NEW YORK, Apr 28 (APP): Pro-Palestinian demonstrations continue in universities across the United States Saturday, as authorities called in armed police to quell enraged student gatherings in some of the campuses, according to media reports. In the second week of protests calling for a ceasefire in Israel\u2019s war on Gaza, which has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, thousands of students are calling on dozens of universities to divest from Israel.<\/p>\n
Some universities have been forced to cancel their graduation ceremonies, while others have seen entire buildings occupied by protesting students. One of the latest to join the movement is The City University of New York (CUNY), where hundreds of students have set up an encampment on campus with banners with slogans like \u201cNo More Investment in Apartheid\u201d. Gabby Aossey, a student organiser at the CUNY protest said that the mobilization of young pro-Palestinian people in the US is \u201cbeautiful to see\u201d. \u201cYoung people are really starting to show up and demand that schools are held accountable for their relationship with the Israeli colonization,\u201d Aossey said. Across the US, university leaders have tried, and largely failed, to suppress the demonstrations. <\/p>\n
The police have intervened violently, with videos emerging from different states showing hundreds of students \u2013 and even faculty members \u2013 being forcefully arrested. Early on Saturday, police in riot gear cleared an encampment on the campus of Northeastern University in Boston. Several dozen students shouted and booed at them from a distance, but the scene was otherwise not confrontational. The school said in a statement that the demonstration, which began two days ago, had become \u201cinfiltrated by professional organisers\u201d with no affiliation to the school and protesters had used what they called anti-Semitic slurs. \u201cWe cannot tolerate this kind of hate on our campus,\u201d the statement posted on the social media platform X said.<\/p>\n
At New York\u2019s Columbia University, where more than 100 pro-Palestinian activists were arrested by armed police officers on campus about a week ago, university leaders said in a statement on Friday that if the university calls the New York Police Department again, it would \u201cfurther inflame what is happening on campus\u201d. Some university leaders and state officials have condemned the protests, calling them \u201canti-Semitic\u201d, but demonstrators reject the accusation, with many Jewish activists and some Orthodox Jews joining the ranks. \u201cAs a child of Holocaust survivors, it disturbs me to my core to see my own people perpetrating something that we\u2019ve been through,\u201d Jewish anti-war protester Sam Koprak told Al Jazeera at a campus gathering.<\/p>\n
The protests, which have sprouted all around the globe in the near seven-month period since the start of the war on Gaza, continue to spread this week outside the US as well. In Berlin, Germany, activists set up a camp in front of parliament to demand the German government stop exporting arms to Israel. At the renowned Sciences Po university in the French capital Paris, protesters on Friday blockaded a central campus building, forcing classes to be held online. The latest pro-Palestine rally in Sweden on Saturday saw people marching in the streets to chants of \u201cFree Palestine\u201d and \u201cBoycott Israel\u201d. Hundreds gathered on Saturday afternoon in central London in solidarity with Palestinians, with a smaller group organizing a pro-Israel event. <\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are gathering here on Parliament Square just outside the houses of parliament for the latest in a series of very major protests in the heart of London,\u201d Al Jazeera TV reported. Ben Jamal, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, an organizer of the march, said he expected hundreds of thousands to attend from across the United Kingdom. \u201cOnce again, we are delivering a double message. One is to the Palestinian people, a message of solidarity. We see you, we hear you, we stand with you,\u201d he said. The second message, Jamal said, is addressed to the British political establishment \u201cto end their complicity with Israel\u2019s genocide against Palestinian people\u201d. Jamal dismissed critics saying that protests have been anti-Semitic. \u201cThis tactic of conflating anti-Semitism with legitimate criticism of the State of Israel is a very familiar one, and is used globally by Israel to silence those who are advocating for Palestinian rights,\u201d he said. Meanwhile, Rina Shah, a Washington-based political strategist and former senior congressional aide, said protests in US universities are a display of democracy in action, a welcome sight in an election year marked by concerns of voter apathy chiefly due to Israel\u2019s war on Gaza. \u201cSo when I see a movement like this of students taking peaceful, non-violent action and expressing their concern about the US government backing of Israel, of where our tax money is going, I think that\u2019s extremely healthy,\u201d she said. \u201cThese students are out there concerned about America\u2019s role in backing [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu. On the one hand, we are supplying weapons and funds to do what he wants to do in Gaza, while on the other we are sending humanitarian aid to Gaza. This is the hypocrisy these students are concerned about.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NEW YORK, Apr 28 (APP): Pro-Palestinian demonstrations continue in universities across the United States Saturday, as authorities called in armed police to quell enraged student gatherings in some of the campuses, according to media reports. In the second week of protests calling for a ceasefire […]<\/p>\n
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