The Cambridge Students “Honouring the Martyrs”

I first noticed students perched over multiple big white sheets on Cambridge’s Sidgwick Site through the window of the Modern Languages library. I was studying, and caught glimpses of small groups of students, bodies changing with every hour, etching small lines into the blank of the sheet which lay on the ground next to Sidgwick’s central square. I later found out that these were students attempting to draw attention to the victims of the Israel-Gaza conflict, and the Palestinian Genocide.  

This action was organised by student-led activist organisation Cambridge University Palestine Solidarity Society, in association with Cambridge for Palestine. The organisation has proclaimed this final week of October as a “week of remembrance and action” which begun with a three-day living memorial, in which students and members of the public from across Cambridge were invited to write the names of “martyrs”. Student volunteers were referred to lists of the thousands of children killed in Gaza, at a time where Oxfam has found that more women and children have been killed in the region than any other conflict from the past two decades.  

The action took place across three days, from 28 October to 30 October, and across three different locations around Cambridge University: the Downing Site, Sidgwick Site, and lastly, the central King’s Parade. Participants could get involved for any amount of time they wished from 10am-5pm each day, transcribing the names of dead children onto white sheets while victims’ names were read aloud through a speaker.  

Watching the participants kneel and etch away from the library, even in the rain, made me want to understand why students decided to take time out of their day to join in. Here, I speak to some of those involved, including organisers and volunteers, to investigate the underlying motivations of this action within the landscape of Cambridge. 

Initially, I found there was a strong sense of grief – its processing, its contemplation – which led many to involve themselves with the ‘Honouring the Martyrs’ project. I spoke to Tilda (“like the rice!”, they note), a young person who grew up in Cambridge and felt compelled to join the project. They expressed that their involvement was motivated by the desire to find a space to just “sit and grieve”. The memorial served as a means of processing the stark loss of life suffered in Gaza and beyond. They noted the apathy that they felt when watching “people idly go by”. Akmal, a postgraduate student studying Earth Sciences, said he felt compelled to “do something” even if it was small, to stand against the “genocide”. He thought of the memorial as a sort of remembrance for those “being killed by the Israeli occupation”, including “babies” and “children”. 

Organisers noted that the memorial was also organised in order to bring attention to the scale and nature of death taking place in Gaza, with the lists of victims starting from babies, going up in age. By the end of the second full day of writing on Sidgwick Site, students had only managed to get to victims aged 4. One student organiser thought this represented “genocide in its purest form” and called on Cambridge to end its “complicity”. Earlier this year, the University came under fire when the Middle East Eye found that Trinity College was investing millions in companies linked to Israeli arms and defence.  

Further, speaking to volunteers on Sidgwick Site and King’s Parade, the desire to humanise victims was palpable. A third-year chemistry student at the University, who wished to remain anonymous, wanted to bring awareness to the individuality of every life lost. They hoped the memorial would provoke people into seeing victims “not just … as numbers but as people”. As Israel continues its renewed invasion of Gaza, an offensive that has seen over 700 people killed in the past three weeks, students and members of the public at Cambridge expressed horror at the ongoing nature of the suffering. The memorial has provided an opportunity for some to “acknowledge the names of children” who have passed.  

However, support for the memorial seemed laced with a bittersweet sense of community too. A student organiser for Cambridge Palestine Society, in the third year of their undergraduate degree, said they felt like people had become “more aware” by the third day of the memorial, especially given the high visibility of their location on King’s Parade. They stressed the “essential” nature of advocating for “institutional change”, which they hoped could have a “lasting impact”. Other students seemed to resonate with sentiment, as well as the community and solidarity that the project had bred. Another third-year student volunteer, who asked for anonymity, expressed that the memorial had given them hope that others also want to fight for change; “it is such a human thing to care for others”. Tilda also noted that helplessness can be resisted through “community”, something which people felt that actions like the memorial were helping to build.