{"id":49853,"date":"2025-08-07T07:40:05","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T07:40:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/49853\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T07:40:05","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T07:40:05","slug":"student-protest-against-war-in-gaza-causes-commuter-chaos-in-melbourne-cbd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/49853\/","title":{"rendered":"Student protest against war in Gaza causes commuter chaos in Melbourne CBD"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hundreds of high school and university students have skipped class to rally against the war in Gaza by stopping traffic in Melbourne CBD in the middle of the afternoon.<\/p>\n

A tense stand-off took place between the group and police outside Flinders Street Station after the protesters sat in the middle of the busy intersection at Flinders and Swanston streets about 3pm.<\/p>\n

9News observed several people being arrested before 4pm, before protesters announced they were on the move, headed towards Federation Square.\ufeff<\/p>\n

\"\"\/Hundreds of students are blocking traffic in Melbourne CBD. (Nine)\"\"\/Police have made arrests at a protest in Melbourne CBD. (Nine)<\/p>\n

The protest, which was organised by Students for Palestine and the National Union of Students, began about 2pm outside the State Library.<\/p>\n

The crowd of several hundred people then marched to Flinders Street Station.\ufeff<\/p>\n

The protesters are demanding an end to Australian military trade with Israel and for universities to end research and investments in the defence sector.<\/p>\n

“Our politicians continue to enable Israel’s crimes in Gaza,” National Union of Students Education Office James McVicar said in a statement.<\/p>\n

“They are sending critical aircraft components that allow Israel to rain terror from the sky. We are taking matters into our own hands on August 7.”<\/p>\n

Tram services have been halted around Flinders Street Station.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hundreds of high school and university students have skipped class to rally against the war in Gaza by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49854,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-49853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}