Jewish faculty at the University of Oxford have spoken out in support of students and others protesting for Palestine. 

In an open letter, 12 staff members said they were all "deeply disturbed" by the conflation of criticism of Israel with antisemitism. 

The group also said it was "deeply proud of the Oxford students, many of them Jewish" for their actions in solidarity with the international student movement for Palestine. 

READ MORE: Oxford's pro-Palestine protesters to return to site of clash with police

The letter said: "All of us are deeply disturbed by the rising tide of rhetoric conflating criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza with antisemitism, and by the use of this rhetoric to justify government interference in higher education and repression of student protest—all under the pretext of ‘protecting’ Jewish students and staff." 

The open letter published on May 27 said the group of Jewish faculty, staff, and emeriti at the University of Oxford had wide-ranging political persuasions, cultural backgrounds, and degrees of religious identification and observance.

The letter read: "Some of us teach and do research on Jewish history, the Holocaust, or Israel. Others have nothing to do with Jewish themes in our professional lives.

"As we write, the International Court of Justice has ordered Israel immediately to halt its assault on Rafah in order to safeguard Palestinians’ right to be protected from acts of genocide.

"As Jews, as educators, and as human beings, we stand with them."

Oxford Mail: Police on scene as another protest took place on Thursday Police on scene as another protest took place on Thursday (Image: Edward Burnett, Newsquest)The letter also disputed a statement from Oxford University which said the protesters had created "a deeply intimidating environment for many members of our community, including our Jewish students and staff and members of the local Jewish community".

The open letter said: "This is not our experience."

"It is also not our experience that the Oxford administration has been open to dialogue with members of the Jewish community who are supportive of the encampment. When some of us reached out to you recently to propose a conversation, you ignored our offer.

"We therefore object to the university’s reductive and misleading claims to speak on our behalf.

"The characterisation of Jews as a uniform mass with a single viewpoint is itself a common and insidious antisemitic trope."

The authors implored the university to "listen to" and "learn from" the students who had been calling for the institution to "reckon with its complicity in the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza". 

They called on the university to "follow the lead" of colleagues including at the University of Cambridge, Trinity College Dublin, the University of York, where good-faith dialogue had taken place with protesters.

A university spokesperson advised that, on receipt of the letter, the vice-chancellor reached out to the authors with a request to discuss.