As Netanyahu compares U.S. university protests to Nazi Germany, young Palestinians welcome the support
CBSN
As pro-Palestinian protests spread on university campuses across the United States, leading to hundreds of arrests, young Palestinians in the war-torn Gaza Strip have told CBS News they appreciate the support from America. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, has condemned the demonstrations as antisemitic and even compared them to rallies held in Germany almost 100 years ago, as the Nazi party rose to power on a wave of anti-Jewish hate.
Fida Afifi had been attending Al Aqsa University in Gaza City before the Palestinian territory's Hamas rulers sparked the ongoing war with their bloody Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel. The war forced her to flee her home to Rafah in southern Gaza, along with some 1.5 million other Palestinians.
She told CBS News on Wednesday that she welcomed the support for the Palestinian people's cause from young people almost 6,000 miles away in the U.S.
Southern Gaza Strip — In a rare moment of access to the war-ravaged Palestinian territory, CBS News visited a critical aid distribution center on Wednesday just inside the Gaza Strip, near the Karem Shalom border crossing from Israel. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza after more than a year of the Israel-Hamas war remains dire.
Moscow — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday made a rare admission of failings by his powerful security agencies over the Ukraine-orchestrated killing of a senior general in Moscow. Lt. General Igor Kirillov, the head of the Russian military's chemical and biological weapons unit, was killed by a bomb planted in a scooter in Moscow on Tuesday, the boldest assassination claimed by Kyiv since the start of the conflict.
A judge in France on Thursday found the former husband of Gisèle Pelicot, who admitted to drugging and raping her repeatedly over the course of almost a decade and inviting dozens of other men to assault her as well, guilty of aggravated rape. He was given the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
Moscow — Former Royal Ballet star Sergei Polunin, famous for his tattoos of Russian President Vladimir Putin, on Wednesday announced that he plans to leave Russia. The Ukrainian-Russian dancer was one of the most prominent stars who backed Russia's unilateral 2014 annexation of Crimea and its military assault on Ukraine. He was rewarded with prestigious state posts.