Gaza protests spread to over 40 campuses despite brutal police crackdowns – National & International News – FRI 26Apr2024

Gaza protests spread to over 40 campuses despite brutal police crackdowns. What do the students want? Could this have been avoided?

Grim revelations from mass graves at Gaza hospitals.

NATIONAL NEWS

Gaza protests spread to over 40 campuses despite brutal police crackdowns

Protests against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza (and US support for it) have sprung up on the campuses of some of the nation’s elite private universities as well as many public universities. After New York riot police dispersed a protest encampment on the Columbia University campus last week, Columbia’s protesters came back in even greater numbers and have continued the demonstration. The heavy-handed actions of Columbia’s president Mouniche Shafik have also inspired other university groups to set up similar “Gaza solidarity camps” all over the country.

Protests escalate after police violence

Like Columbia, many of these campuses have also seen peaceful protests broken up with massive shows of police force. In many cases, not only were hundreds of students arrested but also multiple university faculty members. Video footage showing brutal crackdowns and mass arrests at UT Austin, Emory (Atlanta), Ohio State University (Columbus) and University of Southern California (Los Angeles) have gone viral. 

At UT Austin, police tackled a cameraman from a Fox News affiliate and arrested him. Some of the most inflammatory clips though have come from Emory. APD stormed the campus firing tear gas and rubber bullets, according to reports. In one clip, officers TASE a Black protester who is already handcuffed on the ground with multiple officers on top of him. In another, a female economics professor, reported to be in her 60s, is body slammed to the ground after attempting to intervene in a student’s arrest. A third clip shows the chair of Emory’s philosophy department being led away in handcuffs.

Despite the violence and the risk of arrest and suspension or expulsion from their universities, students are coming back in ever greater numbers and digging in. Some politicians have called for the National Guard to be deployed to clamp down on the protests, stoking fears of a repeat of the deadly Kent State massacre in 1970.

What do the students want? Could this have been avoided?

With the end of term just weeks away and many campuses gearing up for graduation, the crackdowns on campuses and clear First Amendment violations (particularly on public university campuses) have had the opposite of their desired effect. Students at Columbia have already filed civil rights complaints, and other universities are likely to face lawsuits over their handling of the protests.

Some universities have handled the situation differently and without garnering the bad publicity of police crackdowns. For example, the University of Rochester in New York agreed to discuss the students’ demands. Protesters at all the universities have fairly uniform demands, namely: a statement from universities supporting a ceasefire in Gaza; greater transparency for universities’ financial portfolios; and divestment from companies that support Israel or profit from the occupation.

Rochester’s Faculty Senate agreed to investigate any financial ties to Israel. They will prepare a report and recommendations which the Faculty Senate will vote on in May. However, by engaging with their students’ demands, Rochester was able to defuse the situation. Protesters remain encamped on campus until the faculty meets. As part of negotiations, the students agreed to move their encampment to an area that will not interfere with normal university activities, including graduation.

Every university in the country has similar processes that can be followed, though not all of them will unfold as quickly as Rochester’s. Universities with larger financial portfolios (like Harvard, which has holdings of many billions of dollars) might take months or years to go through. However, if Columbia, Emory, NYU or other universities had followed Rochester’s example, it’s likely protesting students would have responded favorably, even if all their demands weren’t met in the end.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Grisly revelations from mass graves at Gaza hospitals

More revelations have been coming out this week regarding the discovery of mass graves on the grounds of Al-Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis and Al-Shifa in Gaza City. Initial reports were conflicting and confusing as civil workers attempted to exhume the bodies and make sense of what had taken place. At this point, a fairly coherent picture has emerged.

Previously, at least 381 bodies were found at Al-Shifa after the Israeli military occupation ended on April 1. Rather than being buried, these bodies were piled up like firewood and covered in sand or plastic sheeting. Many of these appear to have been victims of field executions. Some victims had been crushed to death by tanks or bulldozers while bound, making identification impossible. More bodies are believed to still be buried in mass graves at the site of the hospital.

Women, children, medical staff tortured and murdered

At Al-Nasser, workers have exhumed nearly 400 bodies from three mass graves. Only about 165 have been identified. Authorities believe there are still at least 300 people missing at Al-Nasser. All of these graves seem to have been hastily dug by Israeli military personnel during their weeks-long siege of the hospital, which ended April 7.

About 100 of these bodies were buried by Palestinians in February while the hospital was under siege. When they returned after the siege in hopes of giving loved ones a proper burial, they found that the Israelis had disinterred their bodies, removing identification and even their body bags before dumping them into a new grave. Some bodies had been mutilated, with skin and organs removed.

The rest of the bodies at Al-Nasser were direct victims of violence by the Israeli military. Women, children, patients and medical staff, bear signs of torture, mutilation and execution. Some were still wearing surgical gowns, buried with catheters, cannulas or tubes still in their bodies. In some cases, victims had their hands tied behind their back with zipties. It’s believed that at least 20 victims were buried alive.

After news of the bodies at Al-Nasser emerged, Israel said claims it had buried Palestinians at the complex were “baseless and unfounded”. However, during its occupation of the hospital, the IDF claimed to have taken 200 “terrorists and suspects in terrorist activities” into custody. The IDF has not commented on what happened to those people.

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