Planned Gaza protest fails due to fear of being branded anti-Semitic

A planned protest of the Israeli ambassador’s visit to Warwick failed to materialise after students feared they might be branded anti-Semitic.

Students had organised online to protest Israel’s recent activities in Gaza, at Ron Posner’s visit to the annual Limmud conference, an educational organisation in the British-Jewish community, held at the university. His visit had been kept as secret as possible to avoid a potential protest.

There was a great deal of confusion over whether the ambassador would attend the conference in the current climate, and the Israeli embassy informed callers that the visit had been cancelled.

Friends of Palestine, a society with over 200 members at Warwick, sent out a message to its members and wrote on the Facebook event: “Unfortunately some conflicting information has come to light. We have been informed that there is a chance the Israeli Ambassador may not actually attend tomorrow.”

It continued, “Though this may be a ploy of the Israeli Embassy to keep this visit completely under wraps, we obviously do not want to protest a conference that is from an outside organisation about Jewish and Israeli concerns as Warwick Friends of Palestine society is firmly against any sort of anti-Semitic views as we are sure our members are as well… We do not want our protest to be misunderstood.”

Chris Rossdale who organised the main Facebook event explained the low turnout saying, “Someone less than sympathetic posted on the wall suggesting that the ambassador wasn’t coming after all. Whilst this was false information, a lot of people were afraid to turn up, worrying that they would be cast as anti-semitic if they were to protest at a Jewish conference without the ambassador being there.”

He added, “Needless to say I’m really disappointed by this; a legitimate and peaceful protest was disrupted by misinformation and the fear of being branded as anti-semitic. The protest was called in objection to the terror policies of the Israeli state, and it is a shame that the ambassador wasn’t able to see that many Warwick students are appalled by the current policies of Israel.”

However, students may also have been unable to attend as the protest took place before the start of term and many were not in the area.

The ambassador had a tour of the university campus and gave a speech at the conference without any disruption.