BERKELEY,
California, April 10 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Protests
throughout the U.S. in support of Palestinians occurred Tuesday in a
loose organized effort, including rallies at top U.S. universities
where supporters marched and handed out fliers.
Around
800 pro-Palestinian protesters faced off Jewish students in opposing
rallies at the prestigious University of California at Berkeley, as Jewish students gathered to pay their
respects to Jews killed in World War II and pro-Palestinian students
marked the 1948 killing of 100 Palestinians by Israeli forces at Deir
Yassin.
The
rival groups exchanged heated words with the two sides calling the
other "Nazis" and "murderers," reports the San
Jose Mercury News.
Pro-Palestinian
students gathered at Sproul Plaza, the cradle of the Free Speech
Movement in the 1960s. Some 78 of the students supporting the cause of
the besieged Palestinians were arrested after they barricaded
themselves inside an academic building on the campus and refused to
leave.
News
agencies reported that some students hung a Palestinian flag from a
third-story window, while others marched in the hallways of the
building, which houses classrooms for Middle Eastern studies.
"There
was no violence, but there were 78 people arrested, about 75 percent
of them students, when a pro-Palestine group occupied the lobby of a
building while classes were going on," said Berkeley
spokeswoman, Janet Gilmore.
"But
we are pleased that both sides were able to voice their opinions in a
civil way and that there were no violence or physical assaults that we
are aware of," she added.
The
pro-Israeli students, from the university's Israel Action Committee,
were outnumbered roughly three to one as they gathered near each other
on the San Francisco-area campus, famous as a hotbed of political
activity, witnesses said.
Pro-Palestinian
students compared the plight of the Palestinian people to that of the
Jewish people when Adolf Hitler attempted to exterminate the race in
the 1940s Holocaust, infuriating the Jewish students.
As
part of their action, speakers for Students for Justice in Palestine,
a Berkeley student group that has spread to other campuses around the
country, called on the University of California to divest itself of
all stock in companies that do business in Israel, and to pass a
proclamation supporting a free Palestinian state.
The
group also called on the U.S. to end aid to Israel.
Jewish
counter-demonstrators shouted, "Stop the suicide bombings!"
and booed, cursed and chanted "Shame!" as pro-Palestinian
speakers addressed the gathering.
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Pro-Palestinian
crowd marches just outside Sproul Plaza, home of the 1960s Free
Speech movement.
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Pro-Palestinian
signs in the crowd included, "Holocaust or not, everyone must be
accountable for their actions," and "Israel lovers are the
Nazis of our time," reported the Mercury News.
A
pro-Palestinian Jewish community activist, Micah Bazant, told the
crowd "Anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism," reported the Mercury
News. Pro-Israeli demonstrators responded "Yes it is! Yes it
is!"
Similar
protests went ahead on several other U.S. university campuses,
including the University of Michigan, which is at the heart of an area
of the United States heavily populated by Muslims.
Around
50 protestors there, some with arms tied and mouths gagged, paraded
mutely through the Ann Arbor campus "to draw attention to the
brutal tactics used by the state of Israel in its illegal occupation
of Palestinian lands," read a statement from a group called
Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, news agencies reported.
Protests
on other U.S. campuses occurred at the prestigious Ivy League Columbia
University in New York, the University of Minnesota and Ohio State
University.
In
Miami Beach, Florida, some 300 heavily outnumbered Palestinian
supporters were separated by helmeted police and metal barricades from
3,000 pro-Israeli crowds remembering the Holocaust, reports the Miami
Herald.
Five
people were arrested - three pro-Palestinians and two pro-Israelis -
as the two groups confronted one another. However, violence between
the two groups did not erupt.
The
Herald quoted Roba Ismail, 11, who held up a poster almost as
wide as she was tall that had photos of corpses of four Palestinian
infants. "They are killing children," she said.
