Hundreds of protesters have taken to US universities in response to Benjamin Netanyahu's new decision to launch a new offensive on the Gaza Strip. Police arrested dozens of Columbia University students who occupied part of the school's main library in one of the largest pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus.
At least 40 to 50 students, their hands cuffed with plastic ties, were seen loading into New York Police Department vans and buses outside Butler Library, as NYPD officers searched the six-story building to arrest other protesters who refused to leave, A2 CNN reports. Police arrived on campus at the request of Columbia University officials, who said the student protesters who occupied the main reading room on the library's second floor were engaging in property trespassing.
US President Donald Trump had harshly attacked Columbia University for pro-Palestinian protests on campus last year, saying they were anti-Semitic and showed a failure to protect Jewish students.
Student protesters, including some Jewish organizers, counter that Trump and other conservative politicians who are strongly pro-Israel are unfairly confusing pro-Palestinian protests with anti-Semitism.
Columbia University's board of trustees has been in negotiations with the Trump administration, which announced in March that it was canceling hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to the university for scientific research. The university has said it has worked to combat anti-Semitism and other bias on its campus, while seeking to avoid accusations from civil rights groups that it is subject to government intrusions on academic freedom.
Meanwhile, on the ground, Israel carried out 14 strikes in the Nabatieh area in southern Lebanon, one of Israel's most intense bombardments since a US-brokered ceasefire in November.
In April, Israel struck a southern Beirut building it said was being used to store precision missiles belonging to the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group. Lebanon and Hezbollah had agreed to a ceasefire in November, which halted fighting and mandated that southern Lebanon be cleared of Hezbollah fighters and weapons. (A2 Televizion)
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