Confessions from the committee bench

by Zaid Magdub | January 20, 2025

 

A night at the Oxford Union bears no pretensions on the matter of its own pretentiousness. Dressed in silk and satin, members of committee weekly perform a ritual of faux-poshness: President’s drinks first; followed by a three course meal; before entering the Debate Chamber to nod politely at Parliamentary Procedure and speeches completely unrelated to the motion being debated. When the night is done, a final round of President’s drinks awaits, before said members whistle away to a Kebab truck, or enjoy complimentary tickets to the Bridge nightclub:  a nightlife that is neither the Mayfair nor Ibiza they wish to be accustomed to. But in spite of all the formalwear—ranging from long exhausted tuxedos, to Presidents and their VPs donning poorly fitted attempts at White Tie, and ballroom dresses far too expensive for a student budget—there is a sense of tackiness about it all. An attempt to revel in fanciness while equally half-arsing it. It is theatre for social outcasts and the desperate student politician, a poorly performed student production at best.

 

Often described as a breeding ground for the British political elite—a term seemingly coined by a virgin or a divorce—the Union’s reputation almost justifiably precedes itself. Along the walls, one can find photographed every member of the British political class in the twentieth century, either as returning alumni or hideous undergraduates. For those reasons, aspiring students find themselves sucked into a world quite divorced from the rest of university life, hoping one day to be the picture on the wall pointed at by the Freshmen of year 20XX. In this microcosm of a microcosm exists an arcane constitution, an internal judiciary, a bureaucracy of Returning Officers, an ‘Establishment’ (populated by a mythical set of Old Etonians) who everyone is supposedly fighting against. intangible political factions that switch and shift by the day, and above all else, a morass of social outcasts. There is talk of institutional racism and systemic sexism, but accuser and accused swap places depending on the day, and the racialised have no problem with the racist until an election conveniently looms. Every “politico” may see themselves as a Lenin or Malcom X fighting against a system of public educated schoolboys, but to be most skeptical, they were drawn to a society that produced Johnson, Rees-Mogg and Cameron for a reason.

 

This is, of course, a confession. And hence, I must confess that I too reveled in those theatrics. I found myself partially motivated by the prospect of a boring Trinity, having flailed through Law Moderations in Hilary, and decided that it was too sunny to pursue a degree. I was similarly intrigued by the opportunity to finally observe the pandemonium from within, to dress in silk and satin and perhaps even chase my name as a small footnote in the institution’s history. That, some non-electoral motivations (best left private), and a complete lack of backbone when asked to run, meant I soon found myself chasing another part of the ‘Oxford Experience’—a term so often used in the most self-referential place in the country. And so I must also confess, I most definitely acted with some hypocrisy. And hypocrisy is what led me to observe the travesties that unfolded in a debate I had helped organize: the ‘Palestine Debate’ on 28th November. Buried somewhere in my shame remains a discarded hack-list, even as I remained on those committee benches.

 

Looking from those benches, one finds the Union oddly similar to British politics. There are no real ideological factions: long gone are the days of liberal revolt of the nineteenth century or Tariq Ali’s Marxism of the sixties. Instead, the “Union hack” either gravitates towards both the conservative association—OUCA. Or they gravitate towards the primarily post-graduate and largely international Saïd Business School. These two constituencies in turn produce a slew of candidates, populating the society with an abominable mix of ‘finance bros’ in their thirties, and undergraduates reading PPE, Law and HisPol. One can only envy the riveting conversation. Such is fitting for our historical moment, where the political establishment is subject to the clammy hands of finance and/or the blue wool of Toryism. And just like our present historical moment, the Union seems to have gone woke, replacing white nepo babies with brown nepo babies.

 

If the Union were to be described as a body politic, the body in question is most seriously ill. Infested with a gangrene of infighting, harassment and an undercurrent of gross indecency. Rachel Johnson went so far as to describe the Union to The Times as “a garden committee in Notting Hill—the lower the stakes, the more vicious the discourse”’ This was in the aftermath of a pre-debate business so long and raucous that her fellow speaker Lord Heseltine stormed out. Johnson is of course mistaken, it is far more resemblant of an episode of Dubai Bling.

 

The happenings of the Union may have faded into irrelevance, if not potent distaste, for those not obsessively refreshing Cherwell for the election results. But alas, it remains focal in how Oxford is perceived, both historically and in the present. For many, it is package and parcel of the Oxford of the past, and for many aspiring to attend in the future – their first glimpse into the bubble. For in in spite of the pseudo-elitism and the social hermitude, and in spite of the nonsense—in the Union speak esteemed intellectuals and questionable officials. The pomp and splendour of celebrity is unrivalled and unraveled. On those burgundy benches, history is made in the stutters, coughs and cadence of the orators.

 

On 28th November, the motion, This House Believes Israel is an Apartheid state responsible for Genocide, was brought before a fully packed chamber. A demonstration against the hosting of Zionist activists withered in the cold outside, while the Union premises were dotted with police and hired security. I felt, for the first time that term, an air of genuine anticipation to be sat on those committee benches, chasing history.

 

The motion was a contentious one, positioning a dual claim of genocide and Apartheid. The latter is a construct that is quoted but often misunderstood. A neologism of Afrikaans, apartheid is an invented word that implies so much more than its literal definition. The apartheid regime in South Africa was not just a system of harsh racial segregation. Apartheid conceived of the state as created for the prosperity and safety of a certain people group, a Volk who had suffered inordinately at the hands of the British Empire, including in concentration camps of the Second Boer War. This Volk, in both religious and secular conceptions, had unique interests, culture and identity that needed unique protection. Apartheid claimed moral superiority, pointing to its own farcical system of “multi-national development” and “native statehood”, while subjecting natives to a humiliating level of bureaucracy—backed by depraved violence—that restricted their every breath, their every movement.

 

Israel has not only mirrored, but actively embodied Apartheid. The development of Zionism and the emergence and maintenance of the Israeli regime share these exact features with Apartheid South Africa. The motion thus provided a much-overdue opportunity to dissect these twin histories of oppression in the Union chamber. Here was an opportunity to account for the Palestinian experience, which has been defined by a state built on ethnic cleansing, maintained by ethnic cleansing and now steeped in the blood of ethnic cleansing.

 

I had helped in the preparation of the debate. I did so, somewhat eagerly. But I still felt deeply conflicted. It was difficult to fully accept the premise of reasoned and parliamentary debate when it felt so redundant. What use was intellectual discussion when generations of Palestinian families have been hollowed by tragedy? Sitting on the committee bench, I felt somewhat in an ivory tower.

 

My fears proved unnecessary. What transpired was neither reasoned nor civilised. It was certainly not intellectual. The ivory proved to be cement. The speakers acted in a manner more akin to a brawl in a sleazy pub in Ayia Napa—with Israelis and Levantine Arabs exchanging curses and unveiled threats of violence. All that was missing was a scantily clad lady selling balloons for fifteen Euro.

 

The Opposition began with Johnathan Sacerdoti, a man intimately involved with the Jewish Chronicle, a paper which, in the words of Ethan Netchin, columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, had “increasingly abandoned journalistic integrity in order to champion causes widely associated with the Israeli right”, and so is “predisposed to deception”. With no due respect to Mr Sacerdoti, his speech was as boring as it was nefarious. A disingenuous drivel of state propaganda that sought to win hearts and minds by boring them into organ failure. It was consistently interrupted by a Chamber that had evidently made its decision before the debate—at one point, a member of the audience was removed after screaming “genocidal motherfucker” and entering a shouting match with Sacerdoti’s companion, Yoseph Haddad.

 

Despite having served in the IDF, the pressure of a hostile audience was apparently too much for Yoseph Haddad. He derailed the debate to scream at audience members, invite them to fight him, accuse them of terrorist sympathies, and ultimately be removed from the Chamber. As he left, he donned a shirt with a photo of the late Hezbollah leader, Hasan Nasrallah, captioned “Your terrorist hero is dead! We did that.” One hopes the next thing he will do is actually research the Union. He will be shocked to discover not much of OUCA mourns Nasrallah.

 

Prior to the debate, the Opposition had threatened to withdraw if the Union did not permit Mosab Hasan Yousef to speak at the debate. He is something of an enigma. The son of a co-founder of Hamas turned Israeli intelligence asset, he converted to Christianity and spent the last decade comparing Islam to Nazism. He accused the Union of being “hijacked by Muslims”, and proceeded to rant about how Palestinians do not exist, and have never existed. In his words,Palestinians are “the most pathetic people on Planet Earth”. I wonder if he has looked in the mirror recently.

 

Finally, there was Natasha Hausdorff, an Oxford-educated barrister from  Kensington. with the kind of confidence imbued by an Oxford-education and residence one postcode away from the King to tell proposition speaker Mohemad Al-Kurd that he was squatting in his ancestral home. A qualified barrister, she was expected to be something of the star-girl of the debate. She ended up being more comparable to Eden Hazard after signing for Real Madrid. Her attempt to critique the arguments of the Proposition was more a testament to the flaws in the Lincoln College admission tutors’ judgement.

 

It was a frankly awful affair. While the Proposition mostly fared well, there were certain points when it became impossible to follow their speeches because the audience were seemingly unable not to erupt into applause. What elicited uproar, though, (and a counterterrorism investigation) was Proposition speaker Miko Peled’s speech, understood as an endorsement of October 7th. During Peled’s speech, Sacerdoti called a Point of Order, accusing Peled of moral support of Hamas, and even supplying the President with the Terrorism Act, which he’d brought in advance. Nothing screams free speech more than preparing to legally prosecute your opponent. The ensuing controversy was a contrived attempt to smear an already rightfully beleaguered institution. Contrived because it attempted to portray the Union as a hub of terrorist sympathy, based purely on the words of a single speaker, who is neither a member nor made clear what he would say in his speech beforehand. Say what you will about the Union, a den of support for Hamas it mostly certainly is not.

 

The Opposition has continued with these hideous demonstrations of bad faith to this day. Sacerdoti has enjoyed a grand tour of pro-Israel outlets, framing a debate he chose to attend as the apogee of antisemitism. He has even suggested that the poor reception he received was a result of Oxford increasing admissions to underprivileged students, blaming the Opportunity Oxford programme. Haddad and Yousef have geared themselves towards suggesting that the majority of the debate’s attendees were Arab and Muslim as some kind of half-baked commentary on the infiltration of western society.

 

Even the publication of the speeches was mirred in controversy. With all but Yousef’s speech released on Youtube, the Union was accused of complicity in censorship. An emboldened Sacerdoti went so far as to post his own “uncensored” recording of the events. In response, the Union – now condenmed by a slew of academics, journalists and politicians—opted to purge the record, and re-release all the speeches, yet this time with a caveat. Seemingly without consulting the speakers themselves, the speeches were published with content removed in lieu of a counter-terrorism investigation. Susan Abuhalwa, Proposition speaker, has hence condemened the Union herself—the one common ground between Opposition and Proposition it seems.

 

We have witnessed a complete  subversion of the Union’s pretentions. The Victorian-era moralising of Sacerdoti had suddenly made an elitist Union too foreign and too poor. The bastion of free speech working with the slyness of the Stalinist nomenklantura. None of the pomp mattered anymore. It should have been a brilliant affair.

 

It was far from it.

 

Throughout the debate, the Committee members were nervous and murmuring—aware of being captured on camera. What was also captured were visible attempts at restraint as pandemonium unfolded. In that cacophony of rage and distress, one is left with two strands of thought, somewhat related. The first is conversion. To see the principles and customs of the society violated so flagrantly rarely should have been funny. Now it was rage-inducing. I confess suddenly the faux-pompery seemed worth preserving.

 

The second thought is to wonder where God is, how this could be allowed to happen—a feeling that often comes to me on Union premises. To think of God in a city as Christian as Oxford is to think of Jesus. And to think of Jesus, is to think of a man who, if born on the night of the debate, would have taken his first breath in besieged and encircled بيت لحم(Bethlehem). To think of a man whose voice would be drowned out by artillery fire and the weeping of mothers and infants. Whose disciples would not be immune to White Phosphorus falling from the sky, whose brothers, Joseph and Jude, would be made martyrs by bullets. When Herod massacred the innocents, are the children of Gaza and Jenin not included?

 

The motion passed resoundingly in favour of the Proposition. It could not have happened in a worse time.∎

 

Words by Zaid Magdub. Image courtesy of Zaid Magdub.