Pro-Palestinian student demonstrations spread to Japan on Friday when Waseda University in Tokyo held a protest against Israel’s ongoing offensive in the Gaza Strip. Anadolu Agency reports.
Footage on social media showed dozens of students gathering in support of the Palestinians and chanting “Free Palestine, free Palestine and Palestine will be free.”
They also carried banners and placards with slogans against Israel and “Free Palestine, save Gaza.”
Students and activists have also set up camps at major Australian universities, including in Sydney, as demands for Israeli divestment grow louder.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrations on Australian campuses began after the US saw more than 150 Gaza solidarity camps located across the country.
More than 2,000 people, including students, were arrested by US authorities during pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
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Student protests also took place in Canada and France.
Student demonstrations began on April 17 at Columbia University to protest Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip, where more than 34,600 Palestinians have been killed and 77,700 wounded since the Hamas invasion on October 7.
The protests served as a flashpoint for a broader movement protesting Israel’s genocidal war in the Gaza Strip.
Israel is continuing its offensive on the Gaza Strip, where at least 34,622 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed and 77,867 injured since October 7, according to Palestinian health authorities.
Israel carried out strikes on the Gaza Strip following a cross-border Hamas attack that Tel Aviv said killed about 1,200 people.
However, it has since been discovered Gaaretz that Israeli army helicopters and tanks killed many of the 1,139 soldiers and civilians who Israel claims were killed by the Palestinian Resistance.
Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip has displaced 85 percent of the territory’s population due to severe shortages of food, clean water and medicine, and 60 percent of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.
Israel is accused of genocide by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which in January issued an interim order ordering it to cease its acts of genocide and take measures to guarantee the provision of humanitarian aid to civilians in the Gaza Strip.
However, fighting continues and aid supplies remain woefully inadequate to address the humanitarian catastrophe.
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