An upcoming visit to Cambridge University by the extreme right-wing Israeli Ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, has sparked outrage amongst student groups, the Middle East Monitor reported on Friday.
Citing Cambridge University’s “proud tradition” of opposing racism and apartheid, the Cambridge Palestine Solidarity Society (PalSoc) has co-written an open letter expressing “dismay” at the decision to invite Hotovely to deliver a ‘monologue’ next Tuesday.
In the letter, PalSoc cataloged Hotovely’s many racist supremacist views which the students insist should have disqualified her from ever appearing at Cambridge University.
As the Cambridge Union took decision to host the Israeli ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, we condemn this invitation and affirm that this far-right representative of an apartheid regime is not welcome somewhere.
Take action now:#FreePalestine 🇵🇸 https://t.co/9u2huOc3mq— Lean 👀 لين (@MeLean203) February 4, 2022
“Hotovely is a proud supporter of Israeli settler colonialism, and an open advocate of a ‘Greater Israel’,” said the letter mentioning Hotovely’s extremist view.
The letter pointed out that as Settlements Minister in 2020, Hotovely was directly involved in the continued dispossession of Palestinians and annexation of Palestinian land in the occupied territories.
“Hotovely has repeatedly endeavored to erase the history and existence of Palestinians,” the letter continues, before highlighting the numerous occasions where she publicly made racist anti-Palestinian remarks.
Arab members of the Israeli Knesset have been denounced as “thieves of history” by Hotovely and Palestinians were dismissed as a people without a history. Early into her appointment as ambassador to the UK, Hotovely denied the Nakba – the premeditated ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. She has called it an “Arab lie” and a “made-up story”.
The London School of Economics (LSE) has confirmed this week that the students, who protested legally and peacefully against the appearance of Israel’s ambassador to the UK Tzipi Hotovely inside campuses, had done nothing wrong and politicians, were lying.#FreePalestine pic.twitter.com/QblIRrSbtI
— #SaveSheikhJarra #SaveSilwan #BDS #Yemen #Kashmir (@ChristineJameis) December 26, 2021
Citing leading human rights groups including the most recent report by Amnesty, the letter argued that Hotovely has “dedicated her life” in pursuit of the forcible dispossession of Palestinians to make way for illegal Israeli settlements and in the service of an apartheid system of racial domination.
The letter insisted that given Hotovely’s extreme racist politics, and enthusiastic support for and involvement with the Israeli state’s practices of settler-colonial expansion, dispossession and ethnic cleansing, her appearance in Cambridge “profoundly” undermined the shared values of human rights, freedom and equality.
(MEMO, PC, Social Media)
