“The regrettable images of US police brutalizing pro-Palestinian university professors who are protesting the US support for the murderous Zionist regime, expose the deep gap between word and action in the behavior of the US government to global judgment,” Nasser Kanaani said in a post on his X account on Friday.
“US officials do not have the moral high ground on human rights, women’s rights and freedom of speech,” he added.
The US police have arrested hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters at several universities during the past week.
On Friday, at least 40 protesters were arrested in Denver at the Auraria Campus, an institution shared by the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State University of Denver and the Community College of Denver.
In Texas, the president of the University of Texas at Austin, Jay Hartzell, faced a similar backlash from faculty on Friday, two days after he joined with Republican Governor Greg Abbott in calling in police to break up a peaceful pro-Palestinian protest.
Dozens of protesters were taken into custody, but charges were dropped because authorities lacked probable cause –or reasonable grounds– for making the arrests, the Travis County Attorney’s Office said.
Nearly 200 university faculty members signed a letter expressing no confidence in Hartzell because he “needlessly put students, staff and faculty in danger” when police in riot gear and on horseback moved against the protesters.
Meanwhile, hundreds of protesters at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., remained gathered for a second day on Friday. The school said students did not follow directions to leave, and several were suspended and temporarily barred from campus.
Student-led protests against Israel’s war on Gaza have spread overseas.
At the Sciences Po university in Paris, pro-Israeli protesters challenged pro-Palestinian students occupying a school building on Friday. Police kept the two sides apart.
Pro-Palestinian students at the prestigious university later agreed to call off their action in return for an “internal debate” about the university’s ties to Israel.
At least 34,356 Palestinians have been killed and 77,368 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7, 2023.