In January 1933 the Oxford Union voted 275-153 to approve the motion: “That this House refuses in any circumstances to fight for King and Country.” The proposition became known as the Oxford oath.
Winston Churchill was not amused. While others counseled that it be dismissed as youthful folly, he declined to ignore the proceedings at Oxford. Rather, he declared it “a very disquieting and disgusting symptom” and proceeded to explain why it troubled him (as Martin Gilbert puts it in the fifth volume of his Churchill biography, The Prophet of Truth, 1922-1939):
My mind turns across the narrow waters of [the] Channel and the North Sea, where great nations stand determined to defend their national glories or national existence with their lives. I think of Germany, with its splendid clear-eyed youths marching forward on all the roads of the Reich singing their ancient songs, demanding to be conscripted into an army; eagerly seeking the most terrible weapons of war; burning to suffer and die for their fatherland. I think of Italy, with her ardent Fascisti, her renowned Chief, and stern sense of national duty. I think of France, anxious, peace-loving, pacifist to the core, but armed to the teeth and determined to survive as a great nation in the world.
One can almost feel the curl of contempt upon the lips of the manhood of these peoples when they read this message sent out by Oxford University in the name of young England.
I thought of Churchill’s denunciation in connection with Melanie Phillips’s discussion of the Oxford chant on Julia Hartley-Brewer’s show on Talk yesterday: “Gaza, Gaza, make us proud, put the Zios in the ground.” Phillips describes Hartley-Brewer as a supporter of Israel who upholds sanity, patriotism, and a moral compass. They talked about the Gaza ceasefire, the return of the Israeli hostages, and the Trump peace plan as well as the Oxford student whose chant can be seen in the video below. To adapt a line from Wordsworth’s “London, 1802” — Churchill! thou shouldst be living at this hour[.]
The Oxford student wore a keffiyeh and led a chant wishing for the death of “Zios.” He is a performative supporter of Hamas. Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal reported on page one:
As Israeli troops pulled back last week to facilitate a deal that freed the living hostages still held in Gaza, Hamas surged security forces in behind them—a public assertion of authority intended to make clear the group remains the enclave’s governing power.
Those forces immediately began cracking down on rival militias controlled by prominent Palestinian families, engaging in firefights and conducting public executions that have spread fear and raised concerns that a spiral of internecine violence could bring new pain to a long-suffering population.
Clashes around a hospital in Gaza City on Sunday left dozens dead, according to the Hamas unit that conducted the raid and members of the family it was fighting. Videos that emerged Monday—verified by Storyful, which like The Wall Street Journal is owned by News Corp—show Hamas fighters dragging a number of men from the family into a public square in broad daylight, forcing them to kneel and executing them in front of a crowd of onlookers.
One could understand the pacificism of Oxford students in 1933. It’s a little harder to understand their support of the Islamist Nazis of Hamas in 2025. I take it from the Journal story that Hamas isn’t disarming, isn’t going anywhere, and isn’t ceding power. The Oxford student would be encouraged by Gregg Roman’s MEF essay “The Ghost of Gaza: How Hamas Survived.”
