A UNIVERSITY rector who was accused of using her position to “foster hate” after calling out Israeli “genocide” in Palestine has refused to be intimidated.

Stella Maris of the University of St Andrews sent a message to students about the war on Gaza, which included a call for a ceasefire.

The university’s Jewish Society said that the message was “divisive, harmful and not based in fact.”

Urging her to apologise or resign, the society accused her of an “abuse of power.”

The university’s leadership team has also criticised the message.

But Ms Maris told The Telegraph that there was a “strong consensus” supporting her stance, stating that 6,600 students, staff and “community members” had backed her “humanitarian message, advocating for me to retain my position.”

She highlighted a letter sent by more than 100 “concerned staff” to the university’s leadership in which they expressed their “emphatic disagreement with your public statement criticising” the rector’s Gaza message.

Ms Maris also hit out at the Jewish Society statement online by saying she would not “have anti-semitism weaponised against me” and warning “you will never intimidate me into not speaking truth to power.”