Cam Uni Night Climbers for Palestine!

Statement by Cambridge University students who carried out flag action this weekend
The university needs to take accountability for, and divest from its complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza, which to date has slaughtered over 33,000 civilians, including 12,000 children, since October 7 of last year. This figure does not include the tens of thousands individuals buried under the rubble. The genocide has seen the damage or destruction of every hospital in the Gaza Strip, the weaponised starvation of Palestinians in North Gaza, the intentional targeting of aid workers, and much more. Not only is the university actively profiting off these war crimes, receiving millions of pounds in research grants from the arms companies that supply the Israeli military, but it continues to partner and host events with these same companies which openly market their weapons as ‘battle-tested’- on Palestinians. Trinity College is furthermore yet to respond to the legal notice issued by the ICJP in February that addresses its investments in arms companies such as Elbit Systems, considered to be the “backbone” of the Israeli army. Coverage of the recent slashing of Trinity’s Balfour painting has also failed to highlight the college’s blatant complicity in Israel’s war crimes and its legal obligations to divest.

Other colleges similarly implicated include Christs, which, through its holding in the Amundi ESG Global Low Carbon Fund, has £40,067 worth in exposures in Boeing and £44,067 in Caterpillar, which supplies the armoured bulldozers that famously drove over and killed Rachel Corrie in the Gaza Strip in 2003.

The university’s need to divest is ever more crucial especially in light of the recent news that the UK government has been advised by its own lawyers to cease all arms trade to Israel, lest it risks breaching international law itself.

Given Cambridge University’s leading status in the academic world, it has also been disappointing to see its failure to condemn, or even acknowledge, Israel’s obliteration of Palestinian academic institutions, including the destruction of every university in the Gaza Strip.

In the face of all this, the university has provided an underwhelming amount of welfare support to its Palestinian students. This inadequacy is inexcusable and serves to highlight the university’s double standards in its responses to other regional crises in the past.

We are enraged that the university, one of the most prestigious institutions in the world, has been silent on Israel’s current genocide in Gaza. We urge Cambridge University to follow in the footsteps of other universities worldwide to divest from Israel-involved companies.