Pro-Palestinian demonstrators are calling on universities to sell investments in companies they say are complicit in war in Gaza

As protests against Israel’s offensive in Gaza are spreading throughout American campuses, one demand made by students across schools keeps coming up: divestment from Israel.

Universities rely on endowments to fund things like research and scholarships, and those endowments are typically invested in companies and alternative asset classes, such as private equity and hedge funds.

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Hamas video of hostage prompts protests, as Israeli authorities prepare for ground assault on Rafah

The families of Israeli hostages held in Gaza have put renewed pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu to restart negotiations for a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the release of their loved ones, as Israeli authorities said they were making progress in preparations for a ground assault on Rafah .

After the release by Hamas of a hostage video of the Israeli-American citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin, police and protesters clashed outside the Israeli prime minister’s Jerusalem home, and demonstrators lit fires, set off fireworks and swarmed the car of the far-right security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir.

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Increase in cost of crude could drive inflation up and force central banks to keep interest rates high

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A serious escalation of tensions in the Middle East would push the price of oil above $100 (£80) a barrel and reverse the recent downward trend in global inflation, the World Bank has said.

The Washington-based institution said the recent fall in commodity prices had been levelling off even before the recent missile strikes by Iran and Israel – making interest rate decisions for central banks tougher.

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The safety and security of Palestinians and Jews are interdependent, so we should use language carefully

In reporting on the encampments springing up on college campuses across the US, the media seem to have convened a terminology confab and agreed on two descriptions: “pro-Palestinian” and “anti-Israel”. These labels oversimplify Americans’ opinions on Israel’s onslaught against Gaza, which marked its 200th day on Tuesday with no end in sight. But the error is worse than semantic.

“Universities Struggle as Pro-Palestinian Demonstrations Grow,” says the New York Times . “Colleges Struggle to Contain Intensifying Pro-Palestinian Protests,” reports the Wall Street Journal . In Minneapolis, the Star Tribune has the local news that the “University of Minnesota police arrest 9 after pro-Palestinian encampment set up on campus”. Some publications less shy about displaying their political biases take the opposite tack. A headline in the right-leaning New York Post , for instance, exaggerated the literally incendiary nature of the demonstrators’ tactics: “Anti-Israel protesters carry flares to March on NYPD HQ after 130 arrested at NYU.” The accompanying video is cast in red. Ever evenhanded, CBS does both: “Pro-Palestinian, pro-Israel protesters gather outside Columbia University.”

Judith Levine is a Brooklyn journalist and essayist, a contributing writer to the Intercept and the author of five books

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Sombre documentary focuses on the former Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti, and how he is becoming a Mandela-like figure since his imprisonment in 2002

Here is a film that offers something not generally on offer in the media: an envisioning of the future and a road map, or part of a road map, out of the present situation in Israel and Palestine. It’s about Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti , an initial supporter of the 1993 and 1995 Oslo peace accords who became progressively disillusioned with the slow choreography of international consensus, and was ultimately imprisoned in 2002 for authorising deadly attacks on Israel. Barghouti’s position is not that he is innocent, but that an Israeli court has no right to try him.

During the long years since, he has gone on hunger strike, been beaten and abused in captivity; his grownup children have themselves been targeted and arrested and his wife Fadwa has been repeatedly refused permission to visit him. But the film shows that something else has been happening as well: the Mandela-isation of Barghouti, a process which the Israeli forces themselves may well come to see as convenient, when in some future time they need an internationally accepted figure with whom to negotiate.

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Israel says the graves were dug by people in Gaza a few months ago but the corpses had been examined by IDF soldiers

Pictures coming in overnight from the news wires show Palestinians mourning those killed by the latest round of Israeli airstrikes on Rafah , in the south of the Gaza Strip, an area where Israel’s military has repeatedly ordered civilians to evacuate to.

A memorial at the National Cathedral in Washington on Thursday will honour the seven World Central Kitchen aid workers killed by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza earlier this month.

José Andrés , the chef and philanthropist behind the Washington-based World Central Kitchen disaster relief group, is expected to speak at the celebration of life service, Associated Press reports.

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At least 34 arrested at University of Texas in Austin and 50 more detained at University of Southern California while House speaker jeered at Columbia University

• Student Gaza protests – live updates

Dozens of protesters were arrested on Wednesday while participating in pro-Palestine demonstrations across US college campuses.

At least 34 protesters, including a member of the media from a local news station, were arrested during protests at University of Texas in Austin and at least 50 more were detained by police at University of Southern California (USC).

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Israeli prime minister terms pro-ceasefire rallies ‘horrific’ as students demand universities divest from weapons makers

The Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday condemned pro-Palestinian protests at universities in the United States as “horrific”, saying the demonstrations “have to be stopped”, as he categorized students as antisemitic.

There’s been rising tensions at campuses across the US as demonstrations began last week after students at Columbia set up encampments calling for the university to divest from weapons manufacturers with ties to Israel. The protests have led to mass suspensions and arrests of hundreds students in New York, Texas and California.

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Protesters into seventh day of hunger strike in support of Palestinians and in effort to demand university divestment

A group of students at Yale University were on Friday into the seventh day of a hunger strike in support of Palestinians in Gaza and in a protest to pressure the university to divest from any weapons manufacturing companies potentially supplying the Israeli military.

The group titles itself Yale Hunger Strikers for Palestine and one protester, the graduate student Miguel Monteiro, described losing weight and feeling dizzy, while attempting to put the group’s efforts into a wider perspective.

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