.
Entering the encampment, I was directed to a media tent where a representative for Oxford Action for Palestine politely said no one at the camp would talk to me.
Other protestors at the site weren’t so courteous.
A man saying he was a “trade unionist” raised his middle finger at me while a woman with dyed-red hair screamed “scum”.
It was nothing personal.
Other national newspaper reporters were followed around the site before being pressured to leave.
A journalist from the Daily Telegraph, who initially refused, was surrounded by an “intimidating mob” who “shouted in his face” before he exited.
Israel has a right to exist. Police need to shut this camp down. Just because it’s Cambridge and they are the students, they’re given free rein and they shouldn’t be.”
Mike McCall, 55, a former soldier
However, Iranian State-owned Press TV — banned from broadcasting in the UK by watchdog Ofcom — were granted an interview.
The station — which can still broadcast online — once carried a piece on its website from holocaust denier Nicolas Kollerstrom arguing that “the alleged massacre of Jewish people by gassing during World War Two was scientifically impossible”.
Yet, a number of protesters at the Oxford site are Jewish, including Kendall Gardener.
The PhD student reportedly labelled Sunak’s comments on student anti-Semitism as political point-scoring, adding: “I feel safer on this university campus than I would in other contexts.”
Outside the camp, ex-British soldier John Wells, 65, looked on at the protesters with a Star of David dangling from his neck.
The Jewish caretaker — passing by on his bike — told me: “You only need a minority to turn up and start going on about Hamas.
“It will just set stuff off and give the police even more work to do.”
Some 40 tents also form a protest camp outside King’s College in Cambridge.
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Opposite the camp is The Eagle pub, where scientist Francis Crick told lunchtime drinkers that he and colleague James Watson had “discovered the secret of life” — the structure of DNA — on February 28. 1953.
Again, students at the camp declined to talk to me.
This week chants of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” have rung out through Cambridge’s ancient streets.
While a Jewish student who turned up at a rally at encampment this week has his Israeli flag snatched.
Ari Vladimir, 19, said: “I came into the protest and unfurled my flag and almost immediately I was pushed, my flag was grabbed and thrown to the ground.”
‘Waiting to kick off’
He said he was then ushered away by stewards “for my own safety”.
Jewish students at Cambridge have called for the university to take urgent action after they say that the camp “leaves many of us on edge”.
Locals in Cambridge also called for the camp to be broken up.
Passerby Mike McCall, 55, a former soldier, told me: “That chant means wiping out Israel.
“Israel has a right to exist.
“Police need to shut this camp down.
“Just because it’s Cambridge and they are the students, they’re given free rein and they shouldn’t be.”
While data engineer Simon Brown, 53, from Harlow, Essex, glanced at the camp and called it “pathetic”
He was angry when pro-Palestinian protesters last month daubed red paint — and the slogan “divest from genocide” — on the walls of Trinity College’s historic chapel.
“It annoyed me,” he said.
“They’re not demonstrating in the right way.
“If half of them see a bandwagon, they jump on the back of it
“I watched the pro-Palestine marches in London and saw people creating a problem and being a nuisance.
“They were just waiting for something to kick off.”
Protest camp organisers say they hold Britain and Cambridge University “complicit” and “partners” in “genocide” of Palestinians.
Students say they won’t move until the university has disclosed “financial and professional ties with complicit organisations”.
Strolling past the camp, a company director in his 70s told me: “If they’re so upset with the university, which is one of the best in the world, then why come here?
“If the October 7 massacre of Israelis had happened in Britain, what do you think we would be doing?
“We’d be fighting the terrorists so they wouldn’t do it again.”
We ask everyone in our community to treat each other with understanding and empathy.
Cambridge University
Passing the protest tents, local woman Mary Mortlock — in her 40s — said: “This is not who we are.
“Here in Cambridge we try to look after people so they can study and feel comfortable and this is the way they repay us.”
Police in both Oxford and Cambridge have made no arrests as the stand-off — which currently remains peaceful — continues.
A Cambridge University spokesman said they were committed to “freedom of speech within the law” and “acknowledge the right to protest”.
They added: “We ask everyone in our community to treat each other with understanding and empathy.”
Oxford expressed similar sentiments adding that “there is no place for intolerance” at the university.
They say the Pitt Rivers Museum remains open.
As exam season approaches, many students will have to decide to return to their studies — and secure their stellar careers.
It may leave another blow-hard American-inspired political firecracker slowly fizzling out.
