Terror inquiry into ‘pro-Hamas’ speaker at Oxford Union
by Frederic Attenborough, TCW:
COUNTER-terror police are investigating reports that an Oxford Union speaker committed an offence under the Terrorism Act 2000 by expressing support for the proscribed group Hamas and its ‘heroic’ October 7 attacks on Israel.
Miko Peled, a pro-Palestinian activist, made the comments while speaking in favour of the motion ‘This house believes Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide’. During the debate on November 28, Mr Peled said: ‘What we saw on October 7 was not terrorism . . . these were acts of heroism of a people who have been oppressed.’
Writing for Jewish News, Laura Butcher, an Oxford undergraduate who attended the debate, said that following Mr Peled’s claim ‘the crowd gave its loudest whoop and cheer of the night’.
Ms Butcher added: ‘Even if some of the students were just mindlessly joining in the hateful clamour; even if we assume that the 200 cheering represent the core of student activists − there is no denying that extremism and anti-Semitism have taken hold within our student body.’
Jonathan Sacerdoti, the son of a Holocaust survivor and one of the opposing speakers, raised a point of order following Mr Peled’s remarks, saying that he believed they constituted a ‘criminal offence’.
He told Union president Ebrahim Osman-Mowafy: ‘I believe you should invite the police in. His depiction of the acts of Hamas on October 7 is, under UK law – the Terrorism Act 2000 – illegal.’
Mr Osman-Mowafy reportedly responded: ‘I’m not legal enforcement.’
Following the debate, Mr Sacerdoti told the Telegraph that the president’s refusal to intervene ‘effectively enabled Peled’s support for and praise of a proscribed terror group before a room full of impressionable students’.
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