Danish police arrested a number of students who participated in pro-Palestinian protests, while other European universities and cities witnessed demonstrations calling for an end to the war on the Gaza Strip and the escalation of the occupation’s operations in the West Bank.
Yesterday, Wednesday, Danish police arrested protesters during a demonstration at the University of Copenhagen demanding an end to the Israeli aggression on Gaza, and calling for severing ties with all educational institutions linked to the occupation.
Scenes published by activists on social media platforms documented aspects of that demonstration and the police leading some students amidst chants by the protesters in support of Palestine and the detainees, in addition to the police arresting climate activist Greta Thunberg, who participated in the protest and was wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh.
In Australia, a number of Monash University students in Melbourne demonstrated on Tuesday inside the university campus, demanding that the administration sever relations with Israel, chanting slogans against the Israeli occupation, and calling for freedom for Palestine.
In France, activists demonstrated in Herault in protest against the governor’s decision to ban demonstrations and solidarity events with Gaza, following the burning of the Jewish synagogue in the city of Grand-Motte.
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in Montpellier called for a protest, denouncing the authorities’ decision to use the attack on the synagogue as a pretext to prevent all forms of solidarity with the Palestinian people, after A decision to ban pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the wake of the Grand-Motte incident, a decision that was widely condemned by activists and human rights defenders.
In Germany, protesters staged a sit-in in central Berlin under the slogan “Stop the war of extermination in Gaza and the Judaization of Al-Aqsa Mosque,” after a pro-Gaza event in Frankfurt, where hundreds attended a Palestinian culture festival organized by supporters of Palestine, despite attempts to ban the festival.
In Norway, activists supporting Palestine organized a protest in the capital, Oslo, to denounce the occupation’s massacres in Gaza and its ongoing incursions into the West Bank.Raising Palestinian flags and wearing Palestinian clothes and keffiyehs, to draw attention to the occupation’s crimes against the Palestinians, while an anti-occupation protest took place in front of the central train station in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
This coincides with the return of protests supporting the Palestinian cause to the campus of Columbia University in New York last Tuesday, coinciding with the start of the new academic year, to denounce the Israeli war and demand that the university withdraw its investments from companies linked to the occupation, which is escalating its military campaign in the West Bank, in parallel with its destructive war on Gaza, leaving tens of thousands of martyrs and wounded and a worsening famine looming over the besieged Strip.