Liam O'Dell
May 17, 2024
GB News
In one of the most excruciating media clips to circulate in recent weeks, former home secretary Suella Braverman was filmed being completely blanked by pro-Palestine protesters at the University of Cambridge on Thursday, as the Tory MP along with GB News presenter Patrick Christys tried to find out more about the demonstration.
People have camped out on the lawn outside Senate House this week over the ongoing war in Gaza, in a protest which comes before students are set to graduate on Friday and Saturday.
According to one Cambridge student, who did not want to be named, the protesters are demanding the university discloses “all of its research collaborations and financial ties with companies and institutions complicit in Israel’s genocide and then to divest from these”.
Unfortunately for Christys and Braverman (which sounds like a terrible double act when we put it like that), they were unable to obtain a similar explanation when they walked around the university site.
Approaching one group of protesters wearing keffiyehs, Braverman said: “Hi, I’m Suella. I’m keen to find out your views and what you’re protesting about … [I’m] interested in why you’re covering your faces, is it a Covid or a health measure?”
Silence. The group instead just stared at both of them, with their arms crossed..
Braverman told Christys: “These are supposed to be some of the brightest and the best students in the land, and taught in the art of articulating your views and expressing your arguments in a coherent way, and I’m interested in hearing your arguments, engaging and listening.”
The Fareham MP then moved on to ask questions of a man sitting and holding up a sign which read “openly Jewish against visible genocide”.
“I’m Suella, can I ask you what your message is to Israel,” she said, to which the man – perhaps unsurprisingly – gestured to his sign.
He remained silent when Braverman asked what his message was to Hamas.
“Morning, everybody. Hi, I’m Suella Braverman MP. I’m here to enquire about what you’re protesting about, and give you an opportunity to send a message onto national television,” she asked of another group.
Again, she was met with painful, uncomfortable silence, though Twitter has been loving all two-and-a-half minutes of the clip from GB News:
Braverman told The Jewish Chronicle in March last year that she has “close family members who serve in the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces]” and last month stated Israel was "absolutely not" in breach of international law.
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