UK
Students’ Gaza marches scheduled for October 7 are a ‘f***ing disgrace’
Anti-Israel student groups claim October 7 marks ‘two years since the beginning of the genocide in Gaza’
October 6, 2025 15:22
Anti-Israel student groups claim October 7 marks ‘two years since the beginning of the genocide in Gaza’
October 6, 2025 15:22Student marches marking what organisers describe as “two years since the beginning of the genocide in Gaza” scheduled to take place tomorrow – the anniversary of Hamas’s invasion of Israel in which 1,200 people were murdered – have been branded “an insult to the innocent victims who were violently killed that day” and “a f***ing disgrace”.
Anti-Israel student groups across four London universities – Kings College London (KCL), the London School of Economics (LSE), University College London (UCL) and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) – plan to demonstrate against what they called “two years and 77 years of genocide, of forced starvation, of murder, ethnic cleansing, imprisonment, torture and settler colonialism.”
Protesters at the inter-university event will also rally against “two years of watching the world’s silence and our universities’ complicity as they continue to invest in and profit from settler colonial violence by the Zionist entity” while supporting “two years of resistance… [and the] steadfastness of our brothers and sisters in Palestine.”
The Board of Deputies has condemned the timing of the central march on a day many British Jews will be reflecting on the horrors of the October 7 atrocities.
A Board spokesperson said: "To organise a protest on the anniversary of the October 7 massacre when 1,200 were murdered and hundreds kidnapped by Hamas terrorists is an insult to the innocent victims who were violently killed that day.”
The group’s actions “demonstrate precisely why we have been calling for legislative changes to empower police to consider the cumulative impact of protests and their effects on particular communities like ours”, the spokesperson added.
Robert Jenrick, the shadow lord chancellor and shadow justice secretary offered a blunter assessment, calling tomorrow’s march a “f***ing disgrace”.
Addressing those who planned to turn up, the MP for Newark urged: “Show some common decency.”
Jenrick added: “This is not Britain. Britain is better than that. Think of your fellow citizens, British Jews, people who might be fearful and lonely and afraid right now and call off those protests.”
Commenting on the planned march, the Jewish Leadership Council said: “Jewish people are in urgent, mortal danger, and incitement and radicalisation can no longer be permitted to thrive, unhindered and freely, on our streets.
"In continuing to allow the conflict in the Middle East to spill onto the streets to the UK, British Jews are being put at risk.
"There must be zero tolerance of incitement to violence. Antisemitic placards and chants at tomorrow's demonstration, including those calling to 'globalise the intifada' or 'death to Zionists', must be treated as the incitement to violence that they are.”
It added: "The police must take action against any individual or group inciting violence or committing public order offences against Jewish people."
In their social media posts advertising their “student intifada” organisers appealed for others to “join us in the struggle”. Referring to their universities’ codes of conduct when it comes to marches, they wrote: “Every step we take is showing them that their repression will never intimidate us. That they can try to discipline us, suspend us, expel us, that they can attempt to erase Palestine from our universities but that we will never abide to that [sic].”
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