An opinion poll published by the British newspaper Daily Mail showed that more than 40% of students at Russell Group universities believe that the attack of last October 7 (Al-Aqsa Flood) was an act of resistance.
The survey included more than a thousand students from Russell Universities (a group of 24 universities seen as the best in Britain), and found that 38% of university students believed that October 7 was an “understandable” act of “resistance.”
The poll, conducted by Savanta and shared with the newspaper, showed that only a third of them consider the attack by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), which sparked a new war in Gaza, to be a “terrorist attack.”
According to the poll, 38% of its participants agreed that those who publicly support Israel on university campuses should “expect” mistreatment, and only 31% explicitly agreed with this.
Students at the London School of Economics and Political Science had begun a sit-in in the college’s Marshall Building in support of Palestine and in protest against the college’s cooperation with Israeli companies.
Graduate student and spokesman for the Palestinian community, Ethan Chu, told Anadolu Agency, last Tuesday, that they had prepared a 116-page report revealing the college’s relationships with companies cooperating with Israel, companies in Jewish settlements, fossil fuel producers and sellers, and weapons manufacturers.
Since last April, students and academics at universities in many countries, including the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Spain and India, have been organizing events demanding an end to the war on the Gaza Strip and an end to any support or cooperation with Israel.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has been waging a devastating war on the Gaza Strip, leaving tens of thousands dead and wounded, most of them children and women, and massive destruction and famine that claimed the lives of children and the elderly.
Israel continues its war despite the issuance of an immediate ceasefire resolution by the Security Council, and despite its appearance before the International Court of Justice on charges of committing genocide.