On Tuesday night, dozens of anti-Israel student demonstrators occupied the library at the City University of New York Graduate Center and “renamed” it after a university in Gaza that was destroyed in an airstrike.
Demonstrators held up Palestinian flags, banners and signs inside the Mina Rees Library on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, announcing its new name: Al-Aqsa University Library. Named after Gaza’s oldest public university, the library was nearly destroyed by Gaza. Israeli shelling of the territory.
“Disclosure. Divest.” About 30 students shouted as they stood and sat in the building’s lobby, according to the footage. Filmed by an independent video journalist.
Another 50 protesters stood outside the doors of the public university, but were prevented from entering.
Inside the university building, student demonstrators read out the names of 94 Palestinian professors recently killed in the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
Organizers have requisitioned the library building as part of an effort to demand that City University divest $8.5 million from weapons, technology and surveillance companies “complicit in Zionist settler colonialism and the genocide of the Palestinian people.” , said it had “lifted the occupation.”
Protesters are also demanding that City University drop all charges against students arrested during police raids on City University encampments.
“From New York to Palestine, protesting is not a crime,” they shouted in the lobby. “From New York City to Palestine, protesting is not a crime.”
Joshua Blumberg, director of the City University of New York Graduate Center, met with student protesters in the lobby to try to negotiate a deal.
Students said they would leave the building if he could meet two immediate demands. That means he publicly supports amnesty for all pro-Palestinian protesters arrested at the CUNY demonstration, and that he grants amnesty to all protesters who were at the library on Monday night.
But organizers said Blumberg only agreed to the latter, so the students stayed.
No arrests have been made.
