Over 150 King’s College London (KCL) staff and students staged a pro-Palestine lunchtime walkout and rally outside Strand campus from 12:30 pm, on 10 October 2024. This is the second pro-Palestine rally on campus this week.
In a joint post on X before the protest, the KCL branches of the Universities and Colleges Union (UCU) and Unison, along with KCL Students for Justice in Palestine (KCL SJP), called for “an end to British support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its escalation of the war in Lebanon and the Middle East”.
The walkout is part of a national workplace day of action led by Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Stop the War and supported by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), which represents most of the UK’s trade unions.
Thanks to the hundreds of workers and students who walked out today and raised their voices for justice and peace! We will not stop until Palestine is free! #FreePalestine #HandsOffLebanon šµšøā¤ļøš±š§āš½ pic.twitter.com/wGWkAsV2RM
— KCL UCU still demands pay restoration (@KCL_UCU) October 10, 2024
During the protest, students painted their hands blood red and lay under white body sheets, signifying an alleged complicity of British universities, including KCL, in investments and research for weapons used by Israel across Palestine and Lebanon.
After various protests last academic year and the encampment through the summer calling for divestment from Israel, KCL has announced its intention to impose an ethical investment policy which will ban “investments in companies deemed to be engaged in controversial weapons”. The Times reports that the formal agreement will be finalised later this month.
As of publication, Israeli forces have killed over 41,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including almost 11,300 children according to figures from the Hamas-run Ministry of Health. The current conflict was triggered by Hamas’ massacre of some 1,200 people in Israel on 7 October 2023.
Recent weeks have seen a significant escalation in the conflict in the Middle East, as the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) mounts a ground offensive in Southern Lebanon. According to Lebanese authorities, the regional spillover of conflict into Lebanon has led roughly 1.2 million Lebanese to flee from the South.
In particular, speakers at the protest emphasised the growing concern over ‘scholasticide’ in Gaza, where all schools and universities have now closed. This comes a year after a KCL alumnus, Dr Maisara Alrayyes, was killed in an Israeli airstrike that hit his home in Gaza last November.
Speakers also paid tribute to Dr Adnan Al-Bursh, who was a Fellow of and worked at King’s College Hospital in 2013. Dr Al-Bursh died in an Israeli prison on 2 May 2024, after more than four months of detention with serious allegations of physical and psychological torture.
KCL UCU previously staged a workplace walkout last academic year in February 2024, calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
In a statement given exclusively to Roar on 7 October, a spokesperson from KCL SJP said:
For a year, weāve wept and mourned for people we never even knew. But to live in a world, where genocide can take place, is one thing, and to live in a world where we watch it on our screens, or where we attend a university which is funding and investing into that genocide is another thing entirely. One year on, KCL remains complicit.
