In December 2025, I used to be elected president of the Oxford Union, the world-famous debating society. I made historical past as the primary Palestinian to carry the function within the establishment’s 203-year historical past.
I gained the presidency by a major margin, in an election that noticed turnout far exceed latest contests. All through my marketing campaign, I used to be open about my background as a Palestinian from Gaza, and about how my id and household historical past have formed my understanding of the significance of illustration and debate. That openness, nonetheless, shortly turned the idea for sustained makes an attempt to discredit me.
Fairly than participating with my acknowledged platform or my report, early press reporting questioned my suitability for workplace purely on the idea of who I’m. The purpose was clear: to painting me as a radical, an extremist, somebody inherently suspect.
These experiences didn’t emerge in isolation. They shaped a part of a wider smear marketing campaign that accompanied my presidential run, wherein I used to be forged as an extremist and a safety concern. Inside that framing, false rumours started circulating that college students who supported my marketing campaign might face penalties themselves, together with the lack of visas, placement on safety watchlists or formal investigations. No proof was ever produced to substantiate any of this.
I at all times anticipated scholar politics to contain a sure stage of hostility. What shocked me was the extent to which supposedly respected shops adopted these narratives with out primary due diligence, and in some instances went additional, presenting insinuations as reality with the intention to depict me as unfit for workplace.
That sample turned unmistakable once I acquired an e-mail from the Jewish Chronicle looking for my response to a forthcoming article, a month after I had already been reported on by the Jerusalem Put up. The e-mail was framed as a chance for a “proper of reply”, however in observe it set out a sequence of claims and insinuations, introduced as proof of extremism. Probably the most evident of those was a supposed household hyperlink to a Hamas member.
The declare referred to Mohammed Al-Rayis, a person killed in an Israeli drone strike in Beirut in January 2024. He isn’t associated to me. The suggestion relied on pairing one of the frequent first names within the Arab world with a extensively shared household title from Gaza. My father, Mohammed Elrayess, who bears the identical title, is a scientist at Qatar College and could be very a lot alive.
Different factors raised in the identical e-mail weren’t allegations of wrongdoing in any respect, however descriptions of my speech and actions, reframed to look suspicious.
One involved a social media publish wherein I mourned the killing of Saleh Aljafarawi, a Palestinian journalist killed in Gaza in October 2025, shortly after the announcement of the most recent “ceasefire”. Within the e-mail, the Jewish Chronicle journalist described Aljafarawi as a “Hamas propagandist”.
Israel’s assault on Gaza has been the deadliest battle for journalists in recorded historical past. My publish was a defence of press freedom and a tribute to a media employee killed within the line of responsibility.
One other involved my involvement in a documentary I helped produce, Coronary heart of a Protest, which adopted pro-Palestine demonstrations throughout the UK. It was a zero-budget movie that allowed protesters to clarify why they continued to mobilise and the obstacles they confronted in doing so. All proceeds went to households in Gaza.
One other line of assault centered on a speech I made on the Oxford Union in November 2024, in favour of the movement, “This home believes that Israel is an apartheid state liable for genocide”. There was little interest in the substance of what I mentioned. The objection was to my participation itself.
I’m proud that I spoke at that debate to rebut arguments that justified or supported the genocide in Gaza. I’m proud that I used to be ready to talk about my relative, Maisara Al-Rayis, who was killed alongside his household in an Israeli air strike on his dwelling. If that’s an allegation, I settle for it with out hesitation.
For me, these patterns of assault don’t replicate energy. They replicate weak point. If the considerations raised about me have been real, if I really posed a hazard to the establishment I now lead, there can be no have to recast lawful and legit political expression as proof of extremism, or to indicate guilt by means of invented household associations.
These makes an attempt to discredit me sit inside a broader effort to silence Palestinians in public life, and to discourage Palestinian participation altogether. They’re meant to warn us off.
They won’t.
Let 100 articles be written to mischaracterise or defame us. We’ve lengthy handed the purpose the place this could intimidate us into silence. If something, it makes the necessity to converse all of the extra pressing.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
