Pro-Palestinian encampments spring up on more US college campuses

24/4/2024 11:57

        Pro-Palestinian students have set up tent encampments at more campuses across the U.S. to protest Israel's incursion into Gaza, after mass arrests at similar demonstrations at a handful of mostly East Coast colleges in recent days.
        
        The expanding protests include plans by a coalition of Jewish groups opposing Israel's actions to close the Brooklyn street where U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer resides. That protest, on the second night of the week-long Jewish feast of Passover, is one of a dozen the coalition organized in cities around the country.
        
        Since Friday, hundreds of students and others were arrested at Columbia, Yale, New York University and other schools.
        
        Critics of the protests, including prominent Republican members of the U.S. Congress, have stepped up accusations of antisemitism and harassment by at least some protesters. Civil rights advocates, including the ACLU, have raised free speech concerns over the arrests.
        
        Among the new encampments, students at the University of California, Berkeley - a school well known for its student activism during the 1960s - set up tents in solidarity with protesters at other schools.