Firm condemns in the EU the genocide of Palestinians

Nueva York Y Washington. Students defied orders from academic authorities to clear sit-ins at dozens of universities, including Columbia in New York, where instead of leaving they received support from hundreds of other students and professors along with outside supporters, as the movement against Israel’s war in Gaza and American complicity is expanding in both elite private and public universities throughout the country.

In various parts of the country, students and their allies sang, said Muslim and Jewish prayers, carried signs with photos showing that There are no more universities in Gazathey repeated slogans of ceasefire and an end to American complicity, and stated on their banners that Silence is violence.

Chancellor Nemar Minouche Shafik, of Columbia, ordered students to vacate the sit-in in the center of the luxury campus in Manhattan at 2 p.m. yesterday or be subject to punishment and suspension from that university. When the deadline arrived, the young people responded at a press conference that These repulsive intimidation tactics mean nothing compared to the deaths of more than 34 thousand Palestinians. We will not move until Columbia meets our demands or we are moved by force.

Shortly before, hundreds of students surrounded the camp in the large central quadrant of the university along with brigades of professors who once again proclaimed themselves protectors of the sit-in. At the gates of the main entrance, at Broadway and 116th Street, outside supporters expressed their support.

The rector had announced hours before that initial negotiations with representatives of the student body had failed, she flatly rejected the students’ central demand for Columbia to withdraw its investments in companies with ties to Israel, but stated that for now she would not call again the police like a few days ago, repression that multiplied sit-ins at other universities.

However, the metropolitan police were present on the outskirts of the campus fueling tensions. Meanwhile, the university last night began to follow through on its threat to suspend students.

In the nation’s capital, a sit-in at George Washington University reconstituted itself after being repressed last Friday, leaving only a few students who police surrounded with barricades to prevent more people from joining. At 2 in the morning yesterday the site was taken again by the protesters and instead of the initial 30 tents there are now 70.

Sophie, a sophomore at George Washington, told The Conference that students from all over the capital are participating in protests demanding the “withdrawal of all our (university) investment funds from the Zionist State of Israel.

Police arrest a student at the University of Texas at Austin after clearing a pro-Palestinian sit-in on campus yesterday. Photo Afp

I have taken many classes on decolonization, and this is an opportunity to practice what I learned, he added. He stressed that the sit-in is flooded with art and music to build our community among people of diverse backgrounds, including many Jewish studentsand described how last night there were Irish, Filipino, Palestinian and American resistance songs.

Student protest events continue to multiply across the country in more than 75 universities. Sit-ins have been set up at the main public universities of Indiana and Ohio, South Carolina, Arizona State University, some of the public University of California system including Berkeley, Los Angeles and Riverside, the University of Wisconsin and also that of Minnesota.

At the University of Texas at Austin, peaceful students were repressed and forced to give up the place they had occupied only to retake it hours later as their numbers grew and pushed back, for now, the security forces.

Thousand arrests

The repressive actions have resulted in approximately one thousand arrests in the country, with scenes of physical violence by riot police, antiterrorists and even National Guard at various universities, both private and public, from Yale to George Washington, New York University and Emory University, among others.

At Indiana University the police placed snipers on some of the rooftops of that university; units attended in New York antiterrorists to repress some of the sit-ins, while in others police agents with firearms ready to be used were filmed, and in some tasersrubber bullets and tear gas against what were almost universally peaceful camps and demonstrations.

Although media attention has focused on elite private universities such as Columbia, Yale, Harvard, Princeton and Stanford, among others, it is even more worrying to local and federal politicians that the movement is spreading to large public state universities. of the country, whose students and their families live – and vote – in those states, including several that are key to determining the presidential and legislative elections this year.

For university authorities there is an increasing rush, as the school year is ending and they are preparing for their graduation activities. At Columbia, for example, the end-of-course ceremony is scheduled for May 15, right in the center of campus, where the sit-in is on one side. The luxurious University of Southern California announced the cancellation of its end-of-year ceremony after, among other things, prohibiting the student chosen as representative of her generation, a Muslim, from giving the traditional student speech at that ceremony.

Furthermore, many private university presidents are under intense pressure from billionaire donors and politicians of both parties to end the sit-ins. Some Democratic federal legislators, including leaders of that caucus, have even joined demands by their Republican counterparts demanding that university authorities such as those at Columbia act in a manner decisive to dismantle the seedlings. They accuse that these actions are antisemitessomething routinely rejected by Jewish members of these protests and their allies, including rabbis and Holocaust survivors.

Thank the universe for America’s college students. As Netanyahu and Biden continue the slaughter of the innocent, young Americans are responding; It’s an incredible and inspiring scene.wrote documentary filmmaker Michael Moore.