TEHRAN- Iran’s permanent mission to the United Nations office in Geneva has strongly denounced the current suppression of pro-Palestine protests on U.S. college campuses, emphasizing that using force against nonviolent demonstrators will not stop them.

As the 200th day of Israel’s U.S.-backed genocide against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip approaches, protests against the regime’s attack on the besieged area are growing more intense, and prominent American institutions have been the site of altercations between students and police.

Over 20 U.S. campuses are participating in anti-war demonstrations in response to the conflict, which has claimed the lives of over 34,000 people since October of last year, many of them women and children. 

The students want colleges to distance themselves from any firms supporting the war on Gaza being waged by the Israeli regime. 

Numerous demonstrators have been taken into custody by police on college campuses. 

In a post on X on Saturday, the mission said that “we strongly condemn the brutal and violent crackdown on widespread peaceful pro-Palestinian protests at universities in the United States. The U.S. Police brutality and excessive use of force during peaceful assemblies, and targeting students advocating for an end to genocidal war in Gaza is a matter of serious concern.”

It went on to add, “Demonstrators are precisely calling for ending the U.S. complicity in ongoing genocide in Gaza in their name. Firing and beating peaceful protesters does not silence them, who are the frontline human rights defenders; it only reaffirms the urgency of the struggle for justice for Palestine.”

“Police attacks against university students and professors, the scale of arrests and the conditions of detentions are deeply disturbing and we call for the release of all detained.”

The United States is fully manifesting a double standard approach regarding the students who are sympathizing with the grieving Palestinians who have been subjected to death, bombardment, displacement, starvation, etc. for nearly seven months.

On Thursday, police with shields and batons shoved into protesters at Indiana University Bloomington after students established an encampment. Police officers also tore down tents at the University of Connecticut. At Ohio State University and Emerson College in Boston, police also attacked protesters. 

Police officers further clashed with students at the campus of Emory University in Atlanta. A large number of people were detained during attacks on these universities.  

Demonstrators at Emory accused police officers of using pepper spray and tear gas to break up the encampment they had set up a few hours earlier.

The Atlanta Police Department acknowledged that its officers had “used chemical irritants during the incident.” The Georgia State Patrol also confirmed its troopers used pepper balls for crowd control. 

Separately, The New York Times has reviewed video footage that shows a trooper using a stun device on a protester who was on the ground.

The protestors are accused of “anti-Semitism” while a considerable number of the protestors are Jews. The Western decision-makers, who are subservient to Israel, are using charges of anti-Semitism against anybody who opposes Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian lands let alone those who are chanting slogans, carrying placards, and launching encampment protests at campuses condemning Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Contrary to claims of anti-Semitism, students are calling for a ceasefire, asking their universities and colleges to stop doing business with Israel or any companies that support Israel in its ongoing war in the coastal enclave, cease funding the regime’s war machine, and avoid complicity in this genocide.

Since the Tel Aviv regime began its offensive on the besieged Palestinian enclave on October 7, the United States has given Israel unrestricted military, intelligence, and financial backing. 

Israel receives $3.8 billion in military aid from Washington each year, and U.S. President Joe Biden has been a steadfast supporter of the illegal entity even during the Gaza conflict. 

Biden enacted a hefty financing agreement on Wednesday that would provide the occupying regime an additional $17 billion. 

Additionally, Washington has vetoed multiple resolutions from the UN Security Council that demanded an end to the heinous military invasion. 

Eighty percent of Gaza’s schools have been damaged or destroyed since the conflict started in early October, according to a panel of United Nations experts last week. There have been around 5,500 deaths, along with 261 instructors and 95 academics.