Watch Nidhi Razdan: Pro Palestine protests spread across US University campuses

Gulf News

American campuses have become the new battleground in the Israel- Gaza conflict. In unprecedented scenes, hundreds of students demonstrating against Israel’s actions in Gaza have been arrested across US universities over the last few weeks including Yale and Columbia.  Read the full story here: https://gulfnews.com/opinion/op-eds/backlash-grows-as-us-campuses-respond-to-gaza-protests-1.102371911  See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km  Subscribe to Gulf News on YouTube and watch more of our videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/GulfNewsTV  #UAEnews #US #palestine

Transcript

00:00American universities have become the latest battleground for the Israel-Gaza conflict.

00:09We've seen hundreds of pro-Palestinian students being arrested across US campuses over the

00:15last couple of weeks. It began with an unprecedented standoff at Columbia University in New York,

00:22where the president of the university called in the New York Police Department to evict

00:26and arrest more than a hundred students who had been protesting on the lawns for some

00:30days and also suspended them. Now, that has actually led to a bigger backlash in Columbia

00:35itself. Classes have had to go into hybrid mode and the protests have actually swelled.

00:42We've seen protests spreading to many other campuses also, including Ivy League ones like

00:46Yale University. Now, there are a couple of aspects to this story. One, of course, is

00:51that many of these protests, which have been calling for an end to the Israeli actions

00:57in Gaza, have also turned into hate speech and have bordered on being violent. Not all

01:03of them have been violent. Many have been peaceful, but some of them, according to student

01:08accounts, have turned anti-Semitic and threatening in their tone and tenor. And that is not acceptable

01:13because no student, Jewish or otherwise, should feel unsafe and insecure on campus. And it

01:19is the responsibility of authorities to ensure that everyone does feel secure. However, by

01:25all accounts, a vast majority of these protests have been peaceful and people do have a right

01:30to voice their concerns about Israel's actions in Gaza, which have now killed more than 30,000

01:36civilians, many of them women and children. America prides itself on free speech, on protest.

01:42American universities in the past have been bastions of protests, such as against the

01:47Vietnam War. And today they are completely clamping down on any pro-Palestinian protesters

01:53in the most undemocratic way. People have a right to voice their anger with Israel as

01:59long as it's done or within peaceful means. And if that is happening, then arrests are

02:04very heavy handed.

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