Hundreds of pro-Palestine students march through London on October 7 anniversary

Pro-Palestine protests swept London university campuses today on the second anniversary of the October 7 attack.

Hundreds of students from King’s College London (KCL), the London School of Economics, University College London and SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) staged a class walkout at 2pm.

While some walked through London for an ‘Inter-University March’ towards Holborn, others packed the entrances of university campuses.

Rallies were also held in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Leeds, Sheffield and Bristol despite warnings from Keir Starmer not to on the October 7 anniversary.

Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 people hostage. Of them, 48 hostages – including 26 confirmed dead – remain in Gaza.

Since the attack, Israel has killed more than 67,100 Palestinians, or one in every 34 Gazans, the enclave’s health ministry said today.

Of them, around 20,200 were children, according to a Palestinian fatality tracker. The identities of hundreds are unknown, other than their first names.

Outside KCL on the Strand, students held a roughly 200-foot-long banner with the names of thousands of killed Palestinian children.

University faculty and security held the sign, too, to let students and staff bow their heads to enter the building.

Students chanted, ‘Palestine will live forever,’ and, ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free’, referring to the West Bank, which faces the Jordan River, and Gaza, which hugs the Mediterranean coast.

Signs reading, ‘Bank-Rolling Genocide’, ‘Apartheid Off Campus’ and ‘Two years of genocide’ were held up high.

Campaign group QMUL Action for Palestine organised a rally in Queen Mary’s in east London, where students interrupted an event that involved the British defence contractor BAE Systems.

Organisers wrote ahead of the rally: ‘Join us to commemorate two years since the escalation of the genocide against the Palestinian people, as well as two years of steadfastness and resistance.’

Pro-Palestine protests have been increasingly scrutinised after last week’s terror attack on a Manchester synagogue.

Starmer was among those who had urged organisers to call off the demonstrations today, calling them ‘un-British’.

Writing in The Times, the prime minister said the protests have been used by some ‘as a despicable excuse to attack British Jews’.

He wrote: ‘This is not who we are as a country. It’s un-British to have so little respect for others. And that’s before some of them decide to start chanting hatred towards Jewish people all over again.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews said it was ‘disgusted by reports of recent hate-filled protests on university campuses’.

Anton Parocki, an organiser for today’s protests, told the BBC: ‘What I think is insensitive is that there has been two years of genocide.’

‘Conflating that [actions of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu with Judaism is actually antisemitic.’

A United Nations commission investigating the war in Gaza said last month that Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians.

The report detailed the deaths of civilians amid heavy Israeli bombings and the destruction of hospitals, schools, cultural landmarks and religious sites. Elsewhere, global experts have declared that more than half a million people in Gaza were experiencing a ‘man-made’ famine.

Israel has denied both.

Another student, Muhlisa Husainova, 19, said that people were protesting for ‘human rights’ today.

Husainova said: ‘We are for humans, we don’t want to kill humans. This is what we’re protesting; we’re not protesting anything else. We’re not protesting to hate any other group of people.’

KCL student Hasan, 18, told the i: ‘I understand why people might not be comfortable with the day.

‘But if you look at just the numbers of people that have been dying, I think it’s important to see where the deaths have been happening the most.’

Not all students agreed. A small counter-protest of about four people was held on the Strand, with one holding a flag reading: ‘Jewish and Proud.’

Miles, 19, a Jewish student at KCL, said to the i that the last two years have been ‘difficult’ for Jewish people.

He said: ‘The war should end, aid should go into Gaza, the hostages should come back. Just don’t protest today.

‘They don’t want anyone to live in peace and security. They just want to protest on 7 October, to be performative.’

Israeli and Hamas negotiators were holding talks in Egypt yesterday about a trade of Israeli hostages in Gaza for Palestinians in Israeli prisons.

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