USA launch crackdown on anti-war protest camps set up by pro-Palestinian campaigners at US universities, leading to the arrests of dozens of students who want the genocide in Gaza to end.
By Harsh Thakor
April 25, 2024
Police and security forces in the USA continue to mercilessly pound on students engaging in protest in solidarity with Gaza in Universities. Displaying relentless courage, nonviolent student protesters who have been occupying campus lawns in Columbia University, University of Texas (Austin), the University of Southern California and many others across the USA. College campuses in USA have been the sites of frequent pro-Palestinian protests since October, and the NYPD’s crackdown on Columbia students last week galvanized students at universities across the country. The scenes in various universities are reminiscent of the protests during the Vietnam war.
The Biden administration has said little about the student demonstrations, but President Joe Biden referred to them as “antisemitic protests” this week. Despite the students’ protest, Biden approving a bill into law that would provide USD 26 billion to Israel as it continues the genocide in Gaza. Even the European Union has backed a UN call for an investigation into the over 300 Palestinians killed Palestinians found in mass graves lying below the ruins of two hospitals in Gaza.
Israel continued with its attack on Rafah, killing people in airstrikes on residential buildings. An air strike on a house in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah killed at least nine people, six of them children, hospital authorities said last Saturday. At al-Najjar hospital, relatives wept and hugged children’s shrouded bodies. “Hamza my beloved. Your hair looks so pretty,” wailed a mourning grandmother.
The fatalities included Abdel-Fattah Sobhi Radwan, his wife Najlaa Ahmed Aweidah and their three children, his brother-in-law Ahmed Barhoum said. Barhoum lost his wife, Rawan Radwan, and their 5-year-old daughter, Alaa. “This is a world devoid of all human values and morals,” Barhoum told The Associated Press, crying as he cradled Alaa’s body. “The only martyrs were women and children”, he added.
Reports of protests and repression
Students at UT Austin have had to withstand brutal repression, as ultra-right wing Texas Governor Greg Abbot called in State Troopers, many mounted on horses, who pounced on student protesters and made multiple arrests. Despite the state repression, student protesters refused to vacate, chanting “You don’t scare us!” and “Get off our campus!”
On the morning of April 24, Columbia student organizers made important announcements to those participating in the week-long protest, the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” at Butler Lawn. The previous night, Columbia administration had threatened to bring in the National Guard to sweep the encampment, in a disturbing echo of the Kent State massacre in 1970 of four students protesting the US war in Vietnam by the Ohio National Guard.
However, that morning, students announced to the entire encampment that “we won a huge concession—we have it in writing that we are here for 48 hours and we will not be swept; we will not be moved!”
Intense or fierce mass mobilization of both students and supporters, inside and outside campus gates, made the administration backtrack and deny plans of bringing in the National Guard, according to organizers. The administration had set a new deadline for an encampment sweep: Friday at 3 am.
As student organizers at Columbia plan to confront state repression, other campuses across the USA and in other countries started their own encampments in solidarity with Gaza at universities such as Harvard and Brown. On April 24, students of Sciences Po in Paris started encampment in solidarity with Gaza.
Protesters also experienced a wave of repression at the University of Southern California, where at least 93 people were arrested as Los Angeles Police attempted to clear the encampment. More than 100 students were detained by Boston police officers at Emerson College.
Meanwhile, advocacy group Palestine Legal on Thursday filed a complaint demanding an investigation into the Columbia school’s “discriminatory treatment of Palestinian students and their allies.” The school discriminated against pro-Palestinian protesters last week when President Minouche Shafik summoned New York Police Department officers in riot gear to arrest more than 100 students, said Palestine Legal.
According to Palestine Legal, students of all backgrounds who have demanded an end to Israel’s U.S.-backed massacre of Palestinians in Gaza “have been the target of extreme anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and Islamophobic harassment, including receiving multiple death threats, being harassed for wearing keffiyehs or hijab, doxxed, stereotyped, being treated differently by high-ranking administrators including… Shafik, an attack with a chemical agent that led to at least 10 students requiring hospitalization and dozens of others, including a Palestinian student, seeking medical attention, and more.”
Biden’s partner in crime, Israel PM Netanyahu called the students who have set up encampments in solidarity with Palestinians “antisemitic mobs” and accused them of attacking Jewish students and faculty.
Biden's partner in crimes against humanity is now endangering US college students, lying about campus protests, claiming "They want to kill Jews wherever they are"—all to distract from the horrors they're inflicting. Dystopia: https://t.co/vLUMNp1Vim
— Eli Valley (@elivalley) April 24, 2024
Solidarity messages
A Holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos, 86, opposed to Israel’s war on Gaza on Wednesday told U.S. student protesters they’re on the right side of history, and that the global wave of demonstrations against the slaughter and starvation of Palestinians will soon force Western leaders to face up to their complicity in genocide.
“As a Holocaust survivor, my message to the brave student protesters in America is just keep doing it. Don’t give up,” Kapos said in video published by Double Down News. “We are doing exactly the same, and in the long term we are going to prevail.”
Holocaust Survivor Message to US Campus Protesters:
This survivor of the Holocaust is against Genocide in Gaza & conflating Jewishness with Zionism, which does nothing but increase antisemitism.
Your protests are so persistent, large and global that eventually the Western… pic.twitter.com/IDCH0NTO6m
— Double Down News (@DoubleDownNews) April 24, 2024
Students across the globe have issued messages of solidarity with the US students withstanding repression in solidarity with Gaza. The Arab and Maghreb Youth Student Front Against Normalization and in Support of Peoples’ Causes has called for a “global youth student battle in support of Palestinian resistance and all solidarity forces with it,” stating that “what happened at Columbia University in the United States today is the best evidence of what we say, as after six days of sit-ins inside the campus, many other American universities like the University of California witnessed student movements supporting Palestine, shaking the throne of the entity and pushing the Biden administration to ruthlessly suppress protests supporting the Palestinian people and demanding an end to the genocide in Gaza.”
The Student Front has advocated a mobilization of all Arab and Maghreb youth students to “to intensify field movements in support of the Palestinian cause and to stop the genocidal war in steadfast Palestine, strengthening the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and protesting in front of American embassies and their symbols.”
The International People’s Assembly (IPA) also issued a statement denouncing the “brutal repression and mass arrests of students peacefully protesting their administrations’ investments in the Zionist entity and demanding an end to all academic partnerships and cooperation.”
“We call on all progressive and revolutionary forces around the world to join in solidarity with these students and the people of Palestine resisting on the frontlines,” the IPA stated.
Mass graves found
After the withdrawal of the IDF from the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, mass graves of hundreds of people, among them children, medical staff and patients of the hospital, have been discovered. Some of the people had been executed and buried naked with their hands tied. Colonel Yamen Abu Suleiman, Director of Civil Defense in Khan Younis stated “there were signs of field executions. We do not know if they were buried alive or executed.”
“I am sick to the bone. I want to throw up,” said physician and activist Mads Gilbert during a TV interview following the discovery of the mass graves. The fact that Israel continues its violence against Palestinians in Gaza unpunished is a sign of “massive moral collapse in Western governments,” Gilbert commented.
Representatives of the United Nations soon called for an independent investigation into the discovery of the bodies, asserting that they were aghast by the level of violence and destruction witnessed at Nasser, Al-Shifa, and other hospitals in Gaza. Health centers and hospitals, the UN and Gilbert stated, are meant to serve as sanctuaries and provide real protection during armed conflicts.
Throughout this war, the actions of the IOF have infringed the principle of protection of healthcare in wars. Hundreds of health workers are still being held hostage and imprisoned in Israeli prisons and concentration camps in the Negev desert. Others were killed, as well as members of their families, in bombing raids of targeted health centers, and some were released after long tenure of imprisonment and possible torture.
Harsh Thakor is a freelance journalist. Information collected from Common Dreams, Peoples Dispatch, PBS and Red Herald.