The Gaza effect How Pro-Palestine protests revealed shift in west's tolerance of free speech

The ceasefire between Hamas and Israel has been met with joy and relief across the Middle East and beyond.

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Over the past two years, outrage at Israel's war in Gaza has erupted across Europe and the US, manifesting itself in university campus protests, massive marches through countless capitals and the disruption of major sporting events.

Even as hopes rise of an end to the war, international anger over Israel's actions in Gaza, which have been deemed a genocide by a UN commission of inquiry, remains raw, as evidenced by last weekend's huge rallies in Spain and Italy.

While the fury that fuels them has been shared and ubiquitous, the demonstrations - and the authorities' responses to them - have varied considerably from country to country. If some of the official reactions have been draconian, there have also been exceptions, especially in countries where public opinion is more openly pro-Palestinian.

In the US, growing pro-Palestinian activism has been met with arrests, legal action and mounting threats, offering a pretext for Donald Trump's unprecedented attack on free speech and catalysing what many view as the country's descent into authoritarianism.

In the early months of the war, thousands of people, many of them Jewish, took part in protests. After students at Columbia University set up a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus in the spring of 2024, dozens more followed at other universities across the country. But bowing to pressure from legislators, donors and pro-Israel critics, many universities responded harshly to the encampments, calling police on to campuses, which led to thousands of arrests.

Meanwhile, allegations of antisemitism against pro-Palestinian protests have been weaponised by the Trump administration to launch an unprecedented assault on academic freedom, including cutting billions in university funding, screening thousands of visa applicants for pro-Palestinian views, and the attempted deportation of foreign scholars over their political opinions.