Protests as LSE hosts Nakba denying Israel envoy

2 years ago

Scores of students came out to protest against the LSE Debate Society hosting Israeli Ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, on campus in London on 9 November 2021 [@FriendsofAlAqsa/Twitter]

Scores of students came out to protest against the LSE Debate Society hosting Israeli Ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, on campus in London on 9 November 2021 [@LSEforPalestine/Twitter]

Scores of students came out to protest against the LSE Debate Society hosting Israeli Ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, on campus in London on 9 November 2021 [@FriendsofAlAqsa/Twitter]

Scores of students came out to protest against the LSE Debate Society hosting Israeli Ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, on campus in London on 9 November 2021 [@LSEforPalestine/Twitter]

Scores of students came out to protest against the LSE Debate Society hosting Israeli Ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, on campus in London yesterday.

LSE for Palestine organised the protest because the official “has repeatedly espoused hate speech, contributed to the material oppression of Palestinians by planning and permitting illegal settlements in the West Bank as Israel’s first settlements minister, and consistently denies the Nakba as well as Palestinians’ human and political rights,” a statement said.

“Hosting her on LSE’s campus constituted an attempt at legitimising her openly racist views as somehow up for debate,” it added.

Protesters gathered at 5 pm outside the campus building where the debate was being hosted and continued their demonstration until Hotovely was escorted out of the building by her security team and placed in her diplomatic car.

Amazing.

Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely was forced to flee London’s LSE university after students protested her presence and refused to give her a platform. This is how colonial war criminals must be treated everywhere. #FreePalestine pic.twitter.com/SuInl4tna0

— Hadi Nasrallah (@HadiNasrallah) November 9, 2021

A group of students also walked out of the debate, “signalling their refusal to legitimise the violence inflicted by the ambassador through her rhetoric and the brutal apartheid regime that she represents”, the statement explained.

“While Hotovely may have the platform and power as a government official, we students also have the power to be change-makers. This university belongs to us,” said one LSE student leader at the protest.

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