Scores of pro-Palestinian protesters rallied in front of the Cal State University Chancellor’s Office in Long Beach on Tuesday, May 21, urging the system to, among other demands, divest from Israel — and celebrating the announcement this week that the CSU’s Sacramento campus would do just that.
Tuesday’s protesters also demanded that the 23-campus CSU to boycott Israel, disclose its investments and call for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war and a free Palestine. Though relatively small, the peaceful rally in Long Beach was the latest in a series of demonstrations — ranging from traditional protests to encampents set up on campuses — that have roiled both public and private universities across the state and nation in recent weeks. Those demonstrations, some peaceful and some not, have mostly comprised students and faculty seeking to pressure academic administrators to condemn Israel for what they say has been a disproportionate military response to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
Israeli officials, in the face of mounting global pressure, have remained steadfast in saying the country has a right to defend itself and that their only goal is to eradicate Hamas, whose militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages during an Oct. 7 incursion into southern Israel. That attack started the conflict.
Israel, like the United States, considers Hamas a terrorist group.
But pro-Palestinian activists, including those on college campuses, have sharply criticized Israel for the destruction in Gaza. More than 34,000 people in the Gaza Strip have been killed since the conflict began, according to the Health Ministry there; that ministry is part of the Hamas-run government.
The protests on college campuses have focused, in large part, on university investments that activists say help fund Israeli military actions.
“Military and defense industry funding and collaboration have become foundational to the public…
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