ISRAEL: Students and professors march in Jerusalem

Some 800 Hebrew University students and nearly a dozen professors marched from the Mount Scopus campus to Sheikh Jarrah last Wednesday to protest the evictions of Arab families and what they called the neighborhood's 'Jewish settlement', writes Abe Selig for The Jerusalem Post. While protests in the north-east Jerusalem quarter have ballooned over recent months, and Friday afternoon demonstrations there continue to draw large crowds, Wednesday's march was the first 'academic protest' in Sheikh Jarrah.

Although the march was in no way endorsed by the university, students and professors said more such efforts would follow. Professor Ze'ev Sternhell from the university's political science department addressed the crowd in a park inside the neighborhood. Sternhell, who was born in Poland in 1935, told The Jerusalem Post that the march was a "new step" for the protest movement in Sheikh Jarrah, and that student-professor cooperation was something new for demonstrations in Israel.

Sternhell said that he and his fellow protesters had come out for two reasons. "One is the suffering of those who were kicked out of their homes and others who fear they will be next," he said. "The other thing is the political stupidity that allowed it to happen."
Full report on The Jerusalem Post site