Declassified UK: Silencing Palestine solidarity

Posted: 22nd October 2026

Silencing Palestine solidarity 

Hamza Yusuf

Regular Contributor
Declassified UK

A new Amnesty International report published this week shows UK universities coordinating together to severely suppress Palestine solidarity. 

The ‘Silencing Dissent’ report describes how, as Israel was perpetrating a genocide in Gaza, universities worked together to respond to protests with repressive, heavy-handed measures at odds with their duty to protect human rights and foster meaningful dialogue. It identifies interference with and violations of the right to freedom of expression.

Students and academics have been disciplined for chanting, clapping and wearing keffiyehs, facing suspensions, campus bans, withdrawal of degrees and threats to their visa status.

In several cases, sanctions were imposed before hearings concluded, turning precautionary measures into punishments thereby deepening the chilling effect. Sometimes, universities prolonged investigations without clarifying timelines, outcomes or routes for appeal.

Students who were visibly Muslim and those displaying symbols of Palestinian identity have been disproportionately impacted, the report by Amnesty International UK noted.

Kerry Moscoguiri, from Amnesty said: “This is an attack on our freedom of speech and the right to protest from the very institutions who are supposed to encourage free thought.” 

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Strikingly, Amnesty revealed that universities were not acting in isolation but operating within a network that encouraged repression, shaped by government pressure, regulatory direction, advocacy-group lobbying, and advice from law firms and security contractors.

Some universities even shared legal strategies and security planning with peers at other institutions and followed Department for Education instructions, clamping down on those seen as supporting the victims of Israel’s apartheid and genocide in Gaza.

In one instance, a university withdrew approval for a staff-student event on the legal and humanitarian situation in Palestine, claiming that a watermelon emoji in the promotional materials undermined the event’s neutrality.

Universities listed in the case studies include prestigious ones such as the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

Cambridge, for example, sought a wide-ranging court injunction to prohibit pro-Palestine protests on its campus.

Palestine-related expression often came under greater scrutiny, or appeared to have been regulated differently from the way that other student protests at universities might generally be approached, the report noted.

In 2025, King’s College London suspended 22-year-old Usama Ghanem over his pro-Palestinian activism and told him to “return to Egypt” during the suspension, despite the fact that he had previously been detained and tortured there. The suspension was later lifted on review in September 2026.

Usama said: “I left an authoritarian regime in Egypt to find one at King’s College London.”

KCL has said its review upheld the original reasons Ghanem was suspended, but found that he met agreed conditions and was therefore allowed to re-enrol.  

“We will always apply a fair approach to misconduct proceedings, and have a duty to act where behaviour breaches safeguarding and security regulations, or puts others at risk,” the university has said.

Earlier this year, it emerged twelve British universities had paid a private firm run by former Israeli military intelligence officials to spy on student protestors and academicsinvolved with Palestine solidarity.

The new report by Amnesty International only adds to the growing body of evidence illustrating a systemic effort within the higher education sector to clamp down on Palestine solidarity.

This will do little to calm growing fears of an increasingly draconian culture of repression in Britain.

In solidarity,

Hamza.

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