TEHRAN -- Students and staff of Tehran University have held a rally in support of growing protests on U.S. campuses where students have erected encampments to demand action to end Israel’s war on Gaza.
Chanting “death to America, “death to Israel” and “death to England”, the demonstrators on Saturday condemned violent U.S. police attacks on the students.
The rally was a show of “support for the awakening consciences of the American and European academic community in denouncing violence against and the killing of the oppressed Palestinian people by the fake Israeli regime and America’s support for the child-killing regime,” IRNA reported.
Student protests in the U.S. over the Israeli war on Gaza have intensified and expanded over the past week after police first arrested students at Columbia.
Gaza solidarity encampments have been established at colleges, including Yale, and New York University. Police have been called in to several campuses to arrest hundreds of student demonstrators.
The protests have been peaceful and largely respectful, but have been met by heavy-handed action from authorities and police. Hundreds of police officers have raided the campuses, some on horseback. Holding batons, they have charged at the crowds and forcefully arrested many students.
On campuses where protests have broken out, students have issued calls for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, an end to U.S. military assistance for Israel, university divestment from arms suppliers and other companies profiting from the war, and amnesty for students and faculty members who have been disciplined or fired for protesting.
U.S. President Joe Biden has characterized the revolt as “antisemitic protests”. 
Iran’s permanent mission to the United Nations office in Geneva denounced the ongoing crackdown on U.S. campuses, stressing that violence against peaceful protesters will not silence them.
“We strongly condemn the brutal and violent crackdown on widespread peaceful pro-Palestinian protests at universities in the United States. The US Police brutality and excessive use of force during peaceful assemblies, and targeting students advocating for an end to genocidal war in Gaza is a matter of serious concern,” the mission said in a post on its X social media account on Saturday.
“Demonstrators are precisely calling for ending the U.S. complicity in ongoing Genocide in Gaza in their name. Firing and beating peaceful protesters does not silence them, who are the frontline human rights defenders, it only reaffirms the urgency of the struggle for justice for Palestine,” it added.
“Police attacks against university students and professors, the scale of arrests and the conditions of detentions are deeply disturbing and we call for the release of all detained.”