The JC understands that among those with red-painted hands who were eventually removed from the chamber was Khadija Khokhar, pictured smiling in a photograph with her bright red palms raised.
Khadija Khokhar[Missing Credit]
Khokhar is a Fulbright scholar from Detroit, studying International Development, meaning her studies are partially funded by the taxpayer.
She also runs an online shop selling Palestinian merchandise, including a poster of a keffiyeh-clad face painted onto an outline of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, alongside the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.
The US citizen has previously organised climate-change activism through the “Fridays for Future” movement and was photographed addressing a protest with the group in Washington DC in 2019.
Another protester pictured with her red hands raised inside the chamber and later removed was Nazifa Binte Harun, a Bangladeshi postgraduate student on an Oxford DAC Scholarship, which covers full tuition and living expenses for students from developing countries.
The red hand gesture used by Harun and Khokhar is common within the anti-Israel movement. Protesters suggest it represents the Jewish state having “blood on its hands”, but some trace its origin to a famous image from the Second Intifada showing the lynching of two IDF soldiers in Ramallah.
Protesters inside the chamber also shouted “liar”, “shame on you” and “genocide enabler” throughout Olmert’s remarks, including while he described the 2008 peace offer. It is not clear whether Khokhar and Harun participated in these outbursts.
“Hecklers are normally warned and removed,” a Jewish student inside the chamber told the JC, but this group was taken out only “after countless interjections and members of the audience asking them to be removed.”
He added that the atmosphere was “uncomfortable,” with chanting and drum-banging audible from outside.
A poster stocked on Khokhar's Etsy page[Missing Credit]
The student, who asked not to be named, also claimed that the Union president, Moosa Harraj, abandoned standard protocol by declining to introduce Olmert and instead “went onto a barrage of questions, most of which either quoted Olmert’s articles back to him or quoted UN or Human Rights Watch reports.
“All questions centred back onto claims of genocide and apartheid and why Olmert won’t use those words,” the fourth-year went on, adding that Olmert “was treated really disrespectfully.”
At the end of the event, the Harraj did not shake Olmert’s hand and walked straight out, the student claimed.
But despite the disturbance, the student said he was “not scared [or] worried. This is business as usual at Oxford.”
An Oxford Union spokesperson said: “Disagreement is intrinsic to the Oxford Union’s commitment to upholding free speech.
"As such, we remain committed to hosting speakers whose views may be subject to disagreement, not to endorse those views but to challenge them in an open forum. Platforming a speaker does not equate to supporting their positions – it allows those positions to be questioned and held to account by instrumentalising our tradition to debate and disagree.”
The JC has contacted the union regarding the claims about Harraj’s behaviour.
It comes after the union voted to label Israel a “greater threat to regional stability” than Iran during a debate last week.
Guest speakers included former Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh and UN Watch Director Hillel Neuer.
The JC has contacted Khokhar and Harun for comment.
