Massive student protests are spreading at prestigious American universities, with more than 500 arrests. Students are increasingly setting up tent camps on the campuses of some of America’s largest universities in protest against the war in Gaza. On Saturday, students ‘burrowed’ into various faculties, it is said.
Columbia University in New York is leading the way, where students daily demand President Biden to put an end to the war that has already cost the lives of more than 34,000 Palestinians. Meanwhile, demonstrations demanding a ceasefire are reported from at least 40 U.S. campuses. Although most actions were peaceful, there were also incidents with security forces and a total of 500 people have been arrested, American media report.
This week, a new camp was set up on the campus of George Washington University in the US capital. In California, pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been taking place at universities all week. Another protest camp emerged on the campus of UCLA, the University of Los Angeles. Many pro-Palestinian demonstrations “descended into chaos as police arrived to disperse crowds and arrest demonstrators,” according to US public broadcaster NPR.
Vietnam
American historians are talking about one of the most important student uprisings the country has seen in recent times. Reference is often made to the Vietnam demonstrations in the 1960s. At the time, American students marched on campuses by the thousands. At different times they chose different targets: the Pentagon, Presidents Nixon and Johnson, the draft and the Dow Chemical company – infamous for its defoliant Officer Orange that led to deformities in newborn children during the Vietnam War. The student protests were united by a common belief that the Vietnam War was wrong.
The same common thread now exists because of Gaza. The recent wave of demonstrations started at Columbia University after the arrest of more than 100 people. This happened after the university administration called in the police to clear a pro-Palestinian encampment. The students responded by building an even larger camp a little further away. That led to new tensions. On Friday evening, the university administration sent an email to students saying that re-involving police would be “counterproductive at this time.” It was hoped that ‘negotiations’ with the students would yield more. “We will not rest until Columbia withdraws,” Jonathan Ben-Menachem, a fourth-year doctoral student, told the AP news agency.
There was a lot of buzz in America around a video of student protest leader Khymani James in which he said that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” and that people should be grateful that he didn’t kill them. “What I said was wrong,” James said in a statement yesterday. “Every member of our community deserves to feel safe without reservation.” Yet he was banned from campus by the university administration before that Friday.
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Requirement
A key demand from the students – in addition to pressure on the Biden administration to curb Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s revenge policy – is that universities cut their financial ties with companies linked to Israel or companies that profit from the war with Hamas. University boards have so far remained deaf to this demand.
Demonstrations have been taking place at American universities since the Hamas attack on Israeli settlements on October 7. Hundreds of Palestinian militants carried out massacres in the border area, killing at least 1,300 civilians and soldiers. An estimated 200-250 persons were captured and taken to Gaza as hostages. Students initially turned against the arms industry and demanded that universities cut their financial ties with arms manufacturers.
Protests in the Netherlands and elsewhere in the world
Students are also protesting against the war here in the Netherlands. In Nijmegen, the university library has been sprayed with graffiti several times and a building has also been defaced in Groningen. A building in Maastricht was already occupied at the beginning of November and the university was called ‘complicit in genocide’. The demand is usually that universities and colleges take a stand against Israel’s violence, just as they previously took a stand on Russia’s war against Ukraine. Education administrators prefer to remain neutral for the time being, according to VOX, the independent magazine of Radboud University.
Students from Sorbonne University have taken to the streets in Paris. On Wednesday, 10 tents were set up. Also in Australia, students from the universities of Sydney and Melbourne set up pro-Palestinian encampments this week and continued to protest on Friday. In Rome, students from Sapienza University have organized demonstrations, sit-ins and hunger strikes. A protest began on Monday in Leicester, England, with students from the University of Leicester’s Palestine Society also taking part. Last month, students from the University of Leeds occupied a building on campus in protest against the university’s involvement with Israel.
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