Tuesday, May 14, 2024
Year : 2, Issue : 20
Supporters of Israel attacked a pro-Palestinian protest camp at the University of California in Los Angeles on Wednesday, hours after New York City police arrested some 300 protestors, as days of mounting tensions on some U.S. college campuses boiled over.
Eyewitness videos from UCLA, verified by Reuters, showed people wielding sticks or poles to hammer on wooden boards being used as makeshift barricades to protect the pro-Palestinian protesters before police were deployed to the campus.
On the other side of the country, New York police arrested pro-Palestinian demonstrators occupying an academic building at Columbia University and removed a
two-week-old protest encampment that had inspired similar protests at campuses across the country and abroad.Arrests at Columbia and nearby City College of New York numbered about 300, Mayor Eric Adams said, with many of them charged with trespassing and criminal mischief.
Students have rallied or set up tent encampments at dozens of schools across the U.S. in recent days, expressing opposition to Israel’s war in Gazaand demanding schools divest from companies that support Israel’s government. Many of the schools have called in police to quell the protests.
With the presidential election coming in November, Republican lawmakers have accused some university administrators of ignoring antisemitic rhetoric and harassment, some demanding that Columbia’s president resign. Many protesters, some of whom are Jewish, reject allegations of antisemitism.
UCLA protesters report violent attacks
UCLA officials declared on Tuesday that the encampment was unlawful, violated university policy and included people unaffiliated with the campus. Footage from the early hours showed counter-demonstrators, many of them masked and some apparently older than students, throwing objects and trying to smash or pull down the wooden and steel barriers erected to shield the encampment. Some screamed pro-Jewish comments as pro-Palestinian protesters tried to fight them off.
“They were coming up here and just violently attacking us,” said pro-Palestinian protester Kaia Shah, a researcher at UCLA. “I just didn’t think they would ever get to this, escalate to this level, where our protest is met by counter-protesters who are violently hurting us, inflicting pain on us, when we are not doing anything to them.”
Benjamin Kersten, a UCLA graduate student and member of the group Jewish Voice for Peace, called it “a devastating night of violence.”Police said UCLA called them to restore order and maintain public safety “due to multiple acts of violence” within the encampment. Broadcast footage later showed police clearing a central quad beside the encampment and erecting a metal crowd barrier in front of it.
The atmosphere was calmer on Wednesday. Hundreds of police officers and squad cars were on campus and lining its perimeter. It was unclear how many arrests were made or the number of people who were injured.
Columbia demonstrators arrested
In New York, police had arrested dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators holed up in a building at Columbia University and removed a protest encampment that the Ivy League college had sought to dismantle for nearly two weeks.
Columbia President Minouche Shafik asked police to stay on campus until at least May 17, two days after graduation.
The university earlier warned that students taking part in the occupation faced academic expulsion.
Police were also called in to clear encampments and make arrests overnight at Tulane University in New Orleans, University of Arizona and City College of New York in Harlem.
Source: CNBC
