More than 100 students at Cambridge University rallied on Tuesday against extreme right-wing ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, the Middle East Monitor reported.
Hotovely, who served as a settlement minister under former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was invited to address the Cambridge Union’s debating society. Student groups slammed the decision, citing the 42-year-old ambassador’s long track record of deeply hostile and racist anti-Palestinian remarks.
“Hotovely is a proud supporter of Israeli settler colonialism,” Cambridge students wrote in an open letter, “and an open advocate of a ‘Greater Israel’.”
Tzipi Hotovely, ambassador of racist settler-colonial Israel, supporter of the demolition of Al-Aqsa, and denier of Palestine's right to exist, has been had her vehicles exit from Cambridge University blocked by students.
— Lowkey (@Lowkey0nline) February 8, 2022
While deputy foreign minister, Hotovely asserted that the entire West Bank belongs to Israeli Jews alone. “This land is ours,” she said. “All of it is ours. We did not come here to apologize for that.”
Early on in her time at the Israeli Embassy in London, Hotovely denied that the Nakba — the premeditated ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians — ever happened. She has called it an “Arab lie” and a “made-up story”. Her rejectionist view is not a fringe opinion in Israel; it is part of the mainstream position of the Likud party led by Netanyahu and other parties on the right and far-right.
Tuesday’s protest attracted crowds from outside the student community, including representatives from Amnesty International UK and Jewish Voice for Labour.
Students at Cambridge Uni are now sitting down blocking the Nakba denying, settlements minister turned Israeli ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, from exiting her failed attempt to address an audience at the uni.
Anti-racism in action
— Lowkey (@Lowkey0nline) February 8, 2022
Amnesty released a report on February 1, labeling Israel as an apartheid state. Apartheid is a crime akin to a crime against humanity.
“Silence is complicity, acceptance is complicity, platforming is complicity,” protestors chanted while holding Palestinian flags.
Hotovely’s visit to Cambridge Union comes as consensus grows among leading human rights groups over Israel’s apartheid. Amnesty joined the likes of Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem and others who have labeled Israel as an apartheid state.
(MEMO, PC, Social Media)
