WITH ISRAEL coming under mounting pressure from the international community to cease its attacks in Gaza, the visit of the Israeli Deputy Ambassador, Talya Lador-Fresher, to The University of Manchester was greeted with student protests.
Many international leaders, while upholding every nation's right to defend themselves, have claimed excessive and disproportionate force has been used against the Palestinian people. To this the Ambassador simply replied, "not at all."
Faced with the hoards of protesters chanting outside, Talya Lador-Fresher spoke to Student Direct.
The Ambassador's first topic of choice was freedom of speech on university campuses saying: "I will be the first to defend people who think very differently to me."
However, she was adamant that debate should always occur in an amicable manner. "Universities should ensure we can all come to campus to feel safe and voice our opinions, in an inoffensive way to other individuals who are on campus." she said.
In the past year the debate between pro-Palestine and pro-Israel students has been fierce, with the Students' Union being controversially twinned with the Palestinian An Najah Students' Union last March.
Lador-Fresher condemned this move, questioning why such a controversial university was chosen, saying: "If the Students' Union at The University of Manchester would like to make a twinning, I would be so happy for them to do so with The University of Al-Quds, which is also in Palestine, where they teach tolerance and not hatred. There they speak about freedom of information."
University College London voted last Thursday to twin with both Al-Quds and Al-Azhar, two secular Palestinian universities, after a campaign by their Friends of Palestine group.
Eager to share her views on the role to be played by the Manchester student body, the Deputy Ambassador urged: "If you want to help the situation in Palestine, always encourage the moderates, those that are not radical, teaching hatred and praising suicide bombers."
"We have three groups on university campuses, the silent majority, the pro-Palestine student body and the pro-Israeli student body. What I'd like to achieve is for those three groups to try and work on the common ground."
When commenting on the current situation in the Middle East it is clear that Mrs Lador-Fresher feels that the scores of civilian deaths in Gaza are a price that has to be paid for Israeli security: "When we reacted, we tried very much to get to the militants who are launching those rockets, but unfortunately because Gaza is so densely populated on the one hand, plus the fact that some of them are using Palestinians as human shields, roughly one third of the people who were killed were civilians. And for that I must say that I am very sorry."
Nevertheless, in spite of the Ambassador's hopes for a peaceful resolution to the conflict, it appears unavoidable that the debate over the Middle East, both on the international and student agenda, will rumble on for years to come.
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