By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
AMSTERDAM/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – Clashes broke out in the heart of Amsterdam Wednesday as riot police used force against pro-Palestine protesters who tried to join those already occupying a site of the University of Amsterdam (UvA).
Wednesday’s riots were the latest in a series of increasingly violent protests spreading through Europe demanding that universities sever ties with Israel over its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Dutch Police surrounded the remaining protesters, still occupying an area of UvA. Most activists were forced to leave a university building where furniture and central heating radiators were daubed with paint and walls defaced with texts such as “Free Palestine” and “Ceasefire now.”
Reporters noticed mattresses on the floor, large shopping bags with food and drinks, and piles of sanitary towels and other care products, which was a sign that the protests had been well prepared.
Wednesday’s confrontation came after days of unrest around several Duch universities where more than 200 people were detained, according to Worthy News estimates based on police reports.
Overnight at Utrecht University, some 45 kilometers (28 miles) outside the Dutch capital, police detained dozens of protesters.
Besides the Netherlands, anti-Israel protests have also been held at universities in several other European nations, such as af Sorbonne University in Paris, France, where 86 people were arrested on Tuesday night for offenses that included wilful damage, intrusion in an education establishment, and disrupting order, French prosecutors said.
OCCUPYING LECTURE HALL
The arrests came after about 100 student protesters occupied a lecture hall at the university for two hours.
In Paris, police on Tuesday twice intervened at Paris’s prestigious Sciences Po University to disperse about 20 students who had barricaded themselves in the main hall.
Officers moved in to allow other students to take their exams and made two arrests, according to Paris prosecutors. The university said the exams were able to proceed without incident.
Police intervened several times over the past week at Sciences Po, where protesters are demanding the university reveal its partnerships with Israeli institutions. Thirteen students are on a hunger strike, according to the university.
In the eastern German city of Leipzig, the university said 50-60 people had occupied a lecture hall on Tuesday afternoon, waving banners that read: “University occupation against genocide.”
It was a reference to Israel’s military actions in Gaza, which were sparked by Hamas killing some 1,200 people and kidnapping hundreds of others in Israel on October 7. Israel denies genocide and often warns civilians when it will strike suspected Hamas sites.
Yet protesters barricaded the lecture hall doors of Leipzig’s university from the inside and erected tents in the courtyard, prompting the university to call in police and file a criminal complaint, officials said.
PRO-ISRAEL PROTEST
A pro-Israeli counter-protest involving about 40 people also took place in the area, according to police.
Criminal proceedings have reportedly been initiated against 13 people in the lecture hall on suspicion of trespassing, but no arrests have been made.
Earlier, at the Free University of Berlin, police cleared a demonstration after up to 80 people erected a protest camp in a campus courtyard. The protesters gathering in Germany’s capital wore the keffiyeh scarf, a symbol of what they call “the Palestinian cause,” while sitting in front of tents and waving banners.
They later tried to enter rooms and lecture halls to occupy them, according to the university, which said it called the police to clear the protest.
The university said property was damaged while classes in some buildings were suspended for the day. Berlin police said they made some arrests for “incitement to hatred and trespassing.”
Protests have spread to three universities in Switzerland: Lausanne, Geneva, and Zurich.
The University of Lausanne said it “considers that there is no reason to cease these relations” with Israeli universities, as protesters were demanding.
DEMONSTRATORS IN AUSTRIA
In Austria, dozens of demonstrators have been camped on the campus at the University of Vienna, erecting tents and stringing up banners since late on Thursday.
More than 100 students were also occupying Ghent University, in Belgium, in “a climate and Gaza” protest that they want to prolong until Wednesday. It wasn’t immediately clear what concerns about the climate have to do with the armed conflict in Gaza.
As protesters reportedly carried out sit-ins at institutions in Flanders and Brussels, Belgium’s prime minister, Alexander De Croo, described the demonstrations as an outcome that was to be expected.
“If I were their age, I would probably join them,” he told Belgian public broadcaster RTBF.
Encampments have also been set up, and protests took place at universities in other European countries in recent weeks, including Britain, Ireland, Finland, Denmark, Italy, and Spain.
Clashes also broke out between police and protesters during a pro-Palestinian rally in central Athens on Tuesday. More than 300 people carrying Palestinian flags and banners reading “Hands off Rafah!” rallied outside the parliament building in the Greek capital, witnesses said.
Jewish people have expressed concern about perceived antisemitic slogans said during these and other protests and related attacks and intimidation.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas, saying “the terrorist group was responsible for the worst atrocities against Jews since the Holocaust,” also known as the Shoah.
MANY KILLED
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed nearly 35,000 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, but those figures have been complex to verify independently.
As the clashes continue, antisemitism increases, including in the Netherlands, where on Wednesday, authorities revealed that three “stumbling stones” were forcibly removed from a street in Dordrecht, causing shockwaves across this city in South Holland province.
The stumbling stones, or ‘Stolpersteine’ as they are usually called, were placed in memory of Jewish residents of Dordrecht during the Second World War.
The Stolpersteine Dordrecht Foundation said it started “the initiative in 2004 and placed 201 stumbling blocks.”
The missing stones – which commemorate the deportation and extermination of Jews by the Nazis eighty years ago – were placed on the sidewalk in memory of the Jewish Cohen de Heer family.
The Center for Information and Documentation Israel said someone with “a sick mind” was likely responsible, just days after the Netherlands remembered its war dead.
Copyright 1999-2024 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
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