Hundreds of arrests, riot police facing students who do not let up: the tension remains electric Thursday on American campuses, where the protest movement against the war in Gaza is becoming widespread across the country.
From Los Angeles to Atlanta, from Austin to Boston, via Chicago, the movement of pro-Palestinian American students is growing by the hour after leaving Columbia University in New York more than a week ago. York. Some of the most prestigious universities in the world are affected, such as Harvard, Yale and Princeton.
The scenes across the country follow one another and are similar: students set up tents on their campuses, to denounce the military support of the United States for Israel and the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip.
Then they are dislodged, often in a muscular manner, by police officers in riot gear, at the request of university management.
Wednesday evening, more than a hundred demonstrators were arrested near Emerson College, a university in Boston. Thousands of miles away, mounted officers apprehended students at the University of Texas at Austin.
On the campus of Emory University in Atlanta, in the southeast of the United States, demonstrators were dislodged manu militari by the police, some thrown to the ground to be arrested, according to images from a photojournalist from the ‘AFP.
Enlargement
Despite everything, the movement is growing.
Early Thursday, a new encampment was set up on the campus of George Washington University in the capital.
At UCLA University in Los Angeles, more than 200 students set up a mini-village of around thirty tents, barricaded by pallets and signs.
Kaia Shah, a 23-year-old political science student, is enthusiastic about the movement’s expansion.
“It’s great what we’re seeing on other campuses,” she said, “it shows how many people support this cause.”
In Austin, nearly 2,000 people gathered on the campus of the University of Texas on Thursday to show their support for Gaza, to the sounds of “Free Palestine”.
For Kit Belgium, a professor at this university, the campus needs to see “free expression and the free exchange of ideas”.
“And if the university cannot tolerate this, then it is not worthy of the name,” she adds to AFP.
Near the pro-Palestinian rally, around thirty students organized a counter-demonstration.
Jasmine Rad, a Jewish student at the University of Texas, says demonstrations in support of Gaza are “dangerous for Jewish students.”
“It hurts Jewish students and students who don’t feel safe because of the violence on our campus,” said the 19-year-old journalism student.
National Guard
On his Truth Social platform, Donald Trump denounced the pro-Palestinian protests, calling them a “disgrace” to the United States.
The day before, the Republican tenor in Congress Mike Johnson had gone to Columbia University, where he threatened to ask Joe Biden to mobilize the National Guard on campuses, prey according to him to a “virus of anti-Semitism “.
A warning that resonates painfully in the United States: on May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard opened fire at Kent State University on anti-Vietnam War demonstrators. Four students were killed.
The White House, for its part, assures that Joe Biden, who hopes to be re-elected in November, “supports freedom of expression, debate and non-discrimination” in universities.
The war was triggered on October 7 by an unprecedented attack carried out from Gaza against Israel by Hamas commandos, which resulted in the death of 1,170 people, mainly civilians, according to an AFP report established from official Israeli data.
In retaliation, Israel promised to destroy the Islamist movement, and its vast military operation in the Gaza Strip has so far left 34,305 dead, mostly civilians, according to Hamas.