LONDON: Palestinian American author Susan Abulhawa is suing the Oxford Union in the UK, seeking an apology and compensation for damages after parts of a speech she gave during a debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were removed from a video posted by the union on YouTube.
The Pennsylvania-based author of the best-selling book “Mornings in Jenin” was one of eight speakers who took part in the debate in November 2024. The Oxford Union uploaded her speech to YouTube but deleted it from the platform a week after the debate, then replaced it in December with an edited version that omitted remarks she made about Zionism and Israel’s actions in Lebanon.
The union said that it removed parts of Abulhawa’s speech because of “legal concerns” about certain aspects of it, The Times newspaper reported, including comments about Zionists encouraging “the most vile of human impulses,” and Israeli booby traps in Lebanon.
When contacted by Abulhawa’s legal team, the union argued that the cut remarks constituted racial hatred in violation of Section 17 of the UK’s Public Order Act 1986. The author uploaded the full version of her speech to her own YouTube channel in April.
In one part removed by the union, Abulhawa addresses Zionists directly, saying: “You don’t know how to live in the world without dominating others. You have crossed all lines and nurtured the most vile of human impulses.”
She also highlighted atrocities carried out by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip, including the bombing of hospitals and schools, and the killing of women and children, which a number of UN and Western officials have described as amounting to genocide.
Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has resulted in the killing of more than 65,000 Palestinians since October 2023, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, and the displacement of the entire 2 million-strong population of the territory.
Abulhawa, whose family hails from the Mount of Olives, a Palestinian neighborhood overlooking the walled city of occupied East Jerusalem, described the edited version of her speech as “politically motivated censorship.”
She said: “They talk about freedom of expression, free discourse and free debate, exchange of thoughts, exchange of ideas, however uncomfortable, but when it comes to this one issue … there’s a different set of rules.”
Abulhawa said the actions of the Oxford Union, one of Britain’s oldest university unions, had damaged her reputation by implying her remarks were criminal, The Times reported. She wants an apology, damages, and for the union to restore the full version of her speech. She is suing the union on various legal grounds, including copyright infringement, discrimination and breach of contract.
“I prepared a speech that I labored over for quite a while and I chose my words carefully for content,” she said. “The suggestion was I said things that were unlawful, that were malicious or substandard. It was definitely disparaging to me.”
The debate resulted in approval of a motion that proposed “Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide.” The union did not comment on Abulhawa’s legal challenge.
