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Over 900 arrested at anti-Israel protests in US universities
Pro-Palestinian students are calling for a cease-fire in Gaza and an end to college ties with companies supplying weapons to Israel.
About 275 people were arrested on Saturday on various campuses, including Indiana University at Bloomington, Arizona State University and Washington University in St Louis.
The Washington Post reported the tally on Sunday, the 10th straight day of the protests that began after Columbia University set up an encampment to demand cessation of the war and press the school to divest from Israeli financial interests.
The crackdown then started when university authorities called in the police, a move that sparked more than 100 arrests on the university’s Manhattan campus.
Two other highlights in the crackdown saw police forces rounding up roughly the same number of people at New York University and Emerson College in Boston.
Protests have also erupted across numerous other seats of learning, including Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and California State Polytechnic in Humboldt.
The ensuing countrywide counter-campaign of suppression has seen law enforcement resorting to riot control methods against the protesters.
The methods have featured “the same tools and tactics” that were deployed to confront the thousands-strong protests that sparked across the country after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd four years ago, the daily
reported.
The United States has been providing Israel with unrestrained military, intelligence, and financial support since October 7, when the regime unleashed the war against the besieged Palestinian enclave.
Washington gives Israel $3.8bn in military assistance every year, and US President Joe Biden has continued to provide staunch support to the illegal entity amid the Gaza war. On Wednesday, Biden signed into law a massive funding package that will provide an additional $17bn to the occupying regime.
Washington has also vetoed several United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for a cease-fire in the brutal military aggression.