Demonstrations in American universities against the genocide perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinians in Gaza are gradually spreading to European universities, particularly in France. “French society in the grip of conflict in the Middle East,” headlines Le Monde.
Wednesday, April 24, 2024, at Sciences Po, rue Saint Guillaume, in Paris, pro-Palestinian students set up tents on their campus, following the movement initiated by the universities of Columbia and Harvard in the United States.
The “Palestine Committee of Sciences Po” is at the origin of this action, organized a month and a half after a pro-Gaza conference that had already turned into controversy.
According to AFP, a few dozen students participated in the rally on the Saint-Thomas campus, in the heart of Paris, to demonstrate their opposition to the policy pursued by most Western states in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians of Gaza and call for an immediate ceasefire and a halt to all military aid to Israel.
The demonstrators chanted: “Long live Palestine!” Leaflets were also distributed to those present, calling for a “ Vigil for Palestine”, with the subtitle “ Together against repression, together for justice: Sciences Po must act!”.
All the demonstrators demand that Science Po “cut its ties with universities and companies that are complicit in the genocide in Gaza” and “an end to the repression against pro-Palestinian voices on campus,” said a student. in master’s degree cited by AFP.
The demonstrators were finally dislodged during the night by the police.
Yesterday, Friday, April 26, tension rose a notch, and security forces were deployed to carry out evacuations in the evening before the school management announced an agreement with the pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
She notably indicated in a press release that she made the “commitment” to “suspend the referrals to the disciplinary section initiated since April 17”, while the activists demanded “the immediate cessation of disciplinary proceedings against pro-Palestinian students “.
The school management has also committed to organizing an internal debate. “Given these decisions, the students have undertaken to no longer disrupt classes, exams as well as all the activities of the institution,” wrote Jean Bassères, provisional administrator, in a message, cited by Le Figaro.
Referring to the current tensions in France between the pro-Israel and pro-Palestine camps, Le Monde writes: “It is a country which is sliding towards the tumult it fears. Convictions and summonses of political and trade union activists for “apology of terrorism” in the middle of the electoral campaign for the European elections; bans on conferences at universities and even political meetings; occupation of Sciences Po, in Paris; media and social networks in fusion: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has invaded the entire political, social and media sphere in France.”
In fact – and this is difficult for elites in the West to admit – we are witnessing today a sort of generational break between young Westerners and their elders who no longer react to conflicts in the same way as the West. supplies to the four corners of the world, directly or indirectly through their regional allies, such as Israel in the Middle East.
Long fooled by the propaganda disseminated by the elites in power and the media subordinate to them, all in the pay of the Zionist International, itself in the service of the genocidal State of Israel, young Westerners are waking up to the scale of the disaster committed by their elders and the threats they pose to world peace, today and tomorrow.
For these young people, the tragic fate reserved for the Palestinians is the glaring sign of a moral failure and a loss of credibility of a West that has sold its soul to all devils. And if they are revolting today and expressing their disagreements more and more loudly, it is because they fear inheriting, tomorrow, an unmanageable world in a state of advanced disintegration.
As for France, the fact that Sciences Po Paris, a breeding ground where tomorrow’s political and economic elites are trained, long considered a stronghold of the conservative right, is now becoming the standard bearer of the student revolt, is in itself indicative of a great French malaise.
