A heated free speech and political controversy has erupted at the University of Oxford, where the president of the world-famous Oxford Union debating society, Arwa Elrayess, has publicly condemned pro-Israel advocacy group UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) after the organization reported her to British police over comments she made about Palestinian resistance that Elrayess says were deliberately taken out of context.
The 20-year-old president, who has Palestinian heritage and spent part of her childhood in the Gaza Strip, has only held the leadership role of the prestigious student society for two months when the controversy unfolded. The incident traces back to private messages Elrayess exchanged in a WhatsApp group chat last September, which were leaked to mainstream media and published widely earlier this month.
Following the leak, Elrayess faced widespread public accusations that she had voiced support for Hamas, which is listed as a proscribed terrorist organization under United Kingdom law. A close reading of the full conversation, however, shows Elrayess never endorsed Hamas’ actions. In her messages, she explicitly pushed back against claims that she was justifying the group’s violence, offering a broader historical analysis of how resistance movements are framed by Western powers. She noted that “any resistance group will inevitably be deemed a ‘terrorist’ organisation by the West until they achieve their liberation (by which time, they’ll be lauded as heroes, as history has repeatedly proven),” pointing to the example of Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress, which was labeled a terrorist group by Britain during the apartheid era before being embraced as a legitimate liberation movement after apartheid’s collapse.
When another group chat member argued that Hamas’ actions were too excessive to qualify as a liberation struggle, Elrayess responded that “the severity of resistance is often proportional to the severity of oppression.” She observed that numerous nonviolent Palestinian resistance efforts over decades had resulted only in massacres and no political progress, clarifying, “This is not to justify anything but just to point out that it’s quite rich to allow for decades of oppression and massacres, only to be shocked when the resistance movement responds with proportional severity.” After being challenged on the use of “proportional” to describe the group’s actions, she added that “some would argue it’s less than proportional. Have you seen what Israel has put Palestinians through for decades?” before stressing, “Proportional does not mean right by the way.”
Elrayess has repeatedly issued a clear public condemnation of violence against all civilians: “I condemn Hamas’ targeting of innocent civilians, just as I condemn the targeting of innocent civilians by the IDF or any other actor,” she stated earlier this month, emphasizing this has been her consistent position. Under UK law, supporting or glorifying a proscribed terrorist organization is a criminal offense, and a full review of Elrayess’ comments confirms she never advocated for or glorified Hamas.
Despite this, UKLFI filed a police complaint against Elrayess, claiming her remarks could radicalize other students and amounted to normalizing and legitimizing a banned terrorist group. A spokesperson for Thames Valley Police confirmed the force is aware of the complaint and is currently assessing the allegation in coordination with Counter Terrorism Policing South East. As of her latest statement, Elrayess says she has not been contacted by any law enforcement officials.
The leak of Elrayess’ private messages coincided with another recent free speech controversy at the Oxford Union, after the 20-year-old invited progressive American political commentators Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker to address the society. The UK government blocked the pair from entering the country, widely reported to be over their public criticism of Israeli policy. In response, Elrayess upheld her commitment to open debate by allowing the pair to speak to the union via live stream. Just last week, she again defended the principle of free speech by agreeing to debate far-right activist Tommy Robinson on the motion “Should the West be suspicious of Islam?” despite large protests from left-wing student groups; Elrayess won the debate, defeating Robinson’s position.
In an interview with Middle East Eye, Elrayess accused UKLFI and allied pro-Israel voices of coordinating with sympathetic UK media outlets to run sensationalized, false stories that paint her as an extremist, terrorist sympathizer, and antisemite. “These are slurs, directed at a young politically active Palestinian woman who chooses to use her platform to spotlight issues that matter to my family and my community, and that I believe should matter to the public at large,” she said. “In my opinion, this is nothing more than an attempt to suppress voices like mine and to deny me the right to express my views – a strategy that groups like UK Lawyers for Israel have deployed for some time because they know they cannot successfully challenge the facts of the matter.”
Data from the European Legal Support Centre backs up Elrayess’ claims about UKLFI’s long-standing strategy targeting Palestine solidarity activists. Founded in 2011, UKLFI has led efforts to discredit and pressure individuals and organizations that criticize Israeli policy or express support for Palestinian rights. The group is listed 128 times in the center’s Britain Index of Repression database, which tracks the systematic suppression of Palestine solidarity activism across the UK. The center finds that UKLFI has helped create a “chilling environment” where activists and organizations scale back or abandon entirely lawful pro-Palestine work out of fear of legal retaliation. In most cases, UKLFI acts as an initiating or escalating actor against Palestine solidarity activity, using complaint letters, legal threats, and public pressure to push universities, schools, employers, and public bodies to launch disciplinary investigations or cancel planned events.
Earlier this month, Elrayess defeated a motion of no confidence tabled against her presidency of the Oxford Union. Speaking from the union’s debating chamber, she pushed back against what she described as constant, unfair targeting of Palestinian voices: “it was disappointing that at every stage of my existence as a Palestinian there seems to always be this post-mortem vilification of Palestinians in any way shape or form,” she said. “Our very existence is something that is scary and something that needs to be criticised and something that needs to be vilified. They attribute things to us that are false and defamatory. And it is non-stop, it is never ending and I am sick of it. I have had to grow up with this idea in the back of my mind that I have to be so careful about every single little thing I say… because God forbid someone takes something out of context and puts it in the Telegraph.”
Middle East Eye has reached out to UKLFI to request comment on the complaint against Elrayess.