UNL students protest plight of Palestinians in bombed-out Gaza
As the promise of at least temporary peace grows in the Middle East, students at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln demanded action and awareness on the continued plight of Palestinians living in emaciated Gaza. For about six hours on Wednesday, they took up much of Memorial Plaza near UNL's student union."People are dying, and they're just systematically being killed and ethnically cleansed," Colby Holtz, a UNL student with Students for Justice in Palestine, said.SJP is urging the University of Nebraska to divest from weapons manufacturers, who provide ammunition to what an independent United Nations commission labeled a genocide. The crowd of dozens of coming-and-going students heard from multiple speakers, including Willy Massay. Massay has served as a nurse in Gaza multiple times."I've never seen such trauma," he said. "That trauma is an unimaginable thing for anyone to see. No health care worker's ever trained to do that."Students waved Palestinian flags and displayed posters with the disturbing statistics of death tolls and buildings turned to rubble."Despite being a triple landlocked state in the very center of the country, people still do care about the suffering that's happened, happening all the way across the world," Holtz said.Law enforcement gathered on both sides of the peaceful gathering. UNLPD even requested support from the Nebraska State Patrol, which sent five troopers.Anna Synya is a former UNL student who spoke at the event, touching on her connections to Ukraine. She was born in the war-torn country and says Israel's actions bear similarities to Russia's. She urged the community to support both peoples."Nebraskans can do a lot to just welcome refugees, as we had already been doing, and open our hearts to communities on both side, all individuals fleeing conflict," Synya said.NAVIGATE: Home | Weather | Local News | National | Sports | Newscasts on demand |
