Last week, a demonstration was called by student activists at the University of Edinburgh to protest the renewed onslaught being enacted on the Palestinians by the genocidal maniacs in Israel.
This protest attracted more students than usual, showing that the flame of anger that characterised the first wave of the Palestinian movement is yet to burn out.
Violent tirade
While speeches were being made, a clearly inebriated thuggish individual, approached the crowd shouting “Fuck, Fuck Palestine!”, performing Nazi salutes and shouting racist slurs.
University security stood idle, as a few students attempted to remove the aggressive man from the protest.
Emboldened by complete passivity from the security personnel even after a weapon had been identified, he ended his verbal tirade by slashing a student, Ben Law, across the cheek with a box-cutter. (See below for Ben’s letter.)
Instead of a massive investigation into this incident, there is silence from the bosses. The blame has fallen somehow on the students themselves! According to witnesses, when security personnel were made aware of the weapon they said: “it doesn’t matter what you think you saw”!
Hostility and hypocrisy
This is nothing more than a continuation of the hostility shown by Edinburgh University management towards the Palestine movement on campus, with flyers taken down and meetings shut down over the last year.
The bourgeois media, who constantly publish falsehoods saying that terroristic violence and antisemitism arise from the Palestine movement, are completely exposed for their hypocrisy by incidents like this. They claim that flags and watermelons are intimidating, but have raised not a whisper of condemnation after students are physically assaulted by a hate-fuelled lunatic!
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The movement has every right to defend itself from such attacks, which are encouraged by the vile slanders printed in the press on a daily basis. The ruling class, their media lackeys and Zionist thugs are the real criminals, and the real threat to student safety.
Just as with the Israeli hooligan rampage through Amsterdam last year, the constant torrent of lies from the imperialists creates a permissive atmosphere for violent attacks on Palestinian solidarity. This trickles down all the way to university management and their “security”.
While the capitalist press has been completely silent about this shocking crime, The Communist is proud to report this and represent a real voice of pro-Palestine youth.
No trust in the police
With Netanyahu’s resumption of mass murder, a new layer of young people and workers will enter the struggle. The armed battalions of the state will continue their defence of the ruling order.
We must protect ourselves from thugs who are inspired by the words of the Starmers, Trumps and Farages of the world – and put no trust in the police or security forces, who have proved time and again where their loyalties lie.
During a protest in Edinburgh last year, the police simply watched as a car rammed through protestors. In Glasgow, the Green Brigade were kettled by the cops during an anti-fascist demonstration, while the far-right were left free to make their provocations.
The stewards in these cases made no effort to defend the protest, but left it to the police and corralled people away – we cannot accept such weakness in the struggle against imperialist genocide!
We can only counter such attacks with organised self-defence of the working class and youth out on these protests!
Solidarity with the attacked students!
Letter from attacked student
Ben Law, Edinburgh
I saw the man shouting hatefully as he approached the crowd – security must have seen him too, given that multiple students repeatedly warned security about the escalating threat from the second he arrived.
From that moment, at the very least, he should have been under constant watch. The fact he was not is indefensible. We are not demanding that every agitated individual be forcibly restrained – but why did security fail to even instruct him to leave or calm down, particularly when he was blatantly ignoring us? Why were students and staff forced to take matters into their own hands to remove an obviously violent individual?
Had security fulfilled its basic duty to protect us, I would not be injured, and my family would not be traumatised. There were countless chances to stop this before it spiralled out of control.
Make no mistake: this is not the first instance of violence against students during my time at the University of Edinburgh.
During the divestment encampment, a Palestinian and Jewish student was assaulted at night while security stood by. At a protest against the screening of the anti-transgender film ‘Adult Human Female’, a student was repeatedly punched in the chest – again, with security absent.
And then came last Friday’s events, where security once more merely watched as I was cut. I was lucky it was my face; it could have been my neck – and my life.
These are not isolated incidents. In Panama, two protesters were shot for opposing capital’s gluttonous expansion. They were not as fortunate as I was. Across the world, anti-capitalist movements of all kinds face reactionary violence. From Standing Rock to UCL, from Colombia to Glasgow – the pattern repeats: capital protects its assets, never its people. Across the world, the authorities fail us.
So, let us ask this: how swiftly would security have responded to property damage? If they spotted a tub of red paint? We all know the answer.
Their role is not to protect us – it is to police us, including identifying organisers to coerce compliance. This is how the university chooses to maintain control: by surveilling, dividing, and targeting dissenters.
We must learn from this. We need to understand we only have one another. Solidarity isn’t just a slogan – it’s our only weapon against violence. Because if we don’t fight, we lose – and if we fight together, we might actually have a chance.
