With the elite Sciences Po Paris university as the epicenter, pro-Palestinian students seek to spread their protests in France, but face the rapid reaction of the authorities, who want to avoid a tense situation like in the United States. “Contrary to what we have seen in other countries, especially on the other side of the Atlantic, no camp has been established permanently,” the office of Prime Minister Gabriel Attal highlighted this Friday.
At that moment the security forces were proceeding to evacuate the Sciences Po Paris campus located on rue Saint-Guillaume, in a wealthy neighborhood of the capital, where a hundred students had launched a new occupation on Thursday. “A red line has been crossed,” said Hicham, spokesperson for the Palestine Committee that organized the protest, referring to the entry of the Police into the university campus, something unusual in France.
The person in charge of the center, Jean Bassères, authorized the entry of the agents due to the failure of the “dialogue” to avoid the blockade and after the Government asked the rectors to use all their “powers” to maintain “public order.”
A week after a tense demonstration on this campus and a first eviction, “91 people were evacuated without incident,” the Paris Police Prefecture reported this Friday. But this situation is not the only one. On Monday, the educational authorities requested the eviction of the Sorbonne University, a symbol of the May ’68 protests, and this Friday it was the turn of other campuses.
The scope of the protests is so far limited. Officers evacuated universities in Lyon and Saint-Etienne, in the east of the country. And most registered at Sciences Po Paris annex campuses in other cities, such as Poitiers or Reims.
“The student population has always shown sincere support for those who are being trampled, rarely for authoritarians,” the honorary president of the French League of Human Rights, Henri Leclerc, assured France Inter radio. He compared the current protests against the Israeli offensive in Gaza, in response to the bloody attack by the Islamist movement Hamas on October 7, to the student actions in the 1960s against the Vietnam War.
The conflict in the Middle East between Israelis and Palestinians often strains the atmosphere in France, which is home to the largest Jewish community in Europe. The French authorities report an increase in anti-Semitic acts since October 7.
“Endurance”
In this climate, pro-Palestinian voices are often accused of complacency with Hamas and even anti-Semitism, in part due to the historical ambiguity on the part of the radical left that characterizes the attack by Islamic radicals as an act of “resistance.” “These students are uneducated or anti-Semitic,” the French Minister of Fight against Discrimination, Aurore Bergé, said on the BFMTV network, referring to Sciences Po, where she studied, like the president, Emmanuel Macron.
The student movements claim that they want to draw attention to the thousands of civilian deaths under the Israeli bombs in Gaza and, at Sciences Po, they ask that the university agreements with Israel be “investigated.” “It is unacceptable that the leading political science university in Europe and the second in the world is unable to take a position in accordance with international law on the current situation in Gaza,” said Sarah, one of the students.
Other universities also register an important mobilization in Germany, Canada, Switzerland, Australia and Mexico.
The president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, estimated on Thursday that “prominent academic institutions” in the United States are “contaminated by hatred and anti-Semitism fueled by arrogance and ignorance.”
Meanwhile, numerous human rights organizations denounce that the argument of the fight against anti-Semitism is used to silence demonstrations that criticize the actions of the Israeli Government in Gaza.
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