Cambridge Stop The War

Statement by Cambridge University students who carried out flag action this weekend The university needs to take accountability for, and divest from its complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza, which to date has slaughtered over 33,000 civilians, including 12,000 children, since October 7 of last year. This figure does not include the tens of thousands individuals buried under the rubble. The genocide has seen the damage or destruction of every hospital in the Gaza Strip, the weaponised starvation of Palestinians in North Gaza, the intentional targeting of aid workers, and much more. Not only is the university actively profiting off these war crimes, receiving millions of pounds in research grants from the arms companies that supply the Israeli military, but it continues to partner and host events with these same companies which openly market their weapons as ‘battle-tested’- on Palestinians. Trinity College is furthermore yet to respond to the legal notice issued by the ICJP in February that addresses its investments in arms companies such as Elbit Systems, considered to be the “backbone” of the Israeli army. Coverage of the recent slashing of Trinity’s Balfour painting has also failed to highlight the college’s blatant complicity in Israel’s war crimes and its legal obligations to divest. Other colleges similarly implicated include Christs, which, through its holding in the Amundi ESG Global Low Carbon Fund, has £40,067 worth in exposures in Boeing and £44,067 in Caterpillar, which supplies the armoured bulldozers that famously drove over and killed Rachel Corrie in the Gaza Strip in 2003. The university’s need to divest is ever more crucial especially in light of the recent news that the UK government has been advised by its own lawyers to cease all arms trade to Israel, lest it risks breaching international law itself. Given Cambridge University’s leading status in the academic world, it has also been disappointing to see its failure to condemn, or even acknowledge, Israel’s obliteration of Palestinian academic institutions, including the destruction of every university in the Gaza Strip. In the face of all this, the university has provided an underwhelming amount of welfare support to its Palestinian students. This inadequacy is inexcusable and serves to highlight the university’s double standards in its responses to other regional crises in the past. We are enraged that the university, one of the most prestigious institutions in the world, has been silent on Israel’s current genocide in Gaza. We urge Cambridge University to follow in the footsteps of other universities worldwide to divest from Israel-involved companies.

Multi-group actions against Cambridge University's partnerships with arms companies The Laboratory for Scientific Computing is focused on industry partnerships, and boasts of its work with: BAE Systems - a huge arms company headquartered in the UK, whose weapons are being used by Israel to attack Palestine, and by Saudi Arabia to attack Yemen Qinetic - an arms company which specialises in drones. Exports include Israel and Saudi Arabia. Boeing - the second largest arms-producing company in the world known also for their role in the heavily-polluting aerospace industry. They manufacture Apache attack helicopters and guiding systems which are used around the world, including Israeli attacks on Palestine. BP - large oil company, specifically being targeted by some Climate and pro-Palestinian activists right now for its involvement in Israeli gas field Leviathan SLB - the world's largest oilfield company, which facilitates oil and gas exploration and extraction around the world, including in Israeli offshore gas. They are involved in buying up land in the Congo and in the expansion of the East African Crude Oil pipeline, both of which are contributing to instability in the area. The West Cambridge site hosts many other institutes and labs with dirty industry links, including: Rolls Royce UTC (Rolls Royce is involved in the production of the F-35 stealth combat aircraft currently used in Gaza)

Cambridge groups came together on Saturday 10th February to display long banners of names of people #KilledinGaza since October 2023. These are just a fraction of the over 23,000 now reported murdered by Israeli Occupation forces in Gaza including over 11,000 children. Alongside the hanging long banners we held a banner of names from 2014 #KilledinGaza, when 1484 people were killed in Gaza by Israel including 432 children with Birds of Gaza suspended in front of it. The Birds of Gaza have the names of children killed in 2023. These numbers continue to rise as the brutal Occupation fires on the people of Gaza attempting to flee the bombs in Rafah and others remain buried under rubble yet to be found.

Remembering those killed in Gaza over the last 86 days and standing in solidarity with those struggling to live.

2023 may have ended, but our Palestine actions only just beginning. This year, we have already achieved so much, flooding Cambridge's world famous streets with protestors calling for a ceasefire and exposing key boycott targets complicit in genocide. This coming year, we will... 🇵🇸 Continue marching for Palestine ❗ Protest outside key boycott targets 🔈 Give voices to Palestinians 📚 Educate Cambridge ✊ Unseat Daniel Zeichner MP Join Cambridge Stop the War to campion the Palestine cause.

£99.5 BILLION of our tax money was spent on nuclear weapons this year. 🤯 It's time the government spent this money on building a peaceful and prosperous world, instead of making our world more dangerous with expensive, poor quality nuclear artillery. 💸 Join the movement. Follow Cambridge Stop The War and CND.

Human Chain around UK Parliament calling for release of journalist Julain Assange and stop to the threat of extraditing him to the US for an unprecendented 175 year prison sentence. Expoaing war crimes is not a crime.