Pro-Palestinian students gathered at George Washington University located in Washington. D.C. on Thursday and set up encampments to demonstrate against the ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip, calling for a free Palestine in the wake of Israel's offensive in the enclave.
Students and faculty not just from George Washington University but from colleges in and around Washington D.C. have been congregating at the campus, demanding this university disclose and terminate any relationship that it has with companies that they say are enabling the war effort.
The message repeatedly heard at the demonstration was that there should be "no tuition for funding murder". The students say that is a message that they hope is heard less than a kilometer downtown at the White House.
"This is a movement for a greater liberation. It's a greater liberation movement. And the Zionist state of Israel has been committing ongoing massacres for seven months now. And this is essentially us demanding that the university partake and uptake and essentially just having a stand firm against the ongoing violence that they're complicit in, that they're abetting in, that they're partaking in," said a student.
While the protesters hope to draw attention to violence that has killed more than 13,000 Palestinian children since last October, some Jewish students on the campus say they are concerned about mounting antisemitism.
"When they're calling for an intifada revolution, they're calling for the death of the Jewish people as a whole. And when they say, from the river to the sea, they're calling for the annihilation and the complete destruction of the state of Israel. And that makes a lot of Jewish students including myself feel very unsafe," said a student.
A small police presence was active at the demonstrations, but arrests have not been observed on the campus, nor clashes to the extent witnessed at other university campuses across the United States.
The demonstrators also formed something of a human barrier to protect those in the center of the encampment, with students claiming they will stay there until their demands are met.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrations have recently erupted on campuses across the United States, calling for a permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and cessation of U.S. military aid to Israel.
Despite certain U.S. politicians branding the demonstrators as antisemitic and the subsequent arrest of hundreds of students, the anti-war protests continue to gain momentum.
The University of Southern California (USC), a renowned private research university located in Los Angeles, has closed its gates amid rising tensions after pro-Palestinian protesters clashed with police on Wednesday.
All classes at Columbia University went virtual starting on Monday as divisive demonstrations and debates around the Palestinian-Israeli conflict heated up on campus recently.
According to media reports, students from Yale University, New York University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Michigan and the University of North Carolina also staged encampments in solidarity with their peers at Columbia University.
George Washington University students demonstrate against conflict in Gaza
