Already and this is the Daily OS.
This is the Daily OS. Oh now it makes sense. Good morning and welcome to the Daily ODS. It is Friday, the third of May. I'm billy, i'm zara. Student protests over the Israel Hamas war have intensified across US college campuses this week and have now spread to universities here in Australia. Protesters are calling for an immediate ceasefire and for their universities to divest from, which means stop investing
funds in companies linked to Israel. According to CNN, more than one thousand students have been arrested across at least twenty one states since mid April. Today we're going to explain exactly what you need to know, but before we get their zara, what is making headlines?
Attorney General Mark Dreyfus is urging parents to consider who they are sharing content with online after a survey of four thousand parents by the Australian Institute of Criminology found nearly three percent had received requests online for child's sexual exploitation material. Around a third of these parents were offered payment for the exploitative content. Dreyfus said parents need to be more aware of the potential harms to their child if their photos are posted online.
Both Woolwells and Cohls have recorded jumps in their sales for the first three months of this year compared to the last three months of last year. Woolwales recorded a two point eight percent growth in sales compared to Cols's five point one percent increase. The supermarket giants are facing multiple inquiries into their business conduct during the cost of living crisis.
Solomon Islands has elected its Foreign Minister, Jeremiah manale as the new Prime Minister. Comes after the election last month resulted in no clear leader and former Prime Minister manasse S Sagovare announced he would not be returning to office. Ozupm Anthony Albanizi congratulated manale on x, saying the country's futures are connected.
And today's good news. There was a bit of a rush at this year's Australasian Performing Right Association Awards, also known as the APRA Awards. Troceavan's lead single Rush took out the number one spot for the peer voted Song of the Year. The twenty eight year old was also nominated for a Grammy this year. For Rush.
Okay, so Billy.
There are these huge protests that are happening on college campuses around the world, but they started in the US. Where did this story of protesting begin.
So the protests are over the Israel and Hamas war, and I think whenever we talk about the war and Garza, it's important to give some brief contexts to start. So, on October seven, Hamas launched an attack on Israel, and according to data cited by the UN, roughly one two hundred people were killed. Hamas, which Australia lists as a terrorist organization, captured about two hundred and forty hostages and
today about one hundred and thirty three remain captive. Now, Israel responded by declaring war and bombarding Gaza, and according to data cited by the UN, at least thirty four thousand Palestinians have now been killed since that date or of the seventh of October, and Israel's war in Gaza has caused a massive humanitarian crisis there. And in the seven months since the war began, there have been mass protests all over the world. There have been protests at universities,
there have been protests on the streets. They have really been everywhere. But this recent wave of student protests began at Columbia University in New York City in mid April, so more than two weeks ago.
Now, okay, so Columbia is where this story begins. It's one of the most prestigious universities in New York. Barack Obama is one of the alumni of that col what's happened there?
Yeah, if you haven't heard of Columbia University, you have definitely heard of many of its graduates. It's a very prestigious university over there. So on the eighteenth of April, more than a hundred students were arrested after they refuse to vacate an encampment on the campis Can I.
Just stop you there? Encampment? That word's been everywhere in the headlines. What does it actually mean?
Yeah, I was looking at Google trends the other day and what does encampment mean was one of the top trends.
It's a word that.
It's everywhere at the moment, and it basically is just a group of tents that students are setting up on university lawns and they are sleeping there. So they have been sleeping there for more than two weeks now. So students at Columbia University, for example, have been sleeping on the lawns of their UNI for more than two weeks now.
So these encampments were set up on the eighteenth of April at Columbia University. It's now the third of May. What's happened between then and now.
Yeah, the protests have really only intensified since then. It's been a massive story this week. It's been the leading
story of the New York Times. So this week, students forcefully occupied one of the halls on campus, the Hamilton Hall, which is actually a really well known hall for several protests that have happened there over centuries, and it was completely vandalized and blockaded, and the UNI put out statement saying that well, they said that they had no choice but to reach out to the police, and that is when riot police were actually brought in to clear the building,
and they arrested dozens of people. In the process of that happening and it being cleared out.
It was pretty remarkable vision.
It was being live streamed kind of by most news outlets, and it was police wearing like full gear in these huge trucks coming and coming face to face with student protesters.
It was quite remarkable vision.
And the UNI has also released a statement saying that students who were part of that will possibly face expulsion. So tensions are very high, I think is probably an understatement, to be honest, And Joe Biden, the US President, also weighed in. A spokesperson for him said that forcibly taking over a building on campus is absolutely the wrong approach.
And so in this instance, these protesters were met by police, specifically the NYPD. There's been quite a lot of discussion around what that interaction between police and protesters looked, like, what do we know about that?
Yeah, so there has been this conversation of police violence, and there have been several reported incidents of police violence that have come from students who have been at the protests. Some of the organizers in Colombia, for example, they said that multiple students were injured by police and had to be taken to hospital. They also said that some students had emerged with swollen faces from being kicked repeatedly and also from getting tackled to the ground. So some really
concerning incidents there. So those are some of the reports that we've heard about police violence. But in this case, we haven't heard directly from the New York Police Department or from universities verifying the situation from their perspective.
I'm sure there will still be a lot there to unpack. As you know, this is still a fairly fresh story, so I'm sure we'll be talking about that for a while. It's not just Colombia though, where this has happened. It's happened across the country and now in fact across the world.
How has this grown, this movement.
Yeah, it's grown massively. I mean, students are now protesting at around fifty other university campuses in the US and also in Canada. Some of the universities include Harvard, I'm sure many listeners are familiar without one, Yale, and Johns Hopkins as well, and CNN reports that more than a thousand students have now been arrested across the US in
at least twenty one states. So this has spread a lot across the country, and some universities have also actually had to cancel graduations ceremonies, including the University of Southern California, in the wake of these protests and as they are ongoing, and like we mentioned, above. A lot of these protests are taking the form of encampments. These aren't just the usual protests that we often see. They are literally camping
on the lawns and sleeping there. And the students have been extremely clear that they are saying they will not end this will not stop until their demands are met. Here is one student from Columbia speaking to the media earlier this week. We will not be moved by these intimidation tactics.
You can see outside you now that these students aren't mobilized. There's hundred complems here today. They will not be moved. We demand divestments. We will not be moved and left by force.
I want to get into what exactly the demands of these protesters are, because you've just said that they don't plan to leave, or they will try not to leave until those demands are met.
Actually talk about what it is they are pushing for here.
Yeah, So, as you heard in that clip, what they are asking for is divestment.
What does that mean?
So they are wanting their universities to divest from which just means stop investing funds in companies that are linked to Israel. Now, like I mentioned, there are fifty different unis facing these demands from these students. So I'm not going to go into the responses from every single one of those fifty universities. But let's again, we've been talking about Columbia University a lot because that's where it started.
It has said that it will not divest from Israel, but it did say that it will expedite a review into the matter. So they're saying that they'll look into it, but they're absolutely not making any promises. But one example of a university that has reached an agreement with the students is at Brown University, and they have reached a
pretty rare agreement with the protesters. They announce that its leaders have agreed to discuss and they then later will vote on whether or not to divest funds from companies connected to Israel. And as a result of that agreement, the protesters have stopped their encampment on their campus.
And I think just good to note that there isn't this one body that is organizing all of these different encampments. They are all slightly varied. They're being organized locally on campuses. So while the demands are broadly the same, there are a few variations between them. I do want to turn out to some incidents of anti Semitism that have occurred on college campuses. What can you tell me about that?
Yeah, there have been many reports of anti Semitism occurring during these protests. Video showed Jewish students being physically prevented from entering their colleges, and there have been some incidents of assaults on Jewish students as well, and many Jewish students have said that they don't feel safe at their
university going to their classes anymore. Columbia University has strongly condemned quote chance signs, taunts and social media posts from our own students that mock and threatened to kill Jewish people, and it said that many Jewish students have left campus and that is a tragedy. And they've also banned a student from campus due to their anti Semitic behavior. And last week Biden condemned anti semitism on these campuses and everywhere.
He said that it was reprehensible and dangerous and that anti Semitism had no place on college campuses or anywhere in our country.
Some very strong words, they are from the US President. But as we've said, it's now not just in the US that we're seeing these protests, it's also happening here in Australia, right.
Yeah, there are now similar encampments happening here in Australia. There are ones at the University of Melbourne, University of Queensland, also a new in Canberra. They're also at Sydney UNI. We had a colleague who was there yesterday and she sent through photos of the camps being set up there. So again it's spreading all across Australia now and the organizers here in Australia are asking for a similar demand to those in the US. They are asking for the
universities to stop their partnership with Israeli institutions. And another thing to mention is that mcquarie University is quote working to wholly understand what happened when one of its academics ran an event at the UCID protests for young children where they were filmed chanting phrases including into fada and Israel is a terrorist state.
Look, it's a really complicated topic and I know that it's one that affects a lot of our listeners, a lot of university age students listening to this podcast. So Hopefully we have been able to unpack a bit about where this movement has started, where it might be going next. But that's it from us today. Thanks for listening to the Daily os. We'll be back again on Monday, but until then, have a great weekend.
My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Aarunda Bungelung Calcotin woman from Gadigal Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast dust is recorded on the lands of the Gadigal people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torrestrate island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.