A Goldsmiths University event featuring Palestinian and Israeli speakers calling for co-existence in the Middle East has been picketed by activists claiming they were “appalled” students and some staff members are “collaborating with Together for Humanity” and “upholding Zionism on campus.”
A group of anti-Israel activists congregated outside the hall staging the meeting at the London university, which featured speakers Mira Awad, the Palestinian-Israeli singer and campaigner, Hamze Awawde, a Palestinian peace activist born in Hebron, and Magen Inon, the Israeli teacher now based in London who parents were murdered on October 7.
They held aloft a banner reading “Normalisation Is Annihilation”, while circulating a claim that the event “violates the BDS guidelines set out by Palestinian people because it refuses to name and works to normalise the genocide, occupation, and apartheid being committed in and against Palestine.”
The online messaged added: Let’s make clear that there are NO ‘TWO SIDES’ IN GENOCIDE.”
Call for boycott of co-existence event at Goldsmiths
Ahead the event, the latest to be organised by the pro-peace and pro-co-existence group Together For Humanity, Goldsmiths University and College Union had issued a statement in support of a boycott of the event.
The union went further and said it would support an occupation of the Professor Stuart Hall building in order to prevent the event taking place.
Goldsmiths University College Union confirm boycott of pro-peace event
But on Wednesday, only around 20 activists appeared to have turned up to attempt to occupy the building and prevented from entering by security guards.
A statement published by GUCU on its website claimed: “On Wednesday 20 November, an event is scheduled to take place at Goldsmiths that has been organised with the group Together for Humanity, as well as a small number of Goldsmiths staff.
“In recent weeks, representatives of Goldsmiths for Palestine (G4P), the Students’ Union (SU) and the GUCU executive committee have been engaging in dialogue and meeting with the organisers of the event.
“Following these discussions, G4P have called for a boycott of the event. Furthermore, in line with motions passed democratically by their membership, the SU have communicated that they also cannot support the event outlined.
“Both organisations have outlined their reasoning for this, which includes the fact that the event organisers have failed to name the ongoing genocide in Gaza, with the suggestion from the organisers that non-participation in this event would be a betrayal of the people of Gaza. For these reasons, the executive committee of GUCU will be joining G4P’s boycott of the event.”
In further inflammatory rhetoric GUCU said: “The actions of Goldsmiths for Palestine over the past year, including the occupation of the CCA, have created an essential and urgent disruption to the ‘business as usual’ activities of the University and Goldsmiths CCA, as Israeli forces and settlers continue to enact a genocidal war against the Palestinian people that extends to dismemberment, disease, dispossession and displacement of Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.”
Ahead of Wednesday’s event Yachad’s director Hannah Wesifeld had condemned the protests posting on X: “The stupidity of this is immeasurable. Israelis and Palestinians were coming to campus to talk about how to move forward together to a new better reality in the region. Instead a bunch of students and academics in London have decided to boycott Palestinians as an act of solidarity.”
