George Abaraonye Ally Elected Oxford Union President

It has now been several months since George Abaraonye’s gleeful celebration of Charlie Kirk’s assassination dominated international headlines. For concerned members around the world, they thought, or perhaps hoped, that the whole saga marked the absolute nadir of the Union’s long decline. But they were wrong. While the Union’s attention remained fixed on Abaraonye’s long-overdue apology, the society was seized by the very faction that had defended him most ferociously. On 28 November 2025, Arwa Elrayess, a Qatari-raised Egyptian-Palestinian undergraduate at St Edmund Hall, was elected President for Trinity Term 2026.

But Miss Elrayess is no ordinary student. On the contrary, Arwa Elrayess is an alleged close relative of Mohammed al-Rayes, a Hamas militant killed in the same precision Israeli airstrike in Beirut in January 2024 that eliminated Saleh al-Arouri, then deputy leader of Hamas and one of the chief planners of the 7 October massacre. Far from distancing herself from her family’s alleged ties to a terrorist organisation, Miss Elrayess (who Anglicised her name) has used her Instagram account to repeatedly mourn prominent Palestinians, including Saleh al-Ja’farawi (the Gaza-based influencer and Hamas propagandist killed in 2024). She has also heavily promoted the short film Heart of a Protest, a 2024 documentary she personally narrated, which romanticises “resistance,” occupation-defiance, and Palestinian identity through the lens of campus protests.

It is this same worldview that now animates her approach to British institutions in general and the Oxford Union in particular. She approaches them not as historical inheritances to be engaged with, but as obstacles to a political project she believes must be swept away. In testimonies from anonymous Union whistleblowers, we found she makes little attempt to hide her contempt for what she sees as the cultural foundations of Britain, and frames the Union as merely another institution to be subverted.

What makes this worldview more complex is the ideological climate she was shaped by: she often references political narratives from her family’s region, where radical movements and anti-Western rhetoric have long been part of the landscape. Her own descriptions make clear that she was raised around a set of ideas that see British institutions not as neutral spaces, but as adversaries to be weakened or captured. It is only in that context that her behaviour within the Oxford Union makes sense: the attempts to delegitimise its traditions, the repeated insistence that it must be “repurposed,” and the tactical approach of working within the system while undermining its foundations.

Of course, Miss Elrayess did not just stumble into the Presidency by accident. She was also aided by the patronage of some of the Union's most infamous figures, all intent on abetting her in her quest to turn the society into her personal fiefdom. Most prominently among them is George Abaraonye, the disgraced former President-elect who was removed from office following a landslide vote of no-confidence in October. The two have been particularly close allies in the months since his comments went viral. Her own loyalty was on full display on October 15th, when the governing body of the society met to discuss the regulations that would govern the poll of no-confidence in Abaraonye. The ratified minutes show the lengths to which Miss Elrayess was willing to go to aid Abaraonye in his quest to retain power: she accused all alumni members of the society of racism, demanded the committee disenfranchise them, and insinuated that they were incapable of making a rational judgment.

Miss Elrayess also shares a close relationship with Miss Sarah Rana, the former treasurer of the Union, who is a controversial figure herself. Only a year ago, she openly mourned the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh with the simple caption “this is such a loss,” asking her followers if they were tearing up at the footage of the funeral. For reference, Ismail Haniyeh was the Qatar-based head of Hamas who masterminded the financing and political strategy behind the 7 October attacks––the same Hamas that the UK, EU, and US designate as a terrorist organisation, and the same Haniyeh whose personal wealth was estimated in the billions while Gaza remained in ruins.

After the result was declared, George Abaraonye, the same disgraced President-Elect who had spent the previous months issuing qualified apologies, reposted the news, claiming “better days are coming [for real].” Later, Sarah Rana declared to her thousands of followers “[sic] cannot wait to celebrate with u soon inshallah.”

Her start in The Union however was not typical. The Union’s Israel–Palestine debate at the end of 2024 is an already world renowned scandal: Jewish students reported feeling too intimidated to enter the chamber, Israeli speakers struggled against repeated heckling, and the motion branding Israel an “apartheid state responsible for genocide” passed to loud approval. It was during this fraught evening that Ms Elrayess first emerged as a political actor within the Union. Her speech in favour of the proposition, delivered into an already volatile room, placed her squarely within what would later be known as the George faction. Her prominence did not come from experience or steady contribution, but from positioning herself within a faction that thrived on the polarisation that debate exposed.

And then, in the final, unmistakable proof that civility has entirely vanished, a grotesque antisemitic caricature appeared within hours of Miss Elrayess’ victory on the Facebook page “Union Memes for Power-Hungry Teens in Exile,” made to memorialize their vitriol forever. Titled “The Weight of Influence,” it showed Miss Elrayess and her allies lounging triumphantly on a vast red throne while the candidates they defeated were crushed beneath it. They were deliberately rendered as the vilest Jewish stereotypes lifted straight from the pages of Der Stürmer: one as a lizard, another as a hook-nosed banker, and a third as a wild-eyed Holocaust survivor. This was not satire, not “edgy” banter, not even the usual student-meme clumsiness; it was pure, unabashed Nazi-era race hatred, celebrating the electoral defeat of Jews as though the Union had finally been ethnically cleansed. 

For Miss Elrayess, the Oxford Union is not a debating society to be reformed; it is a British institution to be captured and reshaped. In conversations with members of committee who have anonymously come forward, she and her allies have been clear that they view the Union as a relic of old Britain, one that must be hollowed out and repurposed if a different political vision is to take hold. 

Their aim is not engagement but transformation, using the prestige of the institution as a vehicle for ideas openly hostile to the historical traditions it represents. This, of course, is the typical modus operandi of radicals: they rarely attempt to dismantle an institution outright. Instead, they infiltrate it, launder their message through its influence, and cloak their agenda in the stolen legitimacy of the very history they dismiss. 

What is increasingly evident is that Oxford’s problem is no longer benign. George Abaraonye was not an anomaly but a symptom of something deeper and more corrosive. A systemic issue is taking root in Oxford, and if the University chooses not to confront it, the consequences will fall not only on students but on the institution itself. Those who care about Oxford must recognise this and act before the damage becomes irreversible.