Around 300 students gathered at Sidgwick Site in support of Palestine, calling for the University to divest from Israel.

The protest, held on Wednesday (14/02) at the Universtity’s main teaching site, was organised by the Cambridge University Palestinian Solidarity Society, drawing attention to the Israeli airstrikes on Rafah, a small city in the Gaza Strip.

The protestors called on the University to cut its financial ties with Israel. Harvey Brown, the SU’s welfare officer, said at the demonstration: “The names on the bombs that are being dropped on Rafah right now are the same as names on the spreadsheets that the University produces at the end of the financial year.”

Brown named BAE systems and the US Army, among others, as the military bodies from which the University must withdraw funding.

The hundreds of attendees chanted: “We will not stop, we will not rest, Cambridge Uni must divest.”

Protestors held Palestinian flags and placards, some of which read “Roses are red, violets are blue, Cambridge University complicit in genocide” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

Another speaker told students to email their College JCRs and local MPs to encourage boycotts of companies associated with Israel.

“People are talking too much about the Superbowl and not enough about Rafah,” another speaker said.

The strikes on Rafah killed at least 67 Palestinians by Monday, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. The city’s population has swelled from 250,000 to an estimated 1.5 million people following evacuations of the south of the Gaza Strip.

Humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths has said that the consequences of an invasion of Rafah would be “catastrophic”.

Cambridge University was contacted for comment.