UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) has written to Professor Koen Lamberts, Vice Chancellor of Sheffield University, to warn him about the planned disruption of the University’s open day on Saturday 22 June.

A leaflet from Sheffield Campus Coalition for Palestine says that on Sheffield’s first big Open Day of the year “We need to make sure that prospective students and their families know exactly how the University is complicit in the genocide of Palestinians”.

UKLFI pointed out that the allegation of genocide by the organisers of the disruption is false and stirs up racial and religious hatred against Jews. It is based partly on a fundamental misinterpretation of a provisional measures decision of the International Court of Justice. This misinterpretation was widely reported in the media but wrong as explained in UKLFI’s post.

It is also based on misquotations of remarks by Israeli leaders taken out of context, false and fabricated Palestinian casualty figures produced by Hamas-run Gaza ministries, which in any case include combatants as well as civilians killed by Palestinian fire, and inaccurate and incomplete information about humanitarian supplies.

Jonathan Turner, Chief Executive of UKLFI commented: “If Sheffield University allows the disruption to go ahead, prospective students will be told a pack of unchallenged lies that will thoroughly prejudice them and contribute to a seriously hostile environment for Jews on your campus. In our view, the resulting discrimination and harassment of Israeli, Jewish and Zionist students will put your university in breach of sections 29 and 91 of the Equality Act 2010. We would also remind you of the university’s public sector equality duty in section 149 of that Act.”

Similar disruption has occurred recently at Bristol University and Exeter University, causing serious damage to their reputations.

UKLFI has been contacted by various distraught attendees of these disrupted open days, and has now passed on some of their comments to Sheffield, to illustrate the serious problems that have been caused:

• “I was at the Bristol University Open Day today and was horrified that pro-Palestinian  ‘protestors’ were allowed to come into lecture theatres to disrupt the talks on multiple subjects, and that the Professors giving the lectures stood, by allowing the audiences to be addressed by these speakers.”  
• “We would like to understand why an open day has now become a spectacle  for people to air their political views? People didn’t sign up to come to Bristol open day to hear brainwashing from some uneducated people about a conflict that has nothing to do with Bristol university. They want to know about the course and the university – not about a conflict  miles away especially by someone who does not know anything specific about it apart from their own views.”
•  “We heard the free speech as it was on a megaphone – They may as well be shouting from the rooftops we don’t want Jews in our campus as part of free speech as they screamed in Arabic ‘Palestina is Arabia’ and ‘resistance is justified’ and ‘from the river to the sea’…..We saw a camp where they had been allowed to camp outside the modern language’s building. So this is something allowed by the university? Now students are allowed to set up camps wherever they would like? They no longer need to reside in halls of residence they are allowed to set up a campsite outside the doors of a faculty and that is allowed by you? Can squatters just live there too now? Are you a running a homeless site inside the campus?