Pro-Palestine Protesters at Columbia University Mark One Year on Israeli Genocide on Gaza
New York, MINA – Pro-Palestine demonstrators have marched on campus at Columbia University in New York City, chanting “Free, free Palestine” on the one-year anniversary of Israel’s war on Gaza.
Just outside the US university’s campus, pro-Israel protesters also gathered, holding placards with captives’ faces and names and saying “Bring them home now”, Al Jazeera reports.
Israel’s war on Gaza, which has claimed the lives of close to 42,000 Palestinians, has unleashed the biggest outpouring of US student activism since the anti-racism protests of 2020.
Protests against the Gaza war began on Columbia’s campus in April, inspiring similar encampments at other institutions across the United States and beyond.
Minouche Shafik, the then-president of Columbia University, resigned after she allowed New York City police onto the campus to clear the protests, triggering outrage from protesters and some academics and calls for her ouster.
Now, as those student protesters return for a new year of learning, they are facing a landscape transformed by updated restrictions, heightened security measures and increased scrutiny of pro-Palestine movements. (T/RE1/P2)
Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)