Stanford students stage sit-in to demand university condemn Israel's siege of Gaza

A group of students at California's Stanford University has undertaken a 19-day sit-in protest, calling on the university to condemn Israel's siege of Gaza and vowing to continue until their demands are met.

"For our Palestinian brothers and sisters, we want to keep the conversation going in regards to the bombing in Gaza. We want to give a platform to the people who don't necessarily have a voice right now and essentially advocate for a ceasefire," epidemiology student Nour Aissaoui said.

Emphasising many students face harassment and threats on different platforms, she said: "Advocate for the end of a genocide in Gaza and we have observed that a lot of people have been trying to intimidate us and silence us, even threaten us and many different ways and that has been very concerning."

This is essentially a "tactic" to get us to back off and stop discussing this, but we won't be intimidated by that, Aissaoui stressed.

"We will continue to have these conversations. We think it's important to highlight this conversation to continue," she pointed out.

"We do not stand for anti-Semitism. We do not stand for the killing of innocent people," she added.

'Harassing Arab Muslim students'

Computer science student Hassan Fahmy said some groups are trying to harass the students.

"It shows really that the university is willing to take action against students, to say things that are anti-Semitic or students who say things that Israel supporters don't feel comfortable with," Fahmy said.

But "the university has not taken action against people who have been harassing Arab Muslim students."

When asked why the university does not take any action for hate crimes, he said the university told them, "It might make them seem as anti-Semitic when they acknowledge Islamophobia and hate crimes."

"That has been happening on campus, and it took a student getting hit by a car for them to finally acknowledge that students on campus are at risk," he added.

"We are camping out here and we're willing to stay here until the university takes action and until things start to change one beautiful part of what has happened," political science student Farah Tantawy said about the university campus' hate crimes.

Adding that, however, "the community has been very receptive to us and we've met a lot of folks who are just completely willing to offer up their time and effort and energy and a lot of that means food donations."