American students protest in favor of Palestine

At several major universities and colleges in the United States Palestine Demonstrations in favor of are gaining momentum day by day, where The students The main demand is that universities divest their shares in companies that provide funding for Israeli aggression.

Important educational institutions of the American capital Washington DC have also joined these protests.

America’s famous and largest universities, also known as the Ivy League, are known around the world for their high academic standards, but at the moment their reputation is due to the campuses full of protesting students, Palestinian flags and police arrests. There is a crackdown, during which hundreds of students and teachers have been sent to jail so far.

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On the other hand, there is the administration of these universities Israel There is a lot of pressure from advocacy groups who call these protests anti-Jewish.

In response to the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 Israel’s military operations in Gaza Condemnation of civilian deaths in November 2023 took the form of protests.

At that time, there was a historic protest in Washington, the capital of the United States, in which more than five hundred thousand people participated, but the protests in universities are relatively new.

After the arrests of more than 100 students at New York’s Columbia University, classes on campus have been suspended for the entire semester, while many of the country’s leading political figures have visited the university and openly opposed the protests.

Yale, MIT, Harvard, California’s Humboldt, UT Austin, Berkeley and the University of Chicago have already joined the movement with their own demonstrations and protest camps in solidarity with Columbia University students, after Eventually, eight institutions in the states of DC, Maryland and Virginia also came forward to protest.

In this April 22, 2024, photo, students in favor of Gaza set up a protest camp on the UC Berkeley campus in California (AFP).

A grounds at George Washington University called U Yard has been transformed into a protest and rally site since Thursday (April 25), where chants for Palestinian freedom and a cease-fire could be heard long before arriving. are

Like Columbia and other universities, there are tents, about 20 in number.

A student, Sara (pseudonym), told Independent Urdu that she belongs to the University of Maryland and has been sitting on a bed since morning.

They said that their demands are the same, which are being made in Colombia and other institutions. The main demand is that universities divest their shares and stop funding from all institutions that are providing arms to Israel in one form or another.

This demand is being made at a time when the US government has recently passed a bill to provide $26 billion in emergency aid to Israel.

In this April 22, 2024, photo, students in favor of Gaza set up a protest camp on the UC Berkeley campus in California (AFP).

Michelle, a student from George Washington University, said that she has been warned by the administration that if the camps are not removed by the evening, Colombia-style action may be taken against them.

He said he and his colleagues were not afraid of it because, he said, it was a time like the 1960s, when every major American academic institution was on the streets against the Vietnam War.

According to Michelle, the police crackdown in Colombia is not a new thing for this institution.

Colombia has dealt harshly with protesting students in the past. In 1968, out of 1,000 students who demonstrated against the Vietnam War, 700 were detained on campus and 100 students were injured.

Earlier, in the early 60s, the protest demonstrations that started in a place called Graysboro due to racial bias in the state of North Carolina also engulfed the American campuses.

Now that every university seems to be condemning anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, Jewish student organizations say they are afraid to come to campus in this environment and feel unsafe.

At George Washington University, where the protest in favor of Palestine was going on, a few students stood silently holding the Israeli flag. On talking to them, it was learned that they are recording their protest.

The atmosphere is tense after police calls and arrests at universities, where in addition to Muslim and Arab students, American citizens, including a large number of Jewish students, are also worried about their personal security.