JERUSALEM — After weeks of non-stop coverage of the destruction and death in the Gaza Strip, media outlets across the Middle East have latched onto protests roiling American college campuses over the war between Israel and Hamas.
For some, the protests and what they described as a harsh police crackdown against them represent the double standard of life in the United States, which routinely calls on nations to respect dissent and freedom of expression. However, in most of the Middle East, demonstrations of any kind remain illegal as many countries face war, economic challenges or other widespread unrest.
The coverage included almost breathless reporting by Iranian state television, which broadcast live video of the protests and police actions. Even football commentators mentioned it during matches, with one analyst later describing it as “the death of liberal democracy.”
“The expansion of pro-Palestinian student protests to more than 200 universities while total repression by the police continues,” a news program began, also offering arrest figures.
Iran’s coverage of student protests in the United States comes even though state television largely ignored mass demonstrations surrounding the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022, which left more than 500 people dead and 22,000 detained.
The hardline Iranian newspaper Kayhan, which routinely calls for the destruction of both the United States and Israel, used student protests in the United States to try to discredit a BBC report alleging that Iranian security services sexually assaulted and killed a 16 year old girl. during the Amini demonstrations.
“At a time when consciences around the world are protesting the oppression of students in the United States and other Western countries, and as the global outcry against the countless crimes of the Israeli regime is greater than ever, the BBC World Service , in a strange act of suicide, “He has published such a ridiculous report,” the newspaper said.
In Israel, where the normally boisterous free press has largely rallied behind the war in Gaza, images of the American protests have sparked widespread concerns that public opinion has turned against Israel. Many commentators have called the protests anti-Semitic, an accusation protest leaders reject.
Israeli public broadcaster Kan repeatedly aired footage of protests in the United States on Wednesday, and some have called on Israel to open its doors to Jewish academics and students who feel unsafe in the United States.
“As anti-Semitic demonstrations demanding the destruction of Israel ravage universities around the world, the Council of Higher Education must make a decision to encourage Israel’s academic institutions to proactively absorb Jewish students from abroad.” , wrote Peretz Lavie, professor emeritus and former president of Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology.
At the Hebrew newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, its Washington bureau chief, Orly Azulai, offered a different perspective.
“People in Israel don’t see the protests correctly because they are not always shown correctly and because it is easier not to see them,” he wrote. “The same applies to the dead children in Gaza, the hunger, the shortage of medicine and the destruction that has overwhelmingly left the Gaza Strip uninhabitable.”
He added: “We must not allow extremists on both sides to win. No choice; “We have to learn to live together.”
Meanwhile, weekly protests in Israel drew thousands of people demanding the release of remaining hostages in the Gaza Strip and the resignation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In the Gaza Strip itself, some Palestinian protesters waved signs thanking individual American universities, while at least one man spray-painted his thanks on the side of a tent.
In the hereditarily ruled United Arab Emirates, where protests and political parties are illegal, a newspaper cartoon included an image of silhouetted college graduates marching toward a police van, with an American flag visible on the side. State media in neighboring Saudi Arabia generally stayed away from the news, instead reporting on its own universities opening enrollment for the next academic year.
Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper published an op-ed by lawyer Rafia Zakaria, suggesting that the student protests “may succeed in ushering in a new era in US foreign policy.”
“American foreign policy has long prided itself on its ruthless realpolitik, the architect of which Henry Kissinger died last November,” he wrote in an article published Wednesday. “Now a younger generation is calling into question the blatant hypocrisy that has been visible to the rest of the world for decades.”
The demonstrations even reached state television in Afghanistan, now overseen by the country’s Taliban-controlled government.
“These protesters have raised slogans against the attacks and genocide of the Zionist regime,” said Radio Television Afghanistan.
Qatar’s Al Jazeera news network, which has focused extensively on the war between Israel and Hamas and has seen its correspondents injured and killed in the Gaza Strip, prominently quoted on its website a warning from an American saying: “Our democracy is in danger.” Qatar is also a hereditarily ruled sheikh.
The network also provided context to the banner displayed by protesters who took over Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall and renamed the building “Hind Hall,” in honor of 5-year-old Hind Rajab, whose panicked call to paramedics Before his death in Gaza he attracted international attention.
Al Jazeera’s English-language station broadcast live from New York and North Carolina, showing the breadth of the student demonstrations.
“It was just devastation,” said a Duke University protester identified as Abigail, who spoke during a live report from the nearby University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “The police treated us all really horribly.”
Abigail, dressed in an open black and white Palestinian keffiyeh, added: “I want to speak directly to the people of Palestine, if I may, to the people of Gaza, and tell them that just because this camp was torn down yesterday does not mean that ” It’s over.”
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Find more information on AP’s coverage of Israel and Hamas at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war