Mideast protests set on U.S. college campuses

(CNN) -- The volatile situation in the Middle East has stirred passions on some U.S. college campuses, with protests planned Wednesday by Jewish and Palestinian students at more than 30 universities.

At the University of California, Berkeley, the debate is as much about the date selected for the protests as it is about current events in the Middle East. Students on both sides say April 9 belongs to them.

"Every year, students on this campus have a memorial for the Holocaust where we read names and light candles and that type of thing," said Oren Lazar of the Israeli Action Committee. "And for this student group to pick that day to hold this protest is just offensive."

Palestinian students said they're holding the protest Wednesday to mark the deaths of Palestinian villagers in 1948.

"April 9 always is the commemoration of the Deir Yasin massacre," said Snehal Shingavi of Students for Justice in Palestine. "It's another sort of misconception that we picked this date to compete with [Jewish students]."

RESOURCES Backgrounder: What is happening in the Middle East?

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators also will call for universities to divest themselves of stock in corporations that do business with Israel in much the same way protesters against South Africa did during the apartheid era.

Both student groups said they want a nonviolent protest, but Berkeley school officials plan to have extra police on hand just in case.