Video: US student asked why she’s protesting against Israel, says ‘Don’t know’

Amid mass pro-Palestine protests across multiple US universities over the ongoing Israel’s war with Gaza, a video tweeted by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani showed two protesters completely clueless about the purpose of the demonstrations. In the video, reported to be recorded at New York University, one protester said that she “honestly” doesn’t know what the varsity is doing and why they are protesting against Israel.

“The goal is to show our support for Palestine, and demanding that NYU stops…I honestly don’t know all of what NYU is doing,” the protester said, when asked what her primary goal pertaining to the demonstrations was.

She then turned to another protester, standing next to her, to ask if the latter knows what NYU is doing and why they are protesting.

“I wish I was more educated,” the second protester replied.

The first protester then explained that she came from Columbia University, the flashpoint of the US university protests, after being told that students of New York University needed their support.

“I heard that there (are) lots of cops, some people were saying it was getting dangerous,” she said.

Rudy Giuliani, 79, who visited Columbia University on Tuesday (April 23), slammed the protesters at his show, calling them “terribly misguided people”. He ridiculed the rivalry between Columbia and Harvard – both witnessing massive protests – by saying that the former had to beat the latter at something, so “they figured they gotta beat them at Jewish hatred”.

On Monday (April 22), 133 protesters were taken into custody from pro-Palestine protests at New York University, The Associated Press reported. Officers were called in after university leaders reported that the protesters had breached school barricades and behaved in a “disorderly, disruptive and antagonising manner”, The New York Times reported. In about 30 minutes after the crackdown, the encampments had dispersed.

US university protests, ongoing for weeks, flared up on Wednesday after a number of arrests were made across multiple varsities. Videos flooding social media showed police arriving at the University of Texas’s Austin campus on horseback to stop demonstrations amid chaos. Some 200 students were protesting when the police were called to the university. Meanwhile, police used batons to disperse demonstrations at the University of Southern California. One Palestinian student organiser was detained, but was later released.

Similar protests have been reported at Harvard University, Yale University, and Brown University, among others. The students have rallied behind Palestine and criticised US President Joe Biden for his handling of the Israel-Gaza war. They have also demanded universities divest assets from Israel and seek to pressure the Biden administration to control Israeli strikes on Palestinians.