Gaza protests grow at US colleges, thousands demonstrate in Brooklyn
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[April 25, 2024]
By Cath Turner and Jonathan Allen
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Protests against Israel filled streets in Brooklyn
and escalated at universities across the United States, some of which
included Jewish Passover Seders, as demonstrators demanded an end to
civilian casualties in Gaza.
The growing protests follow mass arrests of demonstrators at some East
Coast universities in recent days, and show a deepening dissatisfaction
in the United States, historically Israel's most important ally, with
the course of the war with Hamas.
Pro-Palestinian protests have followed President Joe Biden, a
self-declared "Zionist," for months. On universities, protests have
recently grown to encampments that draw students and faculty of various
backgrounds, including of Jewish and Muslim faiths, that host teach-ins,
interfaith prayers, and musical performances.
A large Brooklyn street protest reached a standoff on Tuesday when New
York police began to arrest people over disorderly conduct, restraining
those who refused to move with zip ties.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations criticized the use of police
force to stifle dissent, saying it undermined academic freedom.
"So does defaming and endangering Jewish, Muslim and Palestinian ...
students based on suspiciously inflammatory remarks that a few
unidentified, masked individuals have made outside of campus," Afaf
Nasher, executive director of CAIR in New York, said in a statement.
Critics of the protests, including prominent Republican members of the
U.S. Congress, have stepped up accusations of antisemitism and
harassment by at least some protesters. Civil rights advocates,
including the ACLU, have raised free speech concerns over the arrests.
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There have been heated exchanges of words and insults between
pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli demonstrators, particularly in the
public streets around Columbia, leading congressional Republicans on
Tuesday to demand that Biden do more to protect Jewish students.
Several campus protesters Reuters spoke to attributed the off-campus
incidents to rogue provocateurs who are trying to hijack the protests'
message.
"There are no universities left in Gaza. So we chose to reclaim our
university for the people of Palestine," said Soph Askanase, a Jewish
Columbia student who was arrested and suspended for protesting.
"Antisemitism, Islamophobia and racism, in particular racism against
Arabs and Palestinians, are all cut from the same cloth."
Other students blamed universities for failing to protect their right to
protest or stand up for human rights.
"As a Palestinian student, I too did not feel safe for the past six
months, and that was as a direct result of Columbia's one-sided
statements and inaction," said Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student at
Columbia.
Students at the University of California, Berkeley - a school well known
for its student activism during the 1960s - set up tents in solidarity
with protesters at other schools.
Milton Zerman, 25, a second-year student at Berkeley's law school, who
is from Los Angeles, said Jewish and Israeli students have suffered from
hateful harassment.
"When you're an Israeli student on this campus, you feel like you have a
target on your back, you feel unsafe and it's no wonder students from
Israel are so hesitant to come here," Zerman said.
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![](../images/042524PIX/news_n35.jpg)
Students build a protest encampment in support of Palestinians, at
the University of Southern California's Alumni Park, amid the
ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group
Hamas, in Los Angeles, California, U.S., April 24, 2024. REUTERS/Zaydee
Sanchez
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New York police arrested more than 120 protesters at New York
University on Monday and more than 100 at Columbia University last
week. Columbia canceled in-person classes at its Upper Manhattan
campus on Monday in a bid to defuse tensions.
On Tuesday, Columbia said classes for the rest of the year would be
hybrid, with students able to attend online or in person.
Later, the university's president said it was time “to move forward
with a plan to dismantle” the pro-Palestine encampment, and gave
organizers a midnight deadline to do so.
California's Cal Poly Humboldt, a public university in Arcata, was
shut down after pro-Palestinian protesters occupied a campus
building.
At the University of Minnesota campus in St. Paul, police cleared an
encampment after the school asked them to take action, citing
violations of university policy and trespassing law.
PASSOVER PROTESTS
Some Jewish demonstrators said they were taking the second night of
the weeklong feast of Passover, a holiday feast when families gather
and celebrate the biblical account of the Israelites' freedom from
Egyptian slavery, to reaffirm their faith and distance themselves
from the Israeli government's war strategy.
"I don't see what Israel is doing as self-defense. I see incredible,
absolutely unbelievable human rights violations," said Katherine
Stern, 62, of Woodstock, New York, who gave up her family Seder 120
miles (190 km) away to attend the Brooklyn protest.
Protesters want university endowments to divest from Israeli
interests and the United States to end or at least condition Israeli
military aid on improving the plight of Palestinians.
Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 and
taking scores of hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Israel's
counterattack has killed over 34,000 people, according to the
Palestinian health ministry, displacing nearly all of Gaza's 2.3
million people and causing a humanitarian crisis.
In Brooklyn, about 2,000 people occupied a plaza near the Brooklyn
home of U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Shumer, a staunch Israel
supporter and the highest-ranking Jew in the U.S. government,
chanting, "Stop arming Israel," "Stop funding genocide" and "Let
Gaza live."
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Organizers staged music and song from Jewish and other cultures,
giving prominence to Canadian author Naomi Klein, a peace activist
who drew on her Jewish roots to argue against Zionism, which she
called a "false idol."
"We want freedom from the project that connects genocide in our
name," Klein said to cheers. "We seek to migrate Judaism from an
ethnostate that wants Jews to be perennially afraid ... or that we
go running to its fortress, or at least keep sending them the
weapons and the donations."
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen, Cath Turner and Julia Harte in New
York, Nathan Frandino in Berkeley, California, Kanishka Singh in
Washington, Brendan O' Brien in Chicago, and Andrew Hay in Taos, New
Mexico; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Bill Berkrot, David
Gregorio, Heather Timmons and Gerry Doyle)
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