Belgian Campus Protests Over War in Gaza Take Different Tone

Europe|For Campus Protesters successful Brussels, Familiar Methods, but Different Outcomes

On the leafy field of a Dutch-speaking university, students person for months been demanding that their instauration interruption ties with Israeli academia implicit the war successful Gaza.

Their run borrows extensively from the U.S. field protest playbook. The students person acceptable up an encampment. They person staged regular demonstrations. And they person sometimes used slogans that galore Jews presumption arsenic a telephone for the elimination of Israel, like, “From the stream to the sea, Palestine volition beryllium free.”

In the United States, the protests person taken spot amid a hyper-polarized governmental environment, contentious relations betwixt students and administrators, and acrimonious hearings successful Congress. But successful Belgium’s capital, the protestation astatine Vrije Universiteit Brussel, oregon V.U.B., has been acold much peaceful due to the fact that of a unsocial operation of factors: a supportive governmental situation (Belgium is simply a vocal professional of Israel); a proactive rector; strict protestation rules; and, crucially, a tiny field Jewish assemblage that has chosen not to face protesters contempt discomfort implicit immoderate of the protests.

“It’s truly brainsick to look astatine the United States and spot what’s happening there,” Ruaa Khatib, a protester who has Palestinian roots, said arsenic she woke up connected a caller rainy greeting aft a late-night information displacement astatine the encampment.