WASHINGTON (Dispatches) – Dozens of activists denouncing the Zionist regime’s war in Gaza remain camped out on the West Lawn of Columbia University, after New York City police arrested more than 100 people on suspicion of criminal trespass during a pro-Palestinian demonstration on the campus.
Now, students at several other universities are planning rallies in solidarity with the Columbia University demonstrators.
The University of North Carolina Students for Justice in Palestine held a solidarity rally Friday. The Boston University Students for Justice in Palestine announced an “emergency rally.” The Students for Justice in Palestine at The Ohio State University announced an “emergency protest supporting Gaza solidarity encampment.” And the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee announced a student walkout “in solidarity with steadfast Columbia students.”
Demonstrators at Columbia were “peacefully protesting for divestment from genocide,” said one of the organizers, Columbia University Apartheid Divest.
On Thursday, New York police dismantled tents set up by pro-Palestinian students at Columbia University, arresting 108 protesters.
Law enforcement officers came into action apprehending the students after Columbia University President Nemat Minouche Shafik authorized the New York Police Department to raid the campus following a grilling at a House of Representatives committee on so-called anti-Semitism.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams said police had made the arrests concerning alleged trespassing on the university campus.
Meanwhile, Zionist regime troops continued the genocidal war on the besieged Gaza Strip, bombing the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, and killing at least seven more on Friday, most of them women and children.
Further afield, hundreds of young people took to the streets in Milan on Friday calling to stop the Israeli war in Gaza and the environmental damage associated with it.
Footage shows protesters entering KFC fast food restaurant chanting ‘Free, free Palestine’ and holding banners reading ‘Free Palestine. Climate = justice’.
Then protesters marched to Eni petrol station, where they lighted flares and displayed a banner reading ‘Boycott tour, stop genocide’ following the company getting a gas exploration license in Israel. Similar actions were carried out outside a McDonald’s restaurant.
The Israeli regime has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in Gaza since the beginning of the war. Many more have been injured while still many more have been forced to flee the Palestinian land during the decades-long occupation.