Thousands of students have staged demonstrations in response to Israel’s assault on Gaza
US police arrested more than 80 protesters on Wednesday as part of a crackdown on pro-Palestine demonstrations which have gained momentum across American university campuses.
A wave of demonstrations from Massachusetts to California began last week after students at New York’s Columbia University set up tent camps, demanding that universities cut ties to Israel and divest from companies allegedly contributing to the Gaza conflict. They also publicly called for a ceasefire in the Palestinian enclave.
Companies being targeted include Amazon and Google, which are part of a $1.2 billion cloud-computing contract with the Israeli government. Microsoft, whose services are used by Israel’s Defense Ministry and Israeli civil administration, has also been condemned, as well as arms manufacturers profiting from the war such as Lockheed Martin.
Students at schools including New York University, Harvard, and Yale demand that the US government “cease all funding for Israeli weapons and stop giving them any more money to continue this genocide,” Cameron Jones, part of Columbia’s Jewish Voice for Peace movement, said in a video statement on Wednesday.
Visiting the campus at Columbia on Wednesday, US House Speaker Mike Johnson denounced the protests as “mob rule” and condemned what he called a “virus of anti-Semitism” at colleges nationwide.
“And it’s detestable, as Columbia has allowed these lawless agitators and radicals to take over,” he claimed, calling for the resignation of the university’s president. (more...)
Dozens arrested at pro-Palestine protests in US
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