STEPHEN GLOVER: In their face masks and keffiyehs, I found Oxford's Gaza protesters menacing and cult-like - if I were a Jewish student, I'd be afraid

Half a mile from my home in Oxford there is a so-called 'liberated zone', where pro-Palestinian students have set up a camp of about 40 tents.

Yesterday morning I visited the camp, which is spread out on a large expanse of grass belonging to Oxford University in front of the Pitt Rivers Museum. It has become boggy, and is littered with folded black bin bags, which I fear may have contained excrement.

A student leaflet asserts that the 'infamous' museum, which 'acquired its items from across the globe through imperial expansion, mirrors the ongoing struggle of the Palestinian people and connect [sic] us to colonised people'. You get the message. These are odd folk.

Pro-Palestinian student protests ignited in America last month. They have now spread across the Atlantic, and are taking hold in Oxford, Cambridge and a number of other British universities.

In principle, I like the idea of 'liberated zones'. But it would be hard to find somewhere less liberated than this camp festooned with Palestinian flags. There are banners accusing Israel of genocide, and denouncing it as an apartheid state.

This is a zone of sectarian prejudice and intolerance, where about half the students were wearing masks to conceal their identity. Many, of whom the majority were white, wore Arab keffiyehs on their heads.

Where is this latest American cultural import heading? Will it fizzle out as the summer comes, and the students disperse? Or will it grow in size and end in a confrontation with the University authorities which, as we will see, can't possibly meet the student demands even if they are so minded?

At first sight, the camp doesn't seem a particularly threatening place. Clusters of students were sitting around, chatting. Sleeping recumbent bodies could be spotted in a couple of pop-up tents. One student delivered a low-key speech enumerating Israel's latest infamies. There was a generally listless air.

No police were present. Nor was there any evidence of Jewish or other students mounting a counter-protest.

The students I approached were polite and welcoming. But when they learnt that I was a journalist, the shutters came down, and in some cases claws were displayed.

One American post-graduate student took exception to my writing for the Mail. She had evidently been upset by a piece on Mailonline about Kendall Gardner, a fellow American post-grad and an organiser of the protest, who has previously posted pictures of her rather ample bikini-body on social media.

My American student — not Kendall, who was possibly sulking in her tent — declared that she 'disliked' me 'a lot'. She added that I was 'privileged' to be allowed to look around the camp. I told her that I had lived in Oxford for 30 years (against her three). I could have added that this was university land.

When I asked her how long the protest would last, she replied that they wouldn't leave until or unless the University authorities removed them. This sounded like a provocative invitation. Dare to come and get us.

Two other students, one of them American, clammed up when I said I was a journalist. Another, also American, volunteered to find someone from the 'Press team', but returned empty-handed. She said she didn't want to 'engage'. She spoke in the slightly numbed tones of a cult member.

I was then approached by an aggressive young man wearing a mask, and with a keffiyeh wrapped around his head, who instructed my interlocutor (another journalist) not to talk to me. Although this character's face was mostly invisible, his accent suggested that he was English.

No one would give his or her name, or background. My impression is that many of the protesters were American — there are 2,025 of them at the university, according to its website — while there was a smattering of Palestinians.

I realise that students down the ages have demonstrated, and I naturally support their right to do so. Nevertheless, there is something menacing about this protest.

What would I feel if I were a Jewish student? There are more than 700 of them at Oxford University, according to the Union of Jewish Students, of whom the overwhelming majority must be British citizens. I think I would be afraid.

It was reported this week that a Jewish student was denied admittance to the pro-Palestinian camp in Oxford because he had declined to sign a document condemning the 'Zionist entity'.

Over in Cambridge, where a similar encampment has sprung up outside King's College, a Jewish student was jostled as he unfurled an Israeli flag, which was ripped from his hands. What he did was brave, and possibly unwise.

Yes, if I were a Jewish student, at Oxford or Cambridge or any other British university where protests are gathering steam, I would feel afraid — just as some of my Jewish friends are afraid of venturing into central London at weekends because of pro- Gaza demonstrations.

T o be frightened of racial abuse or attack in one's own country: that is a terrible thing. If I am correct in believing many of the Oxford protesters are American — and it's certain they are copying an American phenomenon — we must ask by what right they seek to destabilise and alarm citizens of this country.

Gaza is a foreign war. One may think of it what one likes. (Like many, I have become increasingly troubled by Israeli action.) Whatever one's view, it is certain that nothing anyone does in this country — from the British Government down to the meanest American protester — will have the slightest effect on Israel.

These camps can have no practical utility. They are expressions of a latent power that is bound to intimidate Jewish students, who are probably British citizens. I find that unconscionable.

Nor is there any likelihood of the University authorities caving into student demands. The Oxford rabble has a standard shopping list. End relationships with Israeli universities. Liquidate all investments that Oxford has in companies which either deal with Israel or manufacture arms. Stop banking with Barclays.

Some senior members of Oxford University may sympathise with the students — more than 300 out of 15,000 academics and staff have already signed an online letter in support of the protesters — but the University can't, and surely won't, cave into these unreasonable demands. This may end up with the authorities removing the tents.

In the 1970s, when I was at Oxford, Hard Left students were certainly capable of causing a rumpus. Some of them once occupied the Examination Schools for several weeks because they wanted their own student union. There's a photograph of Chris Huhne (later a Lib Dem Cabinet minister who ran into trouble with the law) trying to bash down the door.

However egregious that was, they didn't try to terrorise fellow students. And they were home-grown thugs.

I realise we live in a global village. But the spectacle of bigoted foreign students menacing British citizens in the Palestinian cause — not to mention desecrating a pleasant part of Oxford — marks a sinister departure.

This is one American import we can do without. Take your bullying tactics back to where you came from, and let Oxford return to being itself.