Oxford, England — Roughly 75 Oxford University students established an anti-Israel encampment on Monday, and 61 faculty members signed a letter endorsing it. 

The protesters who accuse their school of being “complicit in the genocide of Palestinians” set up about 25 tents outside the Pitt Rivers Museum to establish an encampment that they are calling the “People’s University for Palestine” and the “Liberated Zone.”

They have explicitly modeled their protest after protests that have roiled college campuses in the U.S.

“The whole world has seen the powerful actions of the students of Columbia and other US universities. Now it is our turn to escalate,” the group Oxford Action for Palestine wrote in an online onboarding form welcoming protesters to the camp. “This will be one of the most ambitious actions the University has seen in recent years.”

The encampment organizers state in a pamphlet that the museum, “which ‘acquired’ items from across the globe through imperial expansionism, mirrors the ongoing struggle of the Palestinian people and connect [sic] us to colonised peoples everywhere.” A student organizer at the encampment told National Review that the protesters were mostly undergraduates and graduate students, alongside a few alumni.

“With strong ties to companies supporting the Zionist entity (like Rolls Royce and Raytheon) and academic ties to Israel, Oxford continues to uphold israel’s apartheid regime,” reads the Oxford Action for Palestine onboarding form. “The Univeristy’s [sic] lack of transparency protects its financial interests in the genocide of the Palestinian people.”

The form states that prospective protesters seeking to join the camp must affirm the following: “1) The right to self-determination, 2) Jersusalem [sic] as the captial [sic] of Palestine, 3) The right of colonised people to resist against occupation, and 4) The right of Palestinian refugees to return.” By signing the form, prospective protesters agree “to be an active participant in the encampment’s community by participating in its democratic process and collective norms.” The form explicitly advises to only use first names or pseudonyms, not full names.

The group claims to have a “legal team” offering advice. 

The group demands that Oxford University 1) annually disclose university-wide assets 2) divest from “Israeli genocide, apartheid, and occupation” 3) overhaul its investment policies, in part by changing the formal ethical restrictions, 4) “boycott Israeli genocide, apartheid, and occupation,” 5) stop banking with Barclays due to the bank’s “extensive investments in companies supplying Israel with weapons and military technology,” and 6) support Palestinian-led rebuilding of education in Gaza, in part through academic fellowships and scholarship programs. 

Large signs at the encampment say “Jews for a free Palestine,” “Israel has destroyed every university in Gaza,” “Israel has killed 5479 students, 261 teachers, 95 profs, and 3 uni presidents,” and “Oxford men wrote Balfour, divest now!” Organizers at the protest were distributing pamphlets made by a UK-based non-governmental organization Friends of Al-Aqsa. 

“The wealth and prestige of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge stem directly from their role in the British empire and its disastrous colonial legacies, including the Oxford and Cambridge men who authored the Balfour Declaration in 1917, ceding Palestinian land to the Zionist project,” reads a social media post by the Oxford Action for Palestine group. 

An open letter signed by 61 Oxford University faculty members endorsed the encampment. 

“We join our students in asking that the university review its ethical investment policy to explicitly restrict all investment – direct or indirect – in arms, weapons, and other instruments of war,” reads the letter, which was released on Monday morning. “We also ask that the Vice Chancellor unequivocally condemn the killing of over a hundred university professors and Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s educational institutions and archives. Finally, we ask that the university immediately commit resources to (a) creating opportunities for Palestinian scholars to access library resources and educational support online so that they can continue their learning and to (b) rebuilding Gaza’s universities.”