After weeks of nonstop coverage of destruction and death in the Gaza Strip, media across the wider Middle East has latched onto the demonstrations roiling American university campuses over the Israel-Hamas war.
The coverage included nearly breathless reporting from Iranian state television, which aired live video of the protests and police crackdown on illicit conduct by far-left demonstrators. Even soccer commentators brought it up during matches as one analyst later described it as “the death of liberal democracy.”
“The expansion of pro-Palestinian student protests to over 200 universities while full-fledged crackdown by police continues,” one newscast began, offering arrest figures as well.
The Iranian coverage of student protests in the US comes despite state TV largely ignoring the mass demonstrations surrounding the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, which resulted in over 500 people dead and 22,000 detained.
The hard-line Iranian newspaper Kayhan, which routinely calls for the destruction of both the US and Israel, used the student protests in the US to try to discredit a BBC report alleging 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 suppression of students in America and other Western countries, and while the global outcry against the Israeli regime’s countless crimes is greater than ever, the BBC World Service, in a strange act of suicide, has published such a ridiculous report,” the newspaper said.
In Israel, where the normally rambunctious free press has largely rallied behind the war in Gaza, the images from the US protests have prompted widespread concerns that public opinion has turned against the Jewish state. Many commentators have dismissed the protests as antisemitic.
Israel’s public broadcaster Kan repeatedly aired images of the US protests on Wednesday, and some have called on Israel to open its doors to Jewish academics and students who feel unsafe in the US.
“When antisemitic demonstrations calling for the destruction of Israel are raging on campuses around the world, the Council for Higher Education must make a decision to encourage academic institutions in Israel to proactively absorb Jewish students from abroad,” wrote Peretz Lavie, a professor emeritus and former president at Technion – the Israel Institute of Technology.
Meanwhile, weekly protests in Israel continue drawing thousands who demand the release of the remaining hostages in the Gaza Strip and the resignation of 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 appreciation on the side of a tent.
In the hereditarily ruled United Arab Emirates, in which protests and political parties are illegal, one newspaper cartoon included an image of silhouetted university graduates marching into a police van, an American flag visible on its side. State media in neighboring Saudi Arabia broadly stayed away from the news, reporting instead on its own universities opening enrollment for the next academic year.
Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper carried an opinion piece by lawyer Rafia Zakaria, suggesting the student protests “may succeed in ushering in a new era in US foreign policy.”
“For a long time, US foreign policy prided itself on its ruthless realpolitik, whose architect Henry Kissinger died last November,” she wrote in a piece 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 made it to state-run television in Afghanistan, now overseen by the country’s Taliban-controlled government.
“These protesters have made slogans against the attacks and genocide of the Zionist regime,” the broadcaster Radio Television Afghanistan said.
Qatar’s Al Jazeera news network, which has focused extensively on its anti-Israel coverage of the war in Gaza, quoted prominently in its website a warning from an American as saying: “Our democracy is in danger.” Qatar as well is a hereditarily ruled sheikhdom.
The channel also provided context to the banner unfurled by demonstrators who seized Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall that renamed the building “Hind Hall” — after 5-year-old Hind Rajab whose panicked call to paramedics before her death in Gaza gained international attention.
Al Jazeera’s English-language broadcaster went live from New York and North Carolina, showing the breadth of the student demonstrations.
“It was just devastation,” a Duke University protester identified as Abigail who spoke during a live report from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “We were all being treated really horrifically by the police.”
Wearing a black-and-white Palestinian keffiyeh scarf on air, Abigail added: “I want to speak directly to the people of Palestine, the people of Gaza if I may, and say just because this encampment was torn down yesterday doesn’t mean this is over.”
The nationwide campus protests began at Columbia in response to Israel’s offensive in Gaza. War erupted on October 7 when the Palestinian terror group Hamas led a massive cross-border attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, amid numerous atrocities. The roughly 3,000 attackers who burst into southern Israel also abducted 253 people of all ages who were taken as hostages to the Gaza Strip.
Vowing to stamp out Hamas and topple its regime in Gaza, Israel launched a military campaign that also aims to free the hostages, of whom 129 remain in captivity, some believed no longer alive.
At least 34,400 Palestinians have been killed and over 77,600 injured in Gaza since the start of the war, the Hamas-run health ministry in the Strip says.
The figures cannot be independently verified and include some 13,000 Hamas gunmen Israel says it has killed in battle. Israel also says it killed some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.