Japan University Students Blast Israel’s Gaza Genocide

Amid protests at universities in the US and spreading worldwide against Israel's invasion of the Gaza Strip, increasingly more students at Japanese universities are joining the movement, Ai Kunimoto reported for Mainichi Japan.

Protest activities in solidarity with Gaza are spreading in universities across the world. I Photo: rajatonvimma /// VJ Group Random Doctors Wikimedia Commons

Picnic blankets were spread out at Aoyama Gakuin University's campus in Tokyo's Shibuya Ward on the afternoon of May 10, displaying a dozen or so books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and cardboard signs with "Free Gaza" and "Immediate ceasefire" written on them.

Students and others stopped by to pick up the books.

This is a "book reading protest" globally in response to the Gaza invasion, aiming to raise awareness about the issue through books.

Organizer Yashima Nozomi, a fourth-year student at the university's School of International Politics, Economic and Communication, said "as a person studying international politics, I couldn't bear to just continue doing nothing" as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza unfolds every day on social media.”

At the University of Tokyo's Komaba campus in the capital's Meguro Ward, a "Palestine solidarity camp" is being run in solidarity with the efforts at American universities. Protest activities are spreading in universities across Japan, with students at Kyoto University, Meiji University, and Sophia University sharing their experiences on social media.

Sho Toda, a fourth-year student in Waseda University's School of Humanities and Social Sciences, organized a standing protest at the campus in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward on May 1.