Report by Southampton University into tensions and risks in dealing with Israel and Palestine
August 2026
The latest edition of the Campaign Against the Arms Trade’s News (Issue 277, Summer 2026) contains an article discussing links with universities and arms companies in the context of relations with Israel and Palestine. The report Aligning Policy with Practice: Tensions and Risks in the Context of Israel and Palestine, February 2026 analyses these tensions in relation to Southampton but it is clear the issues apply to many universities in the UK. The full report can be accessed here. It is the product of work carried out by the Palestinian Solidarity Network in the University (pictured) and the lead author is Irene Ruiz Espejo.
Essentially, the report analyses the various principles which the University has concerning transparency, sustainability, ethics and EDI and matches that against what happens, the links they have with arms firms and their support for research, and also the links with Israeli universities. They suggest that sometimes matters of governance, partnerships and approaches to free speech can exert a chilling effect as has been seen at other academic institutions.
Risks
They identify several risks: legal, financial, reputational and wellbeing in the report. Official communications do not reference the historical and legal realities of military occupation in Gaza, settler colonialism on the West Bank, apartheid, or the longstanding siege of Gaza. They also do not engage with international legal developments and findings, including United Nations and international and Israeli civil society organisations, which have raised serious concerns that Israel’s conduct in Gaza may amount to grave breaches of international law, including acts that violate the Genocide Convention.
In addition, University statements do not situate events in Gaza within the wider regional context of Israeli military aggression, including the bombing of Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Qatar, and Iran, which have resulted in additional civilian deaths and escalating regional and global instability. Instead, communications tend to frame events primarily as a bilateral conflict and to address Palestinian deaths, displacement, and civilian harm largely through the language of humanitarian crisis.
This framing obscures a central and well-documented reality: the “conflict” is characterised by profound asymmetries in power, control, and vulnerability, including Israel’s effective control over borders, airspace, and key conditions of civilian survival in Gaza, including access to humanitarian aid. In this context, large-scale civilian harm is not only the outcome war, but it is shaped by Israel’s political and military decisions that have driven mass displacement, civilian targeting, severe restrictions on essential supplies, the use of starvation as a method of war , bombardment, and the destruction of critical civilian infrastructure in Gaza, including all twelve universities.
Power of money
They maintain this bias is not accidental but managed, where money and and power repeatedly take precedence over stated values. Students and staff who raise concerns about arms partnerships, or who engage in Palestinian solidarity, face ‘scrutiny, marginalisation or silencing’ – a direct threat to freedom of speech.
Money has become an existential issue for universities and many are struggling. The drop in foreign students has been a severe blow. The suggestion, implicit in the report, that the desire to secure research funding from arms firms has led to threat to their core values. Links to Israeli universities are not inherently wrong but the nature of the research might be.
The CAAT piece ends “our report is an attempt to interrupt that silence resisting erasure – of lives, of knowledge and our ability to name what is happening requires more than critique. It requires cultivating the capacity to see clearly even when language obscures: to think critically even when institutions reward compliance and to remain connected to our sheared humanity, to people, to place and to the consequences of what is doe with our knowledge our research and our labour”.
Some content from the report.
Why the Yeshiva education system stinks.
Made aliya back in ’91. Called myself an atheist – praise HaShem, even while living in Oklahoma. My family about 7 generations of lawyers & judges. I personally despise the Yeshiva whose sh’itta of education made famous by Reshonim g’lut Jewry, employed to instruct Jewish children in Israel today. Just as the mitzva of Shabbat requires making הבדלה which differentiates between מלאכה from עבודה so too and how much more so study and teaching of Torah requires making הבדלה which separates Common law from Statute law. Alas, Yeshivah students which have crossed my path never taught that Shabbat means week, not the 7th Day of the week, as 7th day Adventists falsely teach!
The Torah opens with מעשה בראשית – Yeshiva educated Jews never ask WHY? Its simply not an issue of translating words from Hebrew\Aramaic to English. The Rambam, his Yad-code basically translated the complex Hebrew Aramaic Talmud unto Hebrew – based upon the language of the Mishna. The Steinsaltz talmud and Art Scroll translations follow the path set by that Reshon. The impact upon the Torah world of the Rambam “translations” of Halacha into a simplified Hebrew most probably saved the language of Hebrew from going the way of Catholic Latin – a dead language. But his statute law code turned post Bar Kachba Mishnaic courtroom common law ideal for the future time when Jews conquer the Homeland and restore the pursuit of justice as our Sinai faith unto a static set of halachic religious laws – a belief system – in this sense: no different from Xtian and Islamic theologies.
The times for the Reshonim, cursed g’lut Jewry – exceptionally harsh. The Romans scattered Jewry following the Bar Kochba revolt to the 4 winds of the empire. Goyim barbarians in all cursed g’lut lands both Xtiandom and Islamic – like Spain, made forced conversions, forced population transfers akin to the ’48 Jews thrown out of all Arab countries! The Reshonim scholars confronted harsh realities on the ground; Jewish settlements tiny & scattered and people during the period, where the Roman road system had collapsed, the Dark Ages, rarely traveled. Spanish Jews – Rambam and Ibn Ezra, the latter fled for his life – from Spain, his son converted to Islam. While the former too fled from the anarchy and chaos of the collapsing Islamic civilization unto Egypt; his brother drowned at sea!
Why did the Torah open with בראשית? That Sefer has few Torah commandments: fruitful and multiply, brit melah, gid hanasheh, the טיפש פשט big 3! But most commentators fail to grasp, (akin to the apostle Paul) that the Torah instructs prophetic mussar through repeated themes. As most reform or conservative rabbis utterly numb. The Hebrew Siddur – an unrecognized Primary Source for Talmudic and Midrashic scholarship! This sefer builds upon סמוכים, which requires a discerning eye. The Siddur stands upon Sefer בראשית; it opens with תמיד מעשה בראשית – twice repeated in the first blessing for the שחרית קריא שמע. That critical phrase answers the opening question of this paragraph. The creation aggadah introduces the theme of Torah “wisdom” known as זמן גרמא מצוות. Shabbat as week distinguishes between לא תעשה מלאכה from תעשה מלאכה through k’vanna.
The bi-polar Rambam ספר המצוות in its טיפש פשט literalism, divides Torah commandments to positive and negative camps. The B’hag by stark contrast, his introduction discerns between Av from toldot commandments; like both mesechta Shabbat and Baba Kama ask the question התולדות הולכים אחרי אבות? Just as quality scholarship separates between Primary from Secondary sources – a Ph”D from a bachelor degree. The Sages distinguished between Torah from NaCH from Writings … Mishna from Gemara, so too and how much more so down stream generations of Yiddishkeit likewise required to respect this masoret of scholarship. The B’HaG recognized T’NaCH\Talmudic common law. The Rambam’s statute law effectively blew out the lights of Hanukka; wherein the P’rushim defeated the assimilated ערב רב Tzeddukim. Perhaps based upon the בנין אב of blowing the shofar; this mitzva of blowing the Shofar – a חכמה – the Rif made the chiddush that a person could blow the Shofar on shabbat before his Court!
The term מלאכה refers to Av Torah commandments – time-oriented commandments – which require k’vanna. Toldot commandments and halachot learned separately – as does the statute law code of the Rambam and the Shulkan Aruch – do not require k’vanna. For example: What constitutes as תפילה דאורייתא vs. תפילה דרבנן also ודוי דאורייתא vs ודוי דרבנן? The Rambam harshly criticized in his Introduction שרש ראשון the B’HaG who ruled תפילה דאורייתא! Yet in Rambam’s 5th positive commandment, he too ruled tefillah a mitzva from the Torah! B’HaG learned Hanukkah, a mitzva from the Torah which the Rambam likewise considered absurd. How did the last of the Gaonim scholars “confuse” rabbinic commandments? The Talmud refers to Hannuka מחובר and the Baali Tosafot refers to קריאת שמע likewise as מחובר. The Av Torah זמן גרמא מצוות – מחובר.
The Baali Tosafot refers to the mitzva of ק”ש as מחובר; meaning time-oriented commandments. The B’HaG refers to the lighting the lights of Hanukkah as a מצוה דאורייתא; meaning זמן גרמא מצוות. The statute codes by contrast err and interpret through a טיפש פשט “time” understood in the literal sense. חכמה defined as זמן גרמא מצוות – חמובר. Whereas תולדות מצוות לא צריך כוונה… זמן גרמא מצוות מחובר לחכמה מן התורה. Just as Shabbat means “week” and not a day in a week, so too and how much more so בראשית introduces the theme of זמן גרמא מצוות as Av tohor commandments and not the World created in 6 days טיפש פשט.
The זמן גרמא only a משל which requires making the logical דיוק נמשל. Not literally “time as in watch”, but Torah wisdom as the נמשל of the משל of זמן גרמא מצוות. Hence to both the B’HaG and the Baali Tosafot: where the Baali Tosafot refers to the mitzva of ק”ש as מחובר; meaning time-oriented commandments. The B’HaG refers to the lighting the lights of Hanukkah as a מצוה דאורייתא; meaning זמן גרמא מצוות. The statute codes by contrast err and interpret through a טיפש פשט “time”, understood in the sophomoric – literal sense. חכמה defined as זמן גרמא מצוות – חמובר. Whereas תולדות מצוות לא צריך כוונה… זמן גרמא מצוות מחובר לחכמה מן התורה. The Av בנין אב for all זמן גרמא מצוות … תמיד מעשה בראשית. Sefer בראשית opens with the Central Torah theme of Av tohor time-oriented commandments. Whereas the Books of שמות ויקרא ובמדבר instruct בניני אבות תולדות מצוות. As these secondary commandments – when attached by means of inductive פרדס inductive reason logic to other similar Case/Din rulings (both in the literature of the T’NaCH prophetic mussar and Talmud ritual halacha) this חכמה compares to the two sights of a rifle which permits the prophets to “shoot” their mussar to all generations of the Chosen Cohen People. Herein defines the warp/weft halachic-aggadic relationship which permits the generations of Israel to make aliya from g’lut toldot commandments to Av tohor זמן גרמא מצוות בארץ ישראל.
The זמן גרמא only a משל which requires making the logical דיוק נמשל. Not literally “time as in watch”, but Torah wisdom as the נמשל of the משל of all זמן גרמא מצוות. Hence the B’HaG and Baali Tosafot, specifically the Rabbeinu Tam most likely, מחובר…חכמה “joined/attached” to that חכמה מן התורה which requires k’vanna. Translating the term עדיף\מחובר misses the point all together. This term refers to the distinction between Av Torah commandments – which require k’vanna from toldot commandments which do not require k’vanna. Hence תפילה דאורייתא that’s ק”ש. The Siddur through סמוכים affixes ק”ש to Shemone Esrei דרבנן.
Brought this example as a proof that T’NaCH and Talmud BOTH command common law legalism which learn through judicial precedents. Translating simply misses the boat and qualifies as a לא לשמה Torah curse, based upon the בנין אב of the 1st Sinai commandment. G’lut Jews cannot keep the Yovel – impossible; no different from the slaves beaten by order of Par’o vertical courtrooms (Star Courts which justified impressment of American sailors seized by British warships on the High Seas). G’lut Yidden got religion through the statute halachic codifications.
Only in Israel can Jews sanctify צדק צדק תרדוף; prior to the Oct 7th 2023 Abomination War, Israelis confronted a judicial crisis! Can Israel achieve self-determination and affix the 12 Tribes to the re-conquered lands of Canaan and therein re-establish our Constitutional Republic wherein the Torah mandates only Federal Sanhedrin courts which possess the mandate to rules the Tribal “legislatures” and Knesset Central Government statute laws through משנה תורה-Legislative Review?
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Great Apes share a 98.7% genome genetic match with human-beings. By what measurement readily discerns the switch from grasshopper to the cursed and utterly vile locust? Europeans minds have no loyalty to their allies when loyalty – goes out of fashion.
Houston Stewart Chamberlain: A British-born Germanophile and racial ideologist (1855–1927) whose work The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century advocated for the superiority of the Aryan race and claimed Jewish influence was negative. His theories influenced Adolf Hitler and National Socialist thought, and he viewed the conflict between Aryans and Jews as the basis of European history.
Neville Chamberlain: The British Prime Minister (1937–1940) pursued a policy of appeasement toward Nazi Germany, which included signing the Munich Agreement (1938) that sacrificed Czechoslovakia. He also expressed antisemitic attitudes in private letters and his government introduced the White Paper (1939) which denied Jews unrestricted entry to Mandatory Palestine which
Britain needed acetone as a solvent to manufacture cordite, a smokeless gunpowder used in its munitions. Political Zionist, Chaim Weizmann developed a bacterial fermentation method that produced acetone from starch; his contribution helped solve a serious acetone shortage during WWI. How did the British government award Weizmann’s contribution to the war effort to defeat the “ethnic cleansing” “Germanic Huns”? The British government’s most famous political concession to Herzl’s Political Zionism vision; David Lloyd George’s government on November 2, 1917, became the great power “partner” which Herzl’s “The Jewish State” required in order for Jews to achieve permanent equal rights to achieve self-determination within the borders of their own homeland.
Later revisionist history sources such as the corrupt Wikipedia whose story line can change at the whip of a pen, claim that the Balfour Declaration reflected some undefined and never proven temporary “strategic and political calculations”. Hence the Balfour Declaration stands as the opposite – so to speak – bookend as the Chamberlain White Paper. The White Paper declared where permanently decreed minority Jewish populations could and could not live within the promised lands of an Arab Palestinian state within 10 years after the war. The UN SC later passed 2334 whose language likewise declares “as the New UN International Law”, the bogus declaration where Israelis can live and operate businesses like as the current Socialist Government boycotts Israeli private industry and housing within the Capital of Jerusalem and Judea/Samaria as if dirty Jews Europeans possess the God Given power of kings to establish Ghetto-gulags like as did the Popes of Rome!
Based upon the fact, that all Arab Israeli wars fought over Arab rejection of Jewish self determination as defined through the Balfour Declaration, the White Paper coupled with the British wartime policy and post war policy of restricting Jewish escape to the mandate territories, later revisionist history which declares a Arab/Jewish sharing of authority amounts to a straight up propaganda lie on par with the current “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” slander in post Oct7th Gaza. Britain carpet bombed German cities and civilian populations, the example of Dresden which had no strategic value prove this condemnation of hypocrisy.
Hamas initiated the Oct7th invasion. It rejects the Oslo Accords wherein PM Sharon made a unilateral withdraw from Gaza. It openly initiated conflicts with Israel once it won the general election and cast the PA out of Gaza. The propaganda lie that “debates” in Oxford the so-called “proposition” – Israel never sought peace with Arabs another bald faced lie. The Wikipedia revisionist history which declares Hamas rejected “the Quartets’ conditions of nonviolence, recognition of Israel, and acceptance of prior agreements” utter narishkeit. The Olso Accords negotiated outside the UN. Post the Nakba Allah defeat in another Arab war to exterminate the Jews, proven by the massacre of Oct7th 2023, the UN has no seat in the Board of Peace as also excluded Britain and France and Russia.
Claims made by SA of ‘genocide’ rich! SA sits at the tip of Africa! Its black Apartheid reputation a ‘Turd Reich’ of political opportunism on par with Arafat’s Palestinians really the descendants of Greek Boat People later called Philistines. Yishmael in general and Arabs in particular do not originate from Europe any more than Palestine an Arab name or the ICC has jurisdiction of the Palestinian State in Gaza! The UN has a long revisionist history of anti-Israel block-headed voting. UN GA 3379 an infamous disgrace which the current British Green Party has embraced as their flag in their homosexual relationship with the current Socialist government sitting in London.
‘Ethnic Cleansing’ and ‘genocide’, an emotion arousing slander on par with the blood libel slanders which resulted in Jewish communities destroyed! Attempts to pigion hole history of nations into some BC/AC bible narishkeit an utter abomination. International Law does not begin and end with the establishment of the UN. Traditional diplomatic historians argue that the Balfour Declaration represents a formal recognition of the historic, indigenous rights of the Jewish people to national self-determination in their ancestral homeland, fulfilling a profound moral and political commitment.
The Oct7th War initiated by the Hamas/UNWRA alliance which invaded Israel, a war in self-defense. Attempts by hostile states such as within the gossip society represented by the UN nothing short of a denial of Israel’s rights to self-defense. The British invasion of Saddam’s Iraq in conjunction with the Neo-Con Chaney\Bush lies concerning WMD when Iraq connection with 9/11 prove that nations who go to war – they and they alone determine their self-defense strategies – especially after Bush campaigned on a commitment of “No Nation Building”. The October 7, 2023 assault—rests on core principles of national sovereignty and international law.
The historical pattern wherein European ape-like governments minimize Zionist leadership(s) repeated acceptance to compromise proposals for partition and peace—starting with the 1937 Peel Commission, the 1947 UN Partition Plan, post-1967 land-for-peace frameworks, and the 2000 Camp David/2008 Olmert offers—while Arab leadership systematically rejected them, preferring absolute denial of Jewish sovereignty over compromise – the Jewish people remember and fundamentally refuse to forget.
Revisionist history compares to Holocaust Denial wherein European project their guilt by calling Israel an Nazi State. Palestine ceased to exist in 1948. European attempts to restore the Roman decree of Syria-Palestine post the Bar Kochba defeat amount to European imperialism and attempts to dominate the balance of power which the Nakba Allah Oct 7th War Hamas defeat has radically changes with both the UN and Britain and France excluded from the Trump Gaza peace. Breaking News … Britain and France ceased being ‘great powers’ after they ran away from the Suez attempt in ’56.
Europe has no shame nor loyalty when viewed under the lenses of complex geopolitical conflicts wherein European leaders make appeals to domestic mobs, such as the Green Party in England who wave the flag of ‘Zionism is Racism’. The European grasshopper/locust “genetic” mental insanity – whenever they throw an ally under the bus they flatten multi-dimensional realities into two dimensional box declarations of condemnations which arouses the mobs into hysteria – like as seen in Universities across Europe and the US – which has disgraced their good name reputations as places of objective ‘Higher Learning’.
Actual human history simply not a record of times, places, and events. For example: Who killed President Kennedy? Was 9/11 a False Flag attack to invade Iraq and dominate the balance of power in the Middle East which prioritized the domination “New World Order” of the Western democracies over the break up of the USSR?
The ruse wherein Arabs rejected the 1947 UN Partition Plan which granted 55% of the land to the Jewish State ignore the fact that the Palestine mandate originally awarded to Britain included Trans-Jordan which reflects multiple Byzantine designations of post Bar Kochba Roman Syria-Palestine, akin to the British two state solution which exploded in multiple Indian “civil wars” with Pakistan! Together with the post WWII division of Korea and Vietnam and the “genocide” of Algerians by France.
Great power politics has never attempted to establish a Independent Kurdistan post WWI despite the collapse of the Ottoman empire and the removal of the Turkish Capital from Istanbul! Had Russia not collapsed, replace by Bolshevik revolutionaries, cold, calculated realpolitik would have awarded a restored Constantinople to the Czar of Russia.
The disgraced UN Chairman’s attempt to declare the existence of “Two national movements claiming the same land”, this revisionist history ignores the 1964 PLO Charter which only referred to ’48 Israel as “Occupied Territory”. And the cold hard fact that never in all recorded human history has their ever existed an Arab Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its Capital and having an Independent national currency – as do all nation states.
This underscores the retroactive UN fabrication of “West Bank” nonsense which hides Judea/Samaria. Throughout the Ottoman period and the British Mandate, the region was officially and commonly referred to in administrative, legal, and biblical contexts as Judea and Samaria. Stripping the territory of its thousands of years of recorded Jewish history and connection, international bodies and opponents of Israel could more easily frame the area as “foreign” or “occupied” land belonging exclusively to another sovereign entity, rather than the heartland of ancestral Jewish heritage.
Furthermore the revisionist history “prohibition of acquiring territory by war”, ignores the forced mass population transfers of Germans from Prussia and the division of Prussia between Poland and Russia. The choice of words in international diplomacy – never neutral; it actively shapes legal claims, historical memory, and the political reality on the ground. Post War Germany lost 25% of its land. History simply not a moral scoreboard or tribal contest; but rather a record of choices, alliances, and consequences that evolve with evidence, not ideology nor theology.
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