Pro-Palestine protesters disrupt US tech billionaire talk at university

Pro-Palestine protesters have disrupted a talk by an American tech billionaire at Cambridge student union.

Peter Thiel, the Republican Party donor and founder of Palantir, which has defence contracts with Israel, was delivering a talk to students at the university on Wednesday evening when two pro-Palestinian protesters stood up an delivered a monologue accusing him of genocide.

They were escorted off the premises by security, with footage of the incident showing one of them raising a Palestinian flag in the air as he left.

Mr Thiel later emerged from the building and taunted hundreds of demonstrators, who had gathered outside behind a perimeter fence to disrupt the talk.

He approached the fence and filmed them on his phone while appearing to laugh and smile.

Pro-Palestinian group Youth Demand claimed responsibility for disrupting the talk and put out a press release accusing Mr Thiel of “profiting millions off the back of dead people”.

It comes after pro-Palestinian students on Monday set up a camp on the lawns of King’s College to demonstrate against Israel’s war in Gaza.

Protesters descended on the SU at around 6.30pm onwards, waving Palestinian and singing chants including “from the river to the sea” and “Israel is a terrorist state”.

A leaflet for the demonstration described Mr Thiel as a “far-Right campaigner” and a “genocide profiteer”.

Oliver Howes, 21, a third-year Cambridge student launched a lone counter-protest in solidarity with Israel.

The economics student at Trinity College stood with an Israeli flag raised across the road from the protesters in a peaceful demonstration.

Asked about his reasons for protesting, Mr Howes said he’s “fed up with people calling for genocide” and said he feels a “strong sense of solidarity against terror”.

Mr Howes, who is not Jewish himself, said he was here “to defend the only democracy in the Middle East”.