10:55 PM @eye.on.palestine On Thursday 31 October, students and staff from the University of Manchester (UoM), along with the wider community, disrupted a normalisation event titled “Is Antizionism Anti-semitism”. Framing the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians as a historical, religious dispute between Jewish and Muslim peoples, UoM hosted a debate between Abdullah Al-Andalusi, head of the Muslim Debate Initiative, and staunch Zionist Raphi Bloom, co-director of North West Friends of Israel. The action came following weeks of students and staff publicly demanding the University cancel the event.
With speeches and chants, students and community members stood up against both sides of the debate and against UoM management, preventing the event from continuing normally. Unsurprisingly, they were met with vile racist slurs and attacks by Zionists, as UoM opened the door for a racist audience that was threatening to students. UoM also called on security guards who dragged 4 speakers, including a Palestinian, outside the hall. This happened while different pro-Palestine groups were gathered outside to protest the event, who were also met by the violence of Israel-supporters.
Determined to uplift the Palestinian cause in every space possible, students, staff and community have united to shake the foundations of British academic institutions like UoM that mask their shameful stances with the facade of “freedom of speech” and “inclusion”. They also made a clear statement against any person or entity that claims to be pro-Palestine but agrees to be hosted alongside Zionists in a “two-sided” conversation.
While Israel is further unleashing its inherent genocidal savagery on Gaza and beyond, the minimum that UoM should have done by now is cut its ties with Israeli institutions and BAE Systems, not host such deplorable debates that platform genocide-supporters and question the righteousness of rejecting Zionism, a racist settler-colonial ideology and practice built on the killing, displacement, erasure and torture of Palestinians. Post & caption via @y.f.f.p 
