Calls for Oxford Union President to Step Down

The Oxford Union is a debating society that is most famous for a motion voted on by its members on February 9, 1933, ten days after Adolf Hitler became the chancellor of Germany. The motion presented, “That this House will under no circumstances fight for its King and country,” passed with 275 votes for the motion and 153 against it.

In the last two years, the Oxford Union has held many debates on the subject of Israel, the Palestinians, and the war in Gaza. The most memorable of them pitted Mosab Hassan Yousef (known as the “Son of Hamas” or the “Green Prince,” because his father was one of the founders of Hamas) as the head of the team arguing on Nov. 27, 2024 against the motion: “This House Believes Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide.” Speaking in the opposition, Yousef’s furious eloquence led to clashes with the audience amidst chaotic scenes.

Now there is a new controversy at the Oxford Union, involving the current president and her views on the atrocities carried out by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. More on her views, and the calls for her to resign, can be found here: “Oxford Union President Urged to Step Down After Justifying Oct. 7 Attack, Saying Hamas Will Be ‘Lauded as Heroes,’” by Dion J. Pierre, Algemeiner, June 5, 2026:

Controversy ensnared the historic Oxford Union debate society on Wednesday when its president, reportedly the first Palestinian to hold the position, was revealed to have described the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel as “less than proportional” and asserted that the Hamas terrorists who slaughtered, abducted, and raped Israeli civilians will one day be remembered as “heroes.”

Arwa Elrayess shared the thoughts with her peers in a group chat hosted on WhatsApp, as first reported by The Telegraph, a British daily. The popular messaging service is celebrated for its promise of encrypted, surreptitious communication, but it remains vulnerable to screenshots and damaging leaks. In Elrayess’s case, she spoke to about 100 people.

“Any resistance group will inevitably be deemed a ‘terrorist’ organization by the West until they achieve their liberation, by which time they’ll be lauded as heroes, as history as repeatedly proven,” Elrayess said in one message. Later she added that Hamas should have perpetrated more violence and killings, saying, “Some would argue it’s less than proportional. Have you seen what Israel has put Palestinians through for decades?”

In another text, she said, “Proportional doesn’t mean ‘right’ by the way. Just that you can’t be shocked that it happened.”

Elrayess thinks what Hamas did on Oct. 7 was completely understandable, and justifiable. No one should be shocked; it’s how “oppressed” people such as the “Palestinians” naturally react. And furthermore, Elrayess thinks Hamas’ response to oppression ought to have been still stronger, as when she wrote that “some would argue it’s [Hamas’ attack] less than proportional. Have you seen what Israel has put Palestinians through for decades?”

The comments set off a conflagration in the Union while prompting calls for Elrayess’s resignation.

The group Oxford Students Against Discrimination denounced the messages for coming “at a time when Jewish students have faced an unprecedented rise in harassment, intimidation, and fear.”

In another statement, Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), a British Jewish advocacy group, called the comments “absolutely sickening,” adding, “any effort to excuse or explain it away should disqualify someone not only from being president of the Oxford Union … but also should render then unfit from holding any position at all.”

Standing on her verbosity, Elrayess offered the public more insights in an additional statement to the Telegraph which responded to the outcry. Her critics, she said, mistook the WhatsApp messages for a “legal brief or public statement” when she intended them to be harmlessly discursive — a “theoretical description of the structural context of the conflict.”

Gobbledygook. Or more exactly, Goebbeldygook.

Student anti-Zionists have praised terrorists before….

Mohamed Soliman, 46, an Egyptian national, last month pleaded guilty to all charges he faced in state court for hurling Molotov cocktails at a pro-Israel rally in an attack on June 1, 2025, that killed one person and left more than a dozen others injured….

Writing on Instagram in a post that has since been deleted, SJP praised Soliman for “striking against the colonist procession” and described the incident as “merely a case of chickens coming home to roost.”

Yes, Karen Diamond, the 82-year-old Jewish lady whom Soliman set on fire, and who then burned to death, had it coming; by the Students for Justice in Palestine’s immoral calculus. Diamond had been standing quietly, holding a small sign in support of Israel. But the SJP claims Diamond was engaged in a “colonist procession.” No one should drop a ready tear for her; her death was “merely a case of chickens coming home to roost.”

Calling for Soliman’s release from prison, the group continued, “Mohamed chose the only sane response available to a rational human being confronted with the normalization of genocide. He refused the comfortable position of the grateful immigrant and the role of obedient subject, choosing confrontation with a violent system over passive proximity to the comfort of empire.”

What “genocide” is that? There has been no “genocide” in Gaza. The IDF makes tremendous efforts to minimize civilian deaths, by dropping millions of leaflets, sending millions of text messages, and making millions of robocalls, in order to warn civilians in Gaza away from areas or buildings about to be targeted. West Point professor John Spencer, an expert on urban warfare, having studied the war in Gaza, concluded that “Israel has implemented more measures to prevent civilian harm than any military in history.”

Meanwhile, back at the Oxford Union, not only will its Hamas-loving president Arwa Elrayess not resign, but the members of the Union will, I am certain, vote overwhelmingly to support her and to denounce all those who think her favorable view of Hamas makes her unfit to serve. And a few decades hence, people will look back on that vote and regard it with the same disgust that we now feel for that vote taken at the Oxford Union on February 9, 1933, a vote that so heartened Hitler, just as the Oxford Union today, presided over by a “Palestinian,” with its insensate support so heartens Hamas.