Gaza doctor's victory as Glasgow rector could boost support for Palestine

Dima Abdullatif Mohammed Alhaj, a 29-year-old alumna of Glasgow University, was tragically killed along with her husband, their six-month-old baby, and 50 other family members in an Israeli bombing in Gaza in November.

The university management not only refrained from issuing any official statement on her killing but also failed to take any action to cease profiting from Israel's war on Palestinians.

Months later, a reparations fund will be established in Dima's name, dedicated to supporting young students from Gaza, the university’s new rector, Ghassan Abu Sittah, tells TRT World.

Abu Sittah, a British-Palestinian surgeon who spent over a month in Gaza providing medical aid to the injured, was chosen rector this week by a landslide victory, securing 80 percent of the vote in an election that saw double the turnout compared to the previous one.

The groundbreaking decision by the students of Glasgow might change the trajectory of heightened awareness among Western youth in response to Israel's bloody war on Gaza, which has killed more than 32,000 people since October 7.

As Abu Sittah is now primarily focused on divesting the university's funding from defence companies supplying arms to Israel, he and his students are hopeful that this achievement will ignite a wider momentum and inspire courage for academic boycotts in other academic institutions across the UK and beyond.

Ending complicity

For quite some time, students at Glasgow have been fervently protesting, urging their university to cease its complicity in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians by divesting from all arms companies, prohibiting recruitment on campus, and terminating academic collaborations with Israeli universities holding Zionist ideologies.

Glasgow University holds a $5.5 million investment fund in BAE Systems, a company that manufactures a range of weapon components, such as combat aircraft and machine gun systems, which are sold to Israel.

Amid months-long protests and the occupation of university offices, various student groups, including Glasgow Against Arms and Fossil Fuels (GAAF), the Stop the War Coalition, the Scottish Socialist Party, and the Glasgow Palestine Society, united to invite Dr Ghassan, a Glasgow alumni, to run for the rectorship.

This decision wasn't initially on his agenda, but after he agreed and submitted his nomination, his candidacy quickly became a focal point for all campus groups campaigning against the war in Palestine, Abu Sittah says.

Jamie O'Rourke, an undergrad honours student at Glasgow who spearheaded Abu Sittah’s election campaign, says that students were “deeply angered by the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and they yearned for a chance to have their voices heard, to enact change”.

“The candidacy of Dr Abu Sittah was an opportunity for that,” O'Rourke tells TRT World.

He says that the students have traditionally been an external voice, protesting either by occupying buildings or by standing outside the university chambers and shouting as loudly as possible to try to be heard by university management.

“However, now that we have a rector committed to ending investments in arms companies and showing solidarity with Palestine and victims of war worldwide, we finally have that voice represented within the university court. Whenever there's a management meeting, there will be one voice advocating passionately for us,” he adds.

Mobilising a generation

Starting with Scottish universities, Abu Sittah is planning to organise a campaign for divestment, an academic boycott of Israeli institutions, divestment from the arms industry, which profits from this genocidal war, and the establishment of reparations funds.

“This campaign will aim to push university administrations to align with the opinions, values, and political stance of their students,” he says.

He also pledges to fight against the definition of antisemitism made by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), which is being used to silence anti-Zionist Jewish voices and hinder the unity between othered communities in their common struggle against Islamophobia, antisemitism, racism, and discrimination.

This definition has been used in the United Kingdom to silence anti-Zionist Jews, leading to their expulsion from the Labour party, and has been applied against non-Jewish voices critical of Israel's policies towards Palestinians, according to Sittah.

He believes that it is crucial to establish a robust definition that addresses genuine threats to the Jewish community while also fostering alliances with other racialised groups.

As he advocates for a unified campaign that flourishes within academic campuses as the primary solution, it is because these campuses have the potential to serve as the catalysts for generational change that transcends borders and extends beyond academia.

“We can observe a distinct generational movement not only on campuses in the UK but also on campuses in Europe and North America, as young people today do not merely accept the news handed down to them by the mainstream media but seek their own information through social media outlets,” he says.

“This mobilisation among that generation, particularly on campuses, is truly reflected in the election at Glasgow University, and I'm certain that similar trends will exist on numerous other campuses. If there were other mechanisms through which students could democratically voice their opinions, we would see comparable results across the globe.”

Thinking back on his time in Gaza, Abu Sittah recalls that the level of destruction, killing, and slaughter was so heartbreaking that it made it impossible to envision hope.

But in the long term, he adds, the tide has turned, and the world is witnessing the emergence of Palestine as the resistance movement of this generation.

“Just as the anti-apartheid movement mobilised an entire generation in the eighties, Palestine is mobilising a whole generation in the 21st century.”