The Oxford Union, a venerable student debating society, is best known for a vote taken on February 9,1933. On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler had been appoInted by German President Paul von Hindenburg to be Reichskanzler of Germany. On February 8, 1933 at the Oxford Union, a motion was presented, “That this House will under no circumstances fight for its King and country.” It passed with 275 votes for the motion and 153 against it. According to Winston Churchill, that lopsided vote encouraged Hitler in his aggression; this vote by the children of the British upper classes seemed to confirm for Hitler that he could count on British pacifism.
And now we have another, equally shameful vote at the Oxford Union, even more lopsided than the one taken on February 9, 1933, following a debate on the motion that “Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide,” a motion that passed by 278 votes to 59.
More on this moral morass at the Oxford Union, where the Arab-Israeli journalist Yoseph Haddad, who had spoken against the motion, had to be escorted from the premises by an eight-man security detail, while students were baying for his blood, can be found here: “‘Unbridled Jew-hatred’: Yoseph Haddad kicked out of ‘anti-Israel’ Oxford Union debate,” by Keshet Neev, Jerusalem Post, December 1, 2024:
Arab-Israeli journalist and activist for Israel Yoseph Haddad was kicked out of an Oxford Union debate on Thursday, footage on social media showed.
Yoseph Haddad is an Israeli Arab who is a full-time defender of his country, both in person — he’s a peripatetic defender of the Jewish state, even appearing at the UN — and on YouTube, where he debates, and smites hip and thigh, his country’s enemies.
The debate, which attracted pro-Palestine protesters, concluded in a vote that determined “Israel was an apartheid state responsible for genocide.” This was passed by 278 votes to 59, according to a Friday Jewish Chronicle report.
Haddad posted on X/Twitter that he was kicked out because he “was not ready to accept the humiliation of the Israeli hostages.”
Footage posted on X showed Haddad being escorted out of the event as people in the audience shouted in his direction.
When explaining in a post on X what happened at the event, Haddad began by writing that “Oxford was occupied by supporters of terrorism. 90% of the participants are distinctly anti-Israeli.”
He then continued to explain that during the “biased discussion,” extreme statements were made that supported terrorism and the October 7 Hamas attacks.
“When one audience member cried over Gaza residents in an exaggerated and insincere manner, I pulled out a photo of the Muslim hostages and asked if she was crying for them, too. One participant took the photo, threw it on the floor, and others stepped on it,” Haddad continued.
“I faced insults, boos, and threats during the confrontation, but there was one thing I wasn’t willing to tolerate—the disgrace of our hostages,” Haddad wrote and then added that afterward, he demanded the audience members be removed.
“I wasn’t willing to let the discussion continue, even when the anti-Israel moderator, who was practically part of the confrontation, warned me. In the end, he decided to have me removed from the hall,” Haddad explained….
So it was not those who screamed their hatred of Haddad, and of the Jewish state, those who stomped on a photo of the Israeli hostages, those who threatened Haddad with violence, who were removed from the premises. No, it was Yoseph Haddad, whom the anti-Israel moderator decided should be removed instead.
Haddad’s experience at the Oxford Union is his standard fare; almost everywhere he appears there are attempts by anti-Israel members of the audience who yell at him, try to drown him out, to threaten physical harm that is only prevented by his security detail. He’s too dangerous a witness, an Israeli Arab who is capable of telling the truth about, and thereby defending, the Jewish state.
Mossab Hassan Yousef, the son of a Hamas co-founder and an advocate for Israel, also attended the event and made a Saturday X post writing that “Oxford Union is controlled by terrorist supporters.”
Mossab Hassan Yousef, known as the “Green Prince,” is the son of one of the cofounders of Hamas, and as a young man he believed in the terror group’s policies. He later came to recognize its corruption, its indifference to the safety and well-being of civilians, and its genocidal ideology, and has been inveighing against Hamas ever since, wherever he can find a venue. He can be seen on YouTube debating, and overwhelming, defenders of the group his father helped to find. He speaks with great passion and explosive anger, too. You can see three of his interventions here and here and here.
I began this piece by describing the “we-won’t-fight-for-King-and-country” motion that passed overwhelmingly at the Oxford Union on February 9, 1933, and by noting that this latest vote on a motion that accuses Israel of “genocide” is “equally” appalling. I’ve reconsidered. Now I think it is correct to insist that the latest motion just passed at the Oxford Union is “even more appalling” than that motion of 1933 that Hitler found so encouraging. Right now there are murderers in Gaza delighted to hear of the outcome of the vote at the Oxford Union, a vote that accuses Israel of “genocide,” for the anti-Israel animus has reached a fevered pitch. No wonder Yosef Haddad and Mossab Hasan Yousef denounced the hatefest, and described the Oxford Union as now being “in the hands of terrorists.” For their pains as truth-tellers, they endured catcalls and threats of violence.
When it comes to anything having to do with Israel, Oxford is no longer a placid place of “dreaming spires” but, rather, a hysterical hotbed of “screaming liars.”
Wellington says
Proving again that there is a major disconnect between higher education and two extremely important components of the human condition, those being common sense and a proper moral. intelligence.
This did not used to be the case centuries ago. It is a relatively recent development. It really got its “start” with the Great War, i.e., WWI, but definitely “picked up speed” during that most tragic of decades, the 1960s, which truly began the overall assault on Western Civilization and which we are still living with (N.B., woeful excuses for human beings like Barack Obama and Pope Francis I are “symptoms” of what the 1960s wrought).
Still, the sensible portion of mankind, thankfully, keeps fighting back. Trump’s recent victory is partial evidence of this as is many young people here in America turning to Christianity in large numbers (as an example here, Bible sales in 2024 have been through the roof).
Truth is a very stubborn thing and a constant ally and friend. It never deserts you. And so may Oxford, so often a force for erroneous and specious reasoning in our era, prove itself wrong again. I remain cautiously optimistic that this will prove to be the case.
carpediadem says
The president of the OU is an Arab. Most specially-selected invitees were Arabs. None of this is a surprise, even that the president broke the rules of the OU to participate in the debate himself.
As for the 1933 resolution, apparently it remained hypothetical, because when war broke out many Oxford young men did enlist and did fight the Nazis.
The resolution, thankfully for Britain, did not reflect reality.
This vote against Israel however does, which shows that when you give your venerable institutions to Islamic Jewhaters, they get corrupted and degraded accordingly.
J.J. Septon says
The effete, elitist snobs and their mooslime leaders prove that england is, not only not Great, but now is a dhimmi-hood for the a rabs. They, the original white population, are doomed, as is their history and society. Their “leaders”, just committed societal suicide.
JDow says
Until Brotain can rectify its dirty Muhammadan linen I am strongly inclined to throw them under the bus and not bother to wave good bye.
{o.o}
Gospel Day says
My parents (British) loved “Inspector Morse” and since I inherited the ITV series DVDs I finally watched it through. Morse was an Oxford graduate who despised that “venerable” institution and everything it stood for, which was the most intelligent and interesting thing about this beer-drinking, classics-loving detective. I know it’s fiction but the point is that only three or four decades ago this kind of entertaining and politically incorrect (in the extreme) show was produced and broadcast to rave audiences. Nowadays, a Morse would be lynched in the streets by his own fellows and tossed in the Thames as filthy, unwanted baggage of a ruined nation writhing in the death throes of suicide by monstrously evil stupidity. (Or, as our beloved RS would say, “of shattered, staggering, dhimmi Britain”.) I’ve watched many debates of the Oxford Union, and never seen one where truth and right were applauded. These young people epitomize what the late Oxford don C.S. Lewis said: “One of the most cowardly things ordinary people do is to shut their eyes to the facts.”
loek says
” I pulled out a photo of the Muslim hostages and asked if she was crying for them, too”
Hi Hugh, I did not think there were Muslim hostages still being held in Gaza. Couldyou explain for me?
Thank you.