Gaza protest Columbia

The Washington Post

Parents worrying student protests

For The Washington Post

Columbia students continue pro-Palestinian protest during graduation ceremony

Contributor

Columbia University President Minouche Shafik Visits Campus After Protest Encampment Cleared

Stringer

other

Counter protestors beat pro-Palestinian demonstrator

Students walk out at VCU commencement

Campus Protests Commencements

Pro-Palestine Encampment at George Washington University

for The Washington Post

APTOPIX Israel Palestinians Campus Protest

CAMPUSPROTEST UVA

US-ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS-CONFLICT-EDUCATION-COLUMBIA

Julie Yoon

Protest at Portland State University continues

Reuters

National

Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

Show NLP summaries collection recirc on article pages

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

As India votes, a streetwise pol proves pragmatism often trumps ideology 

Maps show where Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s helicopter was found

Trump is making a strategic pitch to Arab Americans who feel betrayed by Biden

Carolyn Hax: Is it selfish or self-care to cancel plans, ‘etiquette be damned’?

Ask Amy: I don’t feel connected to my late birth mom’s family

Miss Manners: My husband ignored another Mother’s Day and my birthday

The problem with diversity statements — and what to do about them

Russia shows resilience. There is more to do for Ukraine.

Trump promises tax cuts and fewer rules. CEOs shouldn’t fall for it.

Biden team braces for upcoming trials of Hunter Biden

Why Biden is underperforming Democratic Senate candidates

Marco Rubio and the inverted reality of the Trump VP shortlist

The race up a Hong Kong tower covered in 40 feet of steamed buns

The world’s coolest hotels want to tell you a story

6 Airbnb red flags to spot before you make a booking mistake

Life in Taiwan is rowdy and proud, never mind China’s threats

In photos: Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi dies at 63

In photos: The 149th running of the Preakness Stakes

How Jim Jordan tried to connect the dots on Biden’s $8 million book deal

Biden’s false claim that inflation was 9 percent when he took office

Did Obamacare ‘massively’ increase the cost of health care?

In Class AAA, ‘Big James’ waits for his big league moment to arrive

Washington Commanders continue transforming their front office

Nationals limp home after 11-5 loss to Phillies extends skid to five

Would you eat this weird sandwich? Barry Enderwick would. 

She finished chemo then got a medical degree: ‘The dream is real now’

Puppy abandoned with heart-rending note is adopted, named Minerva

Microsoft will build AI into new laptops, firing shot at Apple

Burned out on screens, people are sending lengthy voice notes instead

Blue Origin to fly again as space tourism struggles to get off the ground

President Joe Biden Signs PACT Act

BEIRUT — Students across the Middle East and globally are downing their pens, ditching class and joining in with pro-Palestinian protests in solidarity with a wave of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/04/25/university-protests-arrests-locations/" target=_blank>campus protests that have swept across</a> the United States in recent weeks.

Waves of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2024/university-antiwar-campus-protests-arrests-data/">antiwar protests</a> are spreading across colleges campuses, with growing police arrests as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/04/24/commencement-graduation-protests/" target=_blank>graduation season</a> approaches. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/04/25/university-protests-arrests-locations/" target=_blank>See the universities where protests are intensifying</a>.

Are you a college student? <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/04/25/submissions-college-protests/" target=_blank>Tell us about protests on your campus</a>.

From Kuwait to Lebanon, in Egypt and Ramallah, students have occupied central locations on campuses and on Monday and Tuesday waved placards calling for an end to the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2024/gaza-parents-children-fear-war/?itid=sf_article_list" target=_blank>war in Gaza</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/04/26/bds-divestment-gaza-campuses-israel/" target=_blank>divestment </a>by their universities from companies that do business with Israel.

Similar protests have taken place at Sorbonne University in Paris and elsewhere, including Italy, Britain, Canada and Australia, as the global student demographic piles pressure on administrators and governments almost seven months into the war. Some of those protesting said they were directly inspired by U.S. students.

“Palestine wasn’t initially their thing, but now they are doing more than we are, and [we] felt ashamed and that we should do more,” Ali Tayyar, a student organizer at Lebanon’s American University of Beirut, said at a protest Tuesday. “We needed to at least show some support for our friends in the U.S.”

Hassan Ammar

U.S. colleges have seen protests since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, led by Hamas, and the start of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/israel-hamas-war/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Israel-Gaza war</a>. But the unrest escalated dramatically in recent weeks after police arrested pro-Palestinian demonstrators at an encampment at <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/04/30/columbia-university-protests-palestine-news/" target=_blank>Columbia University</a>, sparking a wave of further campsites at other colleges and more crackdowns and arrests.

Israeli officials have condemned the protests as antisemitic, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issuing a statement last week that called them “horrific” and reminiscent of Nazi Germany.

At the American University of Beirut protest, however, many said they were horrified by the crackdown on the U.S. protests. “We condemn the violence that happened at these universities because these protesters were peacefully demonstrating,” said student Thalia Kattoura.

Roughly 150 protesters stood in the rain outside an administration building  at the American University of Beirut, unfurling a giant Palestinian flag as they chanted “Students and workers against the occupation” as well as anti-Israel slogans.

Demonstrations took place under tight security measures. Most people without a valid faculty or student identification card were denied entry into campus. Those barred held another protest outside the university’s gates.

Protests took place in at least five universities in Lebanon on Tuesday, including at the nearby Lebanese American University, where business major student Batoul, 19, who spoke on the condition that her full name not be used for safety reasons, said that “as Arabs, it is our duty to be present here today.”

Batoul did not agree that the protests were inspired solely by U.S. students. “We inspired them, not the other way around. American students were inspired by us,” she said, noting what she called a shift in perception toward the Palestinian cause among American students.

The American University of Beirut’s president, Fadlo R. Khuri, said in an interview that the university has a long history of student protests and support for Arab nationalist and Palestinian causes.

“This was a case of the students mobilizing for a passionately held issue,” he said of the ongoing protests. “We strive to give the faculty, students and staff as much space as possible, and interfere as little as possible, unless there is violence, of which there was none.”

Khuri added that the college has “no plans to shut down the protests” but said that its endowments are managed by external fund managers, making matters of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/04/26/bds-divestment-gaza-campuses-israel/" target=_blank>divestment </a>challenging.

Yasser Al-Zayyat

In Tunisia, the country’s student union called for a week-long strike of classes. Photos on the union’s Facebook page showed students marching in several cities to call for an end to the war. Protests also took place at the American University of Cairo in Egypt and at Birzeit University near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

The Birzeit Students Union said its protest was a move to thank students at universities in the United States for their support. “We feel it is a duty from our side to thank them, we appreciate their support, and we feel proud of them,” said Jamal Nakhleh, a student coordinator at Birzeit University.

At a solidarity rally at Kuwait University on Monday, one placard read, “From Kuwait University students to Columbia University students: ‘we stand with you.’”

Fawaz Gerges, an international relations professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, said that the spread of student protests showed that young people around the world were “fed up by the continuing bloodletting in Gaza and the failure of Western governing elite to stop the war.”

“Student protests should be seen as another important layer of popular dissatisfaction and anger with Western governments and their Arab counterparts,” Gerges said. But the protests in the Middle East also highlighted a fine line Arab governments have to walk, he added.

“Although Arab regimes pay lip service to the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza and the brutality of the Israeli military onslaught, they have cracked down hard on social protests in support of the Palestinians,” Gerges said. “Arab regimes are also terrified of any form of social protests lest they turn against the authoritarian structure at home. ”

On Monday, French police removed dozens of students from an antiwar encampment at Sorbonne University. Similar protests took place last week at the University of Oxford in Britain, Sydney University in Australia and Sciences Po, another university in Paris.

Mohammed Badra

There is little sign that the U.S. college protest movement is abating. Non-student protests, too, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/04/16/pro-palestinian-protests-us-biden/" target=_blank>have made headlines</a> in the United States in recent weeks, with protests taking place outside pre-election political events and halting traffic on bridges and major thoroughfares in San Francisco and New York. In Chicago and Seattle, protesters blocked the entrance to international airports, while journalists in D.C. walked through protesters outside Saturday’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/2024/04/28/biden-trump-white-house-correspondents-dinner-2024/" target=_blank>White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.</a>

As of Tuesday, more than 1,200 people have been arrested on campuses across the United States, according to a count kept by The Washington Post. Student groups at Columbia <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/04/30/columbia-university-protests-palestine-news/" target=_blank>said </a>they had taken over Hamilton Hall, a building near the campus’s South Lawn, and would occupy it until their demands were met.

Kuwait University faculty member Noor Alawadhi told the university solidarity rally that she was a graduate of Columbia University. “I am a product of the American higher education system, a system that is embedded in equality for all and free speech,” she said.

Alawadhi told The Post that although protests had occurred since Oct. 7 against the Gaza war, this time, they were also an act of thanks, “to send our deepest gratitude and support for the Western colleagues for speaking out and joining our voices.”

Suzy Haidamous in Beirut, Claire Parker in Jerusalem and Heba-Farouk Mahfouz in Cairo contributed to this report.

American University of Beirut, Master of Urban Planning and Policy, Bachelor of Arts in History 

Mohamad El Chamaa is a Beirut-based researcher and reporter for The Washington Post, covering Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, and the Gulf. An urban planner by training, he previously worked on housing in post-disaster events and was a features reporter for L’Orient Today.

Mohamad  El Chamaa

Social Impact Media Award winner (SIMA), 2020

Religion Newswriters Association, Handa Fellow, 2016.

 Women’s International Leadership Scholar, 2016.

School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, LLB Law

Columbia University, MS in Journalism

Adela Suliman is a breaking-news reporter in The Washington Post's London hub. 

Adela Suliman

washpost

Students protest in Middle East in solidarity with those at U.S. colleges

the-washington-post

War In Ukraine

Africa

Americas

Asia

Europe

Middle East

World

prism://prism.query/site,/world/middle-east&limit=20

The Washington Post provides the latest information and analysis of breaking Middle East news stories. Includes news coverage on Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Iran, Kuwait, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

prism://prism.query/site-articles-only,/world/&limit=20

The Washington Post World section provides information and analysis of breaking world news stories. In addition to our world news and video, Post World News offers discussions and blogs on major international news and economic issues.

U.S. campus protests spread to the Middle East and Europe

College protests over Gaza war