Around 100 protesters gathered yesterday (15/05) to protest what they described as Trinity College and the University’s ongoing complicity in the war in Gaza.

The demonstration took place on Nakba Day, the Palestinian Day of Remembrance, and was promoted by organisations including Cambridge for Palestine and the Cambridge Palestinian Solidarity Campaign.

The protest began outside Trinity College’s Great Gate, where demonstrators held signs reading “Trinity College funds genocide” and “Gaza has been held hostage for 107 years,” among other slogans. Other posters bore images of Palestinian children killed in the conflict.

After a speech by a protester outside the gate, the group migrated down Trinity Street to Great St. Mary’s Church while reading out the names of Palestinian children killed by the violence.

Outside Great St. Mary’s, another protester who identified themself as a University student gave a speech. They accused the University of “fail[ing] to protect its members as they become political targets, whether they be Palestinian, trans, or Muslim”.

They also criticised the soon-to-be-opened New Whittle Laboratory. The speaker described the lab as being “built out of an ongoing collaboration with Rolls-Royce that includes aeronautic research and the sharing of facilities”. The speaker alleged that the company builds engines used by the Israeli military, adding: “The ghosts of Cambridge’s past are speaking to us. They tell us nothing has changed.”

The Campaign Against Arms Trade alleges that Rolls-Royce “produces military aircraft engines, naval engines, power supplies for military vehicles, and cores for nuclear submarines” for the Israeli military. The Cambridge UCU has also urged the University to divest from Rolls-Royce. 

Following the speech, the protest continued to King’s Parade, where a third speaker reflected on their Palestinian heritage and their parents’ displacement from Palestine as a result of the Nakba. 

The Nakba, which means “catastrophe” in Arabic, refers to the mass displacement of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. It is commemorated annually on 15 May, the day after the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel was proclaimed in 1948.

Protesters then chanted: “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest,” and hung keys on the fencing outside King’s College to symbolise the “key to the homeland”.

The demonstration outside Trinity follows reporting by Varsity last autumn that Trinity had not divested from any arms manufacturing companies and did not plan to do so, contradicting previous reports of a vote by the College to begin the divestment process.

Previous protests have attacked the University for its ties to companies on the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) Movement list, such as BAE systems, Siemens and Rolls-Royce. Last November, members of the group Palestine Action sprayed the University’s Institute for Manufacturing with red paint.

At the start of May, a student protester interrupted a graduation ceremony with a pro-Palestine speech. 

All relevant parties have been contacted for comment.