07/10/2026
Palestinian-American novelist susan abulhawa has secured the restoration of her full Oxford Union speech in a settlement announced on 5 October.
It’s a major victory for free speech about Palestine and the fight to preserve the public record of Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people.
The agreement ends a legal dispute over the Oxford Union’s removal of five passages from her November 2024 address.
You can watch the powerful speech, delivered just over a year into Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, in the video at the top of this article.
“I’m pleased that we reached a just agreement that led to my unedited speech being posted back on the Oxford Union’s channels,” abulhawa told The Electronic Intifada.
A contributor to The Electronic Intifada, abulhawa is the author of Mornings in Jenin, which has sold more than a million copies, and other novels including Against the Loveless World.
She also founded Playgrounds for Palestine.
abulhawa spoke at the prestigious Oxford debating society on 28 November 2024, supporting a motion that Israel is an apartheid state engaged in genocide. The motion passed by 278 votes to 59.
abulhawa says she agreed to participate on the express condition that her speech would be published unedited, and received repeated assurances from Oxford Union representatives that it would be.
The full recording appeared on the Oxford Union’s YouTube channel on 5 December and attracted about 250,000 views within one week, according to her lawyers. The full version was blocked from public view on 12 December and an edited version appeared on 13 December, without her approval. An accompanying statement invoked standards and legal concerns.
The cuts removed roughly a minute and a half from an address that searingly described Israel’s crimes over decades and challenged the double standards applied to Palestinian suffering.
Excerpt from "susan abulhawa wins fight against Oxford Union censorship” by Ali Abunimah. Read the article at electronicintifada.net.
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/susan-abulhawa-wins-fight-against-oxford-union-censorship
