US presidential candidate Jill Stein detained at anti-Israel rally in St. Louis

By ToI Staff 28 April 2024, 9:40 am

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File: This file photo taken on August 23, 2016 shows Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein during a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. (AFP PHOTO/GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/WIN MCNAMEE)

Police detain dozens of demonstrators, including presidential candidate Jill Stein, at an anti-Israel demonstration at Washington University in St. Louis.

The rally is part of a string of protests across campuses in the United States and beyond against Israel, featuring calls for Israel to end the war in Gaza and for the US to sanction Israel. Many of the protests, in which police have arrested hundreds of people in recent weeks for rioting, also feature calls for Israel’s destruction as a Jewish state.

At this weekend’s protests, police arrested more than 200 people at Washington University and three others: Northeastern; Arizona State and Indiana University.

Stein, a Jewish anti-Israel activist and the Green Party’s presidential candidate in the 2024 elections, was led away to wait in a van to be processed by police, the St. Louis Today website reports.

In St. Louis, the pro-Palestinian students are demanding that the university divest from the Boeing Co. military equipment supplier over its sale of arms to Israel. Boeing is a major employer in the St. Louis region.

Like the Green Party as a whole, Stein supports the boycott, divest and sanctions movement against Israel, or BDS. She places Israel in the company of non-democratic American allies Saudi Arabia and Egypt. On her website, she refers to Israel’s actions against Hamas in Gaza as a “genocide.”