US student demonstrations calling for a ceasefire in Gaza have intensified over the past weeks — with encampments popping up on more than three dozen campuses from Loyola University New Orleans to the University of New Mexico and from UCLA to Northwestern University.
To date, over 34,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 77,000 have been wounded since the beginning of Israel's war in the Gaza Strip, in revenge for the deaths of some 1,300 Israelis killed during the armed break-out by Hamas and other Palestinian groups on October 7, 2023, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
The spike in student protests was visible when 108 were arrested at New York City's Columbia University on April 18. New York police said US Democratic lawmaker Ilhan Omar's daughter, Isra Hirsi, was among those detained.
A day earlier, Columbia University president Nemat Shafik and other university leaders told Congress that they were cracking down on unauthorized demonstrations, sending warning letters to students and subjecting them to sanctions.
Undeterred, students started to put up tents before dawn on the morning of Wednesday April 17 for a sit-in protest in support of the Palestinians in Gaza on the South Lawn of Columbia University’s Morningside Heights campus.
The demonstrators occupied the lawn for 30 hours, despite the threat of being suspended. Eventually, Shafik called the police and over 100 were brutally arrested, prompting other student campuses to hold demonstrations in solidarity.
According to news website Axios, the demands of those in the encampments are similar:
They call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
They want their respective educational institutions to divest from companies related to Israel.
They oppose restrictions on the free speech of protesters bringing attention to the bloodbath in the Gaza Strip.
They seek more protections for black and Latino students, and also call for students suspended over the pro-Palestinian protests to be reinstated.
British liberal newspaper the Guardian called the unfolding pro-Palestinian student movement in the US "perhaps the most significant… since the anti-Vietnam campus protests of the late 1960s."
The US media admits that University administrations have responded to the protests in unprecedentedly harsh ways, after finding themselves unable to curb the tide of demonstrations. "The encampments and sit-ins have been largely peaceful, with little to no conflict until the point of police intervention," Axios acknowledged.
The police interference has by no means disheartened the students, instead prompting new actions and demonstrations.
After police arrested 47 at Beinecke Plaza at the center of the Yale University campus in New Haven, Connecticut, on April 22, the protest swelled even further. About 250 protesters gathered in support of the detainees as they were put onto police buses. Soon hundreds of demonstrators blocked the intersection of Grove and College Streets and occupied it for nine hours.
US legislators from both main parties had sharp criticism for the student protests, denouncing them as anti-Semitic — even though some of the protesters are Jewish. A group of Jewish Columbia University students celebrated the Passover Seder meal on April 23 while rallying for the pro-Palestinian cause.
"All this outrage is closing in on another institution, the Democratic Party, and its leader, President Joe Biden," warns the Economist, drawing parallels with the Dems snubbing the 1968 student protests against the war in Vietnam which cost the party the White House.
The US president continues to provide military aid to Israel, prompting some protestors to call him "genocide Joe." The US delegation to the UN in New York has also vetoed several Gaza ceasefire resolutions in the Security Council. That stances risks losing Biden the support of the Democrat's base — youths, progressives, non-whites and American Muslims — in November's elections.
On the other side of the political aisle presidential candidate Donald Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson and senior GOP lawmakers have also snubbed their voter base, which opposes funding for the Kiev regime's war effort.
Fifty-one percent of Americans disapproved of US lawmakers passing the new $61 billion Ukraine package, the DC-based Democracy Institute found last week. Republican voters are especially skeptical about Washington's proxy war in Ukraine at a time when the southern border is wide open to illegal migrants, criminal gang members and drug traffickers.