Pro-Palestinian demonstrations continue at universities across the United States and are also spreading to schools in Europe and Australia.
In the second week of protests demanding a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, thousands of students are calling on dozens of universities to divest from Israel.
Some universities were forced to cancel their graduation ceremonies, while at others entire buildings were occupied by protesting students.
One of the most recent 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 such as “No more investment in apartheid.”
Gabby Aossey, a student organizer of the CUNY protest, told Al Jazeera that the mobilization of young pro-Palestinian people in the US was “beautiful to see.”
“Young people are really starting to show up and demand that schools be held accountable for their relationship to Israeli colonization,” Aossey said.
Across the United States, university leaders have tried and largely failed to quell the demonstrations. Police have intervened violently, and videos have emerged from various states showing hundreds of students – and even faculty members – being violently arrested.
At Columbia University, where more than 100 pro-Palestinian activists were arrested by armed police on campus about a week ago, university leaders said in a statement Friday that there would be “even more turmoil” if the university again imposed the New York police would call what was happening on campus.”
Some university leaders and state officials have strongly condemned the protests, calling them “anti-Semitic.”
Demonstrators reject the accusation, with many Jewish activists and some Orthodox Jews joining the ranks.
“As a child of Holocaust survivors, it deeply disturbs me to see my own people perpetrating something that we went through,” Jewish anti-war protester Sam Koprak told Al Jazeera at a campus gathering.
“Stop complicity in genocide”
The protests that have sprung up around the globe in the nearly seven months since the war on Gaza began are spreading further outside the United States this week.
In Berlin, activists have set up a camp in front of parliament to demand that the federal government stop arms exports to Israel. At the renowned Sciences Po university in the French capital Paris, demonstrators blocked a central campus building on Friday and forced classes to be held online.
At the recent pro-Palestine rally in Sweden on Saturday, people marched through the streets chanting “Free Palestine” and “Boycott Israel.”
Hundreds gathered in central London on Saturday afternoon in solidarity with Palestinians, with a smaller group organizing a pro-Israel event.
“People are gathering here in Parliament Square, just outside the Houses of Parliament, in the latest in a series of very large protests in the heart of London,” Al Jazeera’s Harry Fawcett said in a report from London.
Ben Jamal, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, an organizer of the march, said he expected hundreds of thousands of participants from across the United Kingdom.
“Once again we send a double message. One of them is a message of solidarity to the Palestinian people. We see you, we hear you, we stand with you,” he said.
The second message, Jamal said, was addressed to the British political establishment “to end their complicity with Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people.”
Jamal dismissed critics, saying the protests were anti-Semitic.
“This tactic of mixing anti-Semitism with legitimate criticism of the State of Israel is very well known and is used by Israel around the world to silence those who advocate for Palestinian rights,” he said.
Meanwhile, Rina Shah, a Washington-based political strategist and former senior congressional aide, said protests at U.S. universities were a demonstration of democracy in action, a welcome sight in an election year marked by concerns about voter apathy. which is mainly due to Israel’s war against Gaza.
“So when I see a movement like this of students taking peaceful, non-violent action and expressing concern about the U.S. government’s support of Israel and where our tax dollars are going, I think that’s extremely healthy,” said she told Al Jazeera.
“Those students out there are concerned about America’s role in support [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu. On the one hand, we supply weapons and money to do what he wants to do in Gaza, while on the other hand we send humanitarian aid to Gaza. This is the hypocrisy that concerns these students.”