By Cameron Baillie
LSE students joined multiple London universities on Friday 24 October in a cross-university student demonstration for Palestinian solidarity. This came in response to mounting civilian casualties in Gaza; the demonstration was organised to call for “a lasting ceasefire and end to the occupation of Palestine”.
Students walked out of their classrooms and gathered at 1:30pm in the Centre Building Plaza to rally in support of the Palestinian people. LSE students were joined by King’s College London (KCL) students and marched together to the School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) from 2pm.
Students joined in chants of solidarity, and called for ceasefires, peace, and justice. Attendees were warned by speakers to beware of police, who had arrived before the rally began. They were also advised to wear face masks.
Organisers and a reporter from The Beaver estimated there were around 200 LSE and KCL students combined at the initial march, and 350 in total when protesters were joined by SOAS and University College (UCL) students at the SOAS campus rally.
Numerous speeches were made at the SOAS campus, where speakers highlighted that “students have always represented the calls for change”, and demanded that suspended Palestinian SOAS students be reinstated immediately. Shows of solidarity are “humanity at its best” in times of crisis, one speaker proclaimed.
Speakers accused SOAS of political repression of its students, “against those standing up for the oppressed”, and claimed that “SOAS is complicit” in the ongoing crisis. One speaker called for all to act, “on social media as on the streets”, because “every single voice matters” and “each voice is powerful”.
The student protestors continued their march towards Keir Starmer’s office in Camden to publicly criticise the Labour leader’s stance on the ongoing humanitarian crisis.
Students interviewed by The Beaver during the march made clear their motivations for joining the collective peace effort. An LSE masters student from a Jewish-British family stressed the need to recognise “all of the atrocities that have occurred”.
She feels that “Jewish voices are being spoken for”. We all bear “personal responsibility [to] stand in solidarity” with innocent victims of the conflict, she stated, since “all their lives matter”.
A second-year LSE student stated that his motivations for marching were explicitly anti-colonial, with the situation today being the “child of British imperialism” and the result of ethnostate formation. He paraphrased George Orwell, saying that “to not speak out in the face of oppression … is a form of support”.
For KCL and SOAS students, the protest was also a response to the murder of KCL and SOAS alumnus Dr Maisara Alrayyes, killed by Israeli rockets. Students held a vigil for Dr Alrayyes on Friday 17 November, where they were joined in solidarity by LSE students. A separate, official memorial for Alrayyes was held on Wednesday 22 November by KCL.
Photograph by Cameron Baillie
