London, May 5 (RHC)-- Students at several universities across the UK, including the prestigious University College London (UC), have launched tent encampments demanding their universities divest from firms that supply arms to Israel and end any potential complicity in the regime’s genocidal war on Gaza.

One UCI organizer of the protests said: "Our demands are three; simply for the university to divest from any companies complicit in Israeli war crimes.  Secondly, for them to condemn Israeli war crimes, and thirdly, for them to pledge towards the reconstruction of the universities destroyed as a result of Israeli war crimes."

"We weren't allowed on the campus so the students came to us, led by a Palestinian doctor who has seen the Israeli atrocities in Gaza firsthand.

Demonstrations have been held at New York University, Harvard, MIT and other universities in Michigan, Minnesota and Colombia.

This new wave of action builds on earlier, all be it underreported, protests which included student occupations of university buildings, but the scenes on campuses across the U.S., that have seen more than 2000 arrested in a violent police crackdown, have further galvanized the protests in Britain.

The movement is spreading like wildfire; the universities of Manchester, Warwick, Sheffield, and several others, have all embarked on similar action.  So far, the protests have been peaceful. The government has backed a police crackdown on what it called disorder.

Occupation of UK universities comes as U.S. riot police violently evict student encampments at several campuses.

The Union of Jewish Students has claimed the encampments are creating a hostile and toxic atmosphere, a claim the Haredi Jews who came to support the students rejected.