Palestinian-American writer sues Oxford Union over edited speech
As-salamu alaykum. A Palestinian-American author, Susan Abulhawa, has taken legal action against the Oxford Union in the UK, asking for an apology and compensation after parts of her speech from a debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were removed from a video the union shared online.
Susan Abulhawa, who lives in Pennsylvania and wrote the bestselling novel “Mornings in Jenin,” spoke at a debate in November 2024. The union put her talk online but took it down a week later and in December uploaded an altered version that left out comments she made about Zionism and Israel’s conduct in Lebanon.
The union said it cut parts of her speech over “legal concerns,” pointing to lines where she addressed Zionists directly and accused them of encouraging “the most vile of human impulses,” and to references to booby traps in Lebanon. When Abulhawa’s lawyers raised the issue, the union argued those remarks could amount to racial hatred under UK law. Abulhawa later posted the full speech on her own channel.
In the removed section she addressed Zionists, saying they “don’t know how to live in the world without dominating others” and that they had “crossed all lines.” She also spoke about atrocities in Gaza - bombed hospitals and schools and the deaths of women and children - which many UN and Western officials have characterised as amounting to genocide. The Palestinian Ministry of Health says more than 65,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023 and the entire population of Gaza has been displaced.
Abulhawa, whose family comes from the Mount of Olives in occupied East Jerusalem, called the edit “politically motivated censorship.” She said the union talks about free speech and debate but applies different rules to this issue. She told reporters the cuts damaged her reputation by implying her words were criminal. She is seeking an apology, damages, and restoration of the full speech, and is suing on grounds including copyright infringement, discrimination and breach of contract.
“I worked on my speech for a long time and chose my words carefully,” she said, adding that she felt unfairly portrayed as having said unlawful or malicious things. The debate had passed a motion declaring “Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide.” The union has not publicly responded to her lawsuit.
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