At least 34,789 Palestinians have been killed and 78,204 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7, its Health Ministry says.
Israel has imposed a complete siege on the densely populated territory, cutting off fuel, electricity, food, and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.
Anger and frustration with the suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza have sparked university protests across the world.
"Tensions are boiling over on university campuses across the US as student protests in support of Palestinians continue to grow, and are increasingly met with police violence despite students and faculty insisting the demonstrations have been peaceful,"
the Guardian reported.
Many universities have called police and other law enforcement agencies onto campus. In the United States alone, more than 2,000 students have been arrested.
Both protests and the campus crackdowns have also spread to other parts of the world – from Canada to Australia, and in multiple European nations. On Monday, students at Oxford and Cambridge in the United Kingdom also set up encampments.
Al Jazeera has reported that students at over 100 universities are protesting across the US. Their counterparts in at least 20 campuses outside of the US are protesting and several of these protests are also encampments.
Students at Harvard, and Brown have joined in pro-Palestinian protests across college campuses. They want their schools to stop accepting funding from groups that directly or indirectly fund the war in Gaza, NBC Boston has reported.
Protesters are demanding that their schools sever any direct or indirect financial and academic links with Israel.
At Berlin’s Freie Universität in Germany on Tuesday, hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters occupied a courtyard.
The protesters set up tents and formed a human chain, chanting slogans such as “Viva, Viva Palestina”.
Student protests demanding that universities sever ties with Israel over the Gaza war have spread across Europe, sparking clashes and arrests as new demonstrations broke out in the Netherlands, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Austria, the Guardian reported.
In recent days, students have held protests or set up encampments in Finland, Denmark, Italy, Spain, France, and Britain following earlier protests in the US, Euronews reported.
Dublin's Trinity College students in Ireland and Lausanne University in Switzerland have joined US universities in solidarity with the encampments protesting against the Israeli war on Gaza.
On May 7, Dutch police violently broke up a pro-Palestinian demonstration camp at the University of Amsterdam, arresting 125 students.
Students at various European universities, inspired by ongoing demonstrations at US campuses, have been occupying halls and facilities, demanding an end to partnerships with Israeli institutions because of Israel’s assault on Gaza.
According to CNN, pro-Palestinian encampments have been set up at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge in England, as students there call on leadership to sever ties to Israel.
The Western media coverage tries to frame the pro-Palestine protesters in Western universities as violent and racist, a social activist from Canada, told Mehr News Agency.
"I think camera phones and social media make the truth much harder to hide," Tyler Berglund added.
Dr. Jody Armour, a distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Southern California, told The Tehran Times, "We spend a lot of time teaching these students to think freely and independently, and then we crack down on them when they put our teachings into practice."
Iran’s Deputy Minister of Science, Research, and Technology Hashem Dadashpour has voiced Iran’s readiness to offer scholarships to American students who have been expelled due to protesting the crimes of the Zionist regime in Gaza.
Reported by Tohid Mahmoudpour
16:53 - 2024/05/12
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