Australian students join protests for Palestine
Students from universities in Australia are joining their American peers in pro-Palestine protests that call for their educational institutions to cut ties with Israel.
Protesters at Columbia won’t leave until they see a commitment to divest from Israel
It is day 10 of this demonstration, and it’s a beautiful Friday afternoon here in New York.
The students are praying on campus now. There is a Muslim evening prayer happening right now, and in a couple of hours, there will also be a Shabbat Jewish dinner, this evening.
The students say there is growing camaraderie among the group, and it’s very welcoming, not hostile, not anti-Semitic. They’re trying very hard to fight these accusations, and they say that anyone who makes that accusation should come and see what’s happening here.
But getting to those all-important negotiations, the students told me that they spent 11 hours with the administration yesterday and another hour here this morning.
There’s some possibility that those discussions will continue over the weekend. They have not been given a deadline to leave or face eviction. However, they haven’t been promised that that won’t happen either.
The university made some offers to the students, saying that they would agree to look at divestments and start the process of reviewing them and talking about them with the students.
But the students said that’s not good enough. They want a commitment to divest from Israel.
And that (underlined) is the problem, Jews and Muslims aren't allowed to show they can live together. Only as long as USA and Israel can keep up the appearance that Islam is Israel's mortal enemy and will destroy Israel at any given opportunity, can they keep this self-defense genocide going.
Age old tactic, divide and conquer.
And that's what CNN calls 'complex' about the situation
Students inside campus encampments that have spread across the United States over the past week are from a variety of backgrounds — including Palestinians, Arabs, Jews and Muslims, joined by students of other religious and ethnic backgrounds. They hold a spectrum of political and social views too: liberal and heterodox, progressive and absolutist. Many have been motivated by the reports and video coming out of Gaza that is often unbearable to watch.
Can't have people coming together, stay in your own echo chamber. Yet that's what schools and universities are all about, exchanging ideas, learning from each other. It's not complex, society barricading itself in echo chambers is the problem.
A silver lining, kids are learning to socialize and talk to each other in person again during these protest encampments. But we'll call it anti-semitism instead of a solidarity movement.
University of Texas professor says protests have been ‘nothing but peaceful’
The University of Texas at Austin has been a main flash point of protest across US college campuses, with the public institution’s president Jay Hartzell facing calls to resign following a police crackdown on peaceful demonstrators.
The president initially supported the police action, which saw several violent arrests, but has since said he supports the right to protest on the campus.
But faculty member Pavithra Vasudevan, an assistant professor of women’s and gender studies, said outrage remains over how the president has responded to “protests that have been nothing but peaceful”.
“They have been nothing but a spontaneous and organised expression of people’s feelings about what’s happening,” she told Al Jazeera from the university’s campus.
The protests arose, she added “at a time when the university is fully repressing any conversation about Palestine, faculty are scared to mention the word Palestine in their classes. People don’t want to talk about the genocide. There has been strong indication from the university since October 7 that this is not our topic of conversation.”
Israeli bombardment continues in Rafah
As Palestinians are following the protests at American universities, they have also been subjected to bombardment in the past couple of hours. Israeli fighter jets targeted a residential house in the northern part of Rafah district, with no casualties reported.
Just a half hour ago, an Israeli fighter jet targeted another house on the vicinity of Rafah crossing, in the southern part of Rafah district, with at least two Palestinians injured.
Meanwhile, at least three Palestinians have been killed in the vicinity of a school in the southern part of Khan Younis city.
