USA: Student anger over Gaza

The police arrested dozens of students and activists at pro-Palestine demonstrations at Yale University in Connecticut and New York University in Manhattan, as student protests intensify at US academic institutions demanding a cease-fire in Gaza.

In campus of Yale authorities arrested 47 protesters on Monday night, the foundation said in a statement. Students caught will be referred for disciplinary action.

New police operations came next Columbia’s decision to cancel lifelong learning and to proceed with remote education as a “response” to the makeshift camps set up in front yards by students standing in solidarity with the people of Palestine.

At Yale hundreds of people demonstrated to demand the end of the university’s cooperation with Israeli companies, in a similar move to the Columbia students who have similar demands. The Yale administration announced that it had repeatedly warned students to leave the forecourts.

In New York, the authorities removed protesters from Gould Plaza outside New York University (NYU), on Monday night. Videos released on social media show police breaking up the makeshift camps as the situation is tense. A spokesperson for the NYPD said the arrests came after the university asked police to “enforce the law,” but the total number of arrests was not released, the Guardian reported.

The arrested were however released in the early hours of Tuesday.

The student newspaper Washington Square News reported that NYPD officers said the arrests would be made because the students were “obstructing traffic.”

Last week, Columbia University President Nemat Minouche Shafik called in the New York City police to “clear out” a tent camp that had been set up at the institution’s main entrance. The students were also asking there that the administration cut off all business relations with Israeli companies, stating that “our tuition fees will not be soaked in blood”. To the point more than 100 students were arrested, while Columbia as well as its “brother” Barnard College, temporarily suspended student status for those who were brought in.

Still, at Columbia a new camp was set up solidarity, while hundreds of faculty members stage a mass strike to protest the administration’s handling.

Bassam Khawaja, an adjunct lecturer at Columbia Law School and supervising attorney at the school’s human rights committee, told the Guardian she was “shocked at the president’s decision to go immediately to New York authorities” to seek intervention. “There was no violent protest. A group of students just occupied a space on the grass, they were not obstructing anything,” he said.

After the crackdown in Columbia, students across the US are organizing to protest taking their side. Students at Brown, Princeton and Northwestern held protests Friday and over the weekend.

Students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Emerson College set up their own protest camps. Protests also took place at Boston University, UC Berkeley and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Columbia donor threats

In the meantime Robert Kraft, a major donor to the university; expressed his displeasure “at the insufficient protection that Columbia affords to Jewish students.”

The Jewish-born Kraft, who has donated millions of dollars to the university, is threatening to cut off funding, saying he “doesn’t feel comfortable supporting the university until remedial measures are taken.”

From his side US President Joe Biden said in a statement on Sunday that the government is doing everything to protect the Jewish community.

“Even in the last few days we have seen harassment and calls for violence against Jews,” Biden complained. “This blatant anti-Semitism is reprehensible and dangerous and has absolutely no place in universities or anywhere else in our country,” he added.

The students organizing the protest in Columbia criticized Biden’s announcement, pointing out that some of the participants are Jewish, while stating that the media has focused “on isolated and extreme individuals who do not represent us”.

“We were abused by the media, the police arrested us, the university kicked us out. We have knowingly put ourselves at risk because we can no longer be complicit with Columbia and its management funneling our tuition to companies that profit off death. We are united by our love for Justice and demand that our voices be heard against the mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.

The images of children crying over the bodies of their dead parents, the images of families begging for food, the images of doctors operating without anesthesia, they terrorize us every day.

We strongly reject any form of hatred or intolerance and remain vigilant against outsiders who attempt to disrupt the solidarity forged here among students, Palestinians, Muslims, Arabs, Jews, Blacks and pro-Palestinian colleagues who represent the diversity of our country,” the protestors’ statement said. students.