Protests Hit European Cities, Students Strike at UCLA

Israel Embassy Set on Fire in Mexico

Date: 29 May 2024 - 22:27

News ID: ۱۲۷۸۷۴

MEXICO CITY (Dispatches) -- Angry demonstrators have torched the Israeli embassy in Mexico City to denounce the ongoing genocide in Gaza, after clashes erupted between law enforcement and protesters.
Hundreds of protesters joined the “Urgent action for Rafah” demonstration outside the Israeli embassy. They clashed with police as some protesters sought to break down barriers preventing them from reaching the mission.
They lobbed Molotov cocktails at the building which set parts of the building ablaze. Protesters also hurled stones at the riot police who tried to break them up.
Mexico, on Tuesday, filed an intervention declaration in South Africa’s case accusing the occupying regime of Israel of “genocide” at the International Court of Justice.
Similar protests were observed throughout the world following an Israeli attack on a refugee camp in Rafah on Sunday evening, which killed at least 50 people.
In Paris, about 10,000 people took part in a demonstration near the Israeli embassy.
The demonstration gathered a few hundred meters from the embassy in the center of the French capital before protesters chanted “We are all Gaza children,” “Free Gaza” and other pro-Palestinian slogans.
Protests were also held in Madrid and Barcelona.
The demonstrations were organized a day after Israel’s attack in Rafah which set off a fire in a tent city.
“It is a massacre too many,” said François Rippe of the Association France-Palestine Solidarity group that organized the rally, which the Paris police service said involved about 10,000 people.
“They start a fire in a camp for displaced, they burn people and we (France) don’t even summon the Israeli ambassador to ask for an account. It is just not acceptable,” Rippe added.
One large banner at the rally showed presidents Emmanuel Macron of France Joe Biden of the United States and Zionist prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with the slogan “it is humanity they are assassinating.”
In the UK, police on Wednesday said that 40 people had been arrested and three officers injured after protesters refused to disperse following a demonstration in London over Israel’s latest crimes in gaza.
The British capital’s Metropolitan Police Service said the individuals were arrested late on Tuesday for offenses including breaching public order conditions, obstructing roads and assaulting emergency workers.
Police had approved plans for the early evening protest — organized by a coalition including the Palestine Solidarity Campaign — outside the gates of Downing Street in central London.
But it imposed conditions including that the rally end by 8:00 pm.
Up to 10,000 people attended, and the “vast majority” had left by the required time, but a group of around 500 remained to continue protesting, according to police.
“Officers engaged extensively before making a number of arrests for failing to comply with conditions,” the Met said in a statement.
“As they moved in, some in the crowd resisted physically requiring officers to use force to extract those who had been arrested.”
Further arrests followed later in the evening after the remaining demonstrators launched a breakaway march and were eventually corralled outside a train station, the Met said.
The Zionist regime renewed military aggression in Gaza, concentrated on Rafah, has sparked fresh protests in London and other cities around the world.
The British capital has seen frequent marches protesting Israeli atrocities, stoking controversy and political debate over how they should be policed.
They have passed off largely peacefully, but police have made arrests at many for various reasons.
In the U.S., discord from last month’s violent mob attack on pro-Palestinian students and activists encamped at the University of California, Los Angeles in the United States, flared again on Tuesday as academic workers staged a protest strike on campus protesting UCLA’s response to the incident.
Unionized academic researchers, graduate teaching assistants and post-doctoral scholars at UCLA walked off the job over what they regard as unfair labor practices in the university’s handling of pro-Palestinian demonstrations in recent weeks, organizers said.
They were joined by fellow academic workers at two other University of California campuses, UC Davis near Sacramento, and UC Santa Cruz, where the protest strike began on May 20.

The strike was organized by the United Auto Workers union Local 4811, which represents some 48,000 non-tenured academic employees total across 10 University of California campuses and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The UAW local includes about 6,400 academic workers at UCLA, 5,700 at Davis and about 2,000 at Santa Cruz. A union representative said “thousands” had joined the strike as of Monday by withholding their work, though fewer than 200 were seen attending a noon-time rally on the UCLA campus.
The expanding work stoppage marks the first union-backed protest in solidarity with the recent wave of student-led demonstrations on dozens of U.S. campuses against Israel’s military invasion of the Gaza Strip.
Union leaders said a major impetus for the strike was the treatment of 210 people arrested at the scene of a Palestinian solidarity protest camp torn down by police at UCLA on May 2.
About 24 hours earlier, on the night of April 30-May 1, a group of masked assailants armed with sticks and clubs attacked the encampment and its occupants, sparking a bloody clash that went on for at least three hours before police moved in to quell the disturbance.
The university has since reassigned the chief of the campus police department and opened an investigation into law enforcement’s reaction to the violence.
The strikers are demanding amnesty for grad students and other academic workers who were arrested or face discipline for their involvement in the protests, which union leaders say were peaceful except when counter-demonstrators and other instigators were allowed to provoke unrest.
Last week, three weeks after the melee, campus police announced their first, and so far only, arrest of someone accused of instigating the attack - a man they say was seen in video footage beating victims with a wooden pole.
The University of California filed its own unfair labor practices complaint with the state Public Employee Relations Board, but the panel refused to order a halt to the union’s protest strike.
Instead, the board ordered the two sides to take part in mediated talks aimed at settling the dispute. A union representative said the parties met once over the weekend.