Students at England’s prestigious University of Cambridge voted last week overwhelmingly in favour of the motion “This House Believes Israel is a Rogue State”during a debate at the Cambridge Union Society.
In a packed debating chamber on March 5, 51 per cent of attendees voted in favour of the motion, 30 per cent abstained and 19 per cent voted in opposition.
The debate featured six prominent speakers, most notably the Jewish American political scientist Norman Finkelstein in proposition and Vivian Wineman, the president of the board of deputies of British Jews, in opposition.
Finkelstein was joined by the Palestinian academic, Prof. Ghada Karmi, and the human rights activist Ben White in proposition. Wineman was supported by Hannah Weisfeld, director of the pro-Israel pro-peace movement Yachad, and Davis Lewin, deputy director of the global think tank the Henry Jackson Society.
The proposition opened the debate by focusing on Israeli settlement growth in occupied Palestinian territories since 1967, which White labeled a “grave violation of international law. Karmi further argued that, “Israel’s preferred methods are violence, aggression and war” and described the state as a “threat to its neighbours.”
Wineman, tried to place the state in the wider context of the Middle East and received loud hisses upon declaring Israel as the “only democracy in the Middle East.” Wineman additionally provided a passionate rebuttal to the point on settlements, accusing White of obscuring the fact that Israel has withdrawn from settlements in the past in attempts to broker for peace.
Weisfeld chose a different tact, focusing closely on Israeli domestic politics. She argued that any nation with a strong system of parliamentary democracy that allows open criticism, along with a free press, cannot be called rogue.
Despite heated early exchanges between speakers, students remained largely respectful and listened carefully to points raised.
However, the final speaker in opposition, Lewis, was met with vocal abuse, including boos and hisses throughout his speech. This began after Lewis described the motion as “disgusting” and expressed his frustration that Israel was “once again” being debated because of an “obsession” with the state. The loudest jeers of the night came when he dismissed Palestinian death tolls as “minor” by comparison to the hundreds of thousands of casualties of the Syrian civil war.
Union Society president, Amy Gregg, was repeatedly forced to plea for calm, especially when the debating chamber erupted after Lewis described the Israel Defence Forces as the “most moral army in the world.”
“We will review the debate footage, but as the disturbances were general audience noise, rather than repeated incursions by an identifiable individual, we do not anticipate taking disciplinary action,” Grgg said after the event.
She denied that Israel was being unfairly focused on, stating, “this is the first debate we have held on Israel in two years. In the meantime, we have discussed Russia Iran, and the Arab Spring, to name but a few of our debate subjects.
“The Israel-Palestine conflict is a topical issue that, as evidenced by turnout, our members are extremely interested in, and this is a primary consideration in deciding which debates to run.”
Nevertheless, some Jewish students were left feeling uncomfortable and intimidated by interruptions, which culminated in chants of “Free Palestine, Free Palestine” at the end of the debate.
One student commented, “I felt the debate in general was poorly managed, with little intervention from the president or officials when it became out of hand and hostile- even to the point where we could not hear the speaker. It became extremely chaotic.”
The controversial result comes just months after the Israeli Ambassador to the U.K. was met with loud protests as he addressed students in the Union chamber. In addition, a recent survey found Israel to be the second most disliked country by Britons in the world, only behind North Korea. This follows a significant surge in anti-Israeli sentiment in 2014 across Britain, something Cambridge students appear far from rejecting.
Founded in 1815, the Cambridge Union is the world’s oldest continuously running debating society. Notable past speakers have included Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan, as well as The Dalai Lama and Moammar Gadhafi The society prides itself on debating a wide variety of controversial topics ranging from legalizing the sex industry to capitalism’s influence on the Third World.
The same motion was debated at the Cambridge Union in 2010, but was comfortably rejected by a significant majority. Just five years on, it appears Britain’s brightest students have had a clear change in heart towards the Jewish state.