https://arab.news/mj394

Long running pro-Palestine demonstrations at some of the most prestigious universities in the US, including Yale, Columbia and Princeton, have given way to mass sit-ins and demands for a halt to investments in Israel and in arms manufacture. Protesters at Columbia declared: “We will not rest until Columbia divests from apartheid Israel, Palestinians are free, and liberation is achieved for all oppressed people worldwide.”

Hundreds of students and academics have been arrested at campuses throughout the US for peacefully exercising their democratic freedoms. State troopers in riot gear swarmed through the University of Texas, arresting dozens on the orders of far-right Governor Greg Abbott, who declared: “These protesters belong in jail.” A police purge against Columbia University’s “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on April 18 inspired a host of copycat sit-ins elsewhere. “The irony is that in trying to quiet things down and assert control over the encampment, the administration unleashed this firestorm,” one professor remarked. Parallel protests are springing up in France, Britain, Germany, Austria, Canada and elsewhere.

These students’ passion and the impact of their demostrations prompted an unnerved Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take a brief break away from plotting mass murder and angrily denounce the protests as “reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s”. US Senator Bernie Sanders, who is Jewish, forcefully hit back: “Do not insult the intelligence of the American people by attempting to distract us from the immoral and illegal policies of your extremist and racist government … it is........

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