Scandal is once again roiling the United Kingdom’s famed Oxford University. A private WhatsApp chat of 100 incoming philosophy, politics, and economics freshmen leaked last week. Its contents are a whopper.
Oxford Union president Arwa Elrayess, the elected head of the university’s premier debating society, was caught defending the Oct. 7, 2023, atrocities committed by Hamas. Elrayess, the union’s first Palestinian president, rationalized the deliberate murder of 1,200 Israeli civilians and barbaric abuse of women and girls as a “proportional” response to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
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Elrayess’s WhatsApp comments merit close analysis. But first, a word about PPE. It’s the Oxford degree that aspiring diplomats, economists, philosophers, and academics specializing in political systems and political theory first obtain. Many PPE graduates will go on to form their country’s political elite. It’s no exaggeration to say the WhatsApp participants are Britain’s likely future leaders and political influencers. Within a year of getting my PPE degree in 1978, I went to work for Ronald Reagan in California and then to the White House.
In the dialogue, Elrayess portrayed Hamas’s systematic rape, torture, and murder as “proportional.” According to my Oxford English Dictionary, the strict meaning of proportional is “corresponding in degree or amount.” The Israeli military has never inflicted such calculated cruelty on Palestinian civilians. Civilian casualties during the recent fighting in Gaza were carefully minimized by Israel. Indeed, some respected assessments suggest they were proportionally lower than the civilian casualties caused by American forces in key urban battles in Iraq.
When questioned whether she really was calling Hamas’s savagery proportional, Elrayess stood firm. “I am, actually,” she affirmed, “In fact, some would argue it’s less than proportional.” Perhaps sensing the risk of implying that Hamas’s violence was relatively restrained, Elrayess immediately added that “proportional does not mean ‘right’ by the way. You just can’t be shocked that it happened.”
She is badly wrong.
We must indeed retain our capacity to be shocked by the horrifying and calculated cruelty inflicted by Hamas that day. We should be further shocked by the realization that if Hamas’s assault on Israel had lasted longer or succeeded, its crimes against humanity would have been magnified by thousands, if not millions, more victims. Like Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine, they must never be forgotten or minimized. Predictably, Elrayess’s comments have triggered calls for her ouster as president of the Oxford Union. In what looks like defiance, she has invited Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker to address the union via video link. Both men were recently banned from entering the U.K. because of their inflammatory rhetoric.
Jewish organizations have called for disciplinary action, accusing her of fostering an environment hostile to Jewish students. Oxford University has a moral and legal imperative to prevent antisemitism, but so far, authorities have been relatively muted about the uproar.
Judging from her WhatsApp chat, it’s a mystery to me that Elrayess ever got into Oxford, much less that she was elected union president. Her ability to reason is sophomoric at best, and if she’s deliberately propagandizing, it’s particularly galling. Although her views about Oct. 7 are abhorrent, I don’t support silencing or canceling her any more than I do banning Uygur and Piker from Britain or addressing the union.
That’s because freedom of speech is under assault in the U.K., and the views most often silenced or criminalized by British authorities are those of conservatives. Condemning the effects of immigration in a social media post will get you a knock on the door by the police and very likely arrest and prosecution. Most recently, the British government has proposed adding criticism of Islam to its list of hate crimes.
Rather than castigate Elrayess, then, I’d rather see her educated about Hamas’s atrocities the same way Allied Forces did in Germany after finding the Nazi death camps. Unsettled and revolted by what they found, U.S. and British troops carefully documented the deaths of millions of Jews and others deemed undesirable by Hitler’s regime through photographs, film, and a collection of evidence.
German officials and civilians from nearby towns who lived in denial about the mass murder taking place under their noses (quite literally when it comes to the stench of smoke from cadavers consumed by flame) were forced to tour the death camps and witness the grim reality for themselves. The Nuremberg war crimes tribunal established the veracity of the Holocaust.
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Israel’s Civil Commission report on the Oct. 7 crimes, “Silenced No More,” could serve the same purpose at academic institutions today, including elite ones such as Oxford. Based on 10,000 photographs, 430 testimonies and interviews, and 1,800 visual records, the report documents in appalling detail the events of that day. It should be required viewing for incoming freshmen students as well as professors, particularly the anti-Israel academic contingent.
The best way to counter the Oct. 7 deniers like Elrayess, Piker, and Uygur is with facts, not cancellation. How about it, Oxford, will you lead the way and make “Silenced No More” mandatory for the university?
John B. Roberts II served in the Reagan White House and was an international political strategist and executive producer of the McLaughlin Group. He is an author and artist.
