LONDON (Dispatches) – The prestigious Oxford Union voted by an overwhelming majority that the Zionist regime is an “apartheid regime responsible for genocide” at a fiery event in which the society’s president denounced the occupying regime’s war on Gaza as a “holocaust”, and a pro-Israel speaker was ejected from the debating chamber.
The exclusive debating society, founded in 1823, held an unprecedented debate on the motion: “This house believes Israel is an apartheid regime responsible for genocide”. The motion was carried with a thumping majority of 278 to 59.
The packed debate, observed by Middle East Eye and largely attended by Oxford students, was often raucous and heated, with nearly every speaker interrupted several times by students raising objections.
A Palestinian student, who said he studies mathematics and physics, volunteered to give an impromptu speech to the chamber in an intermission between the scheduled speeches.
Another student, a young Palestinian woman, also gave an impromptu speech in which she explained that she was a cousin of Maisara al-Rayyes, a Palestinian doctor recently killed in an Israeli air strike on Gaza. 
Both speeches received long-standing ovations. 
Israeli-American activist and author Miko Peled, who also spoke in favor of the motion, described the October 7, 2023 operation as “heroic”.
Ebrahim Osman-Mowafy, the union’s elected president - who was chairing the debate - stepped down towards the end to give a speech in favour of the motion.
He stood in for prominent American academic Norman Finkelstein. The audience was told that he had been scheduled to speak but could not come.
The president spoke about 19-year-old Shaban al-Daloum, who was burnt alive in October after an Israeli air strike on northern Gaza’s Al-Aqsa hospital.
Osman-Mowafy said Daloum’s death was part of Israel’s “holocaust” of Gaza.