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03-05-2024
LOS ANGELES/ NEW YORK: Mounting tensions on US campuses boiled over on Wednesday when pro-Israel supporters attacked an encampment of pro-Palestinian protesters at UCLA, hours after police arrested activists who occupied a building at Columbia University and cleared a tent city from its campus.
Eyewitness videos from the University of California at Los Angeles, verified by media, 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 called to the campus.
The university canceled classes for the day on Wednesday, and UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said the school would conduct an investigation “that may lead to arrests, expulsions and dismissals.”
In a statement, Block said the “appalling” assault on pro-Palestinian demonstrators, which came hours after their encampment was declared an unlawful assembly by UCLA, was committed “by a group of instigators.”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who returned to the city early from a trip to Washington, and California Governor Gavin Newsom each issued separate statements condemning the overnight violence and calling for an investigation.
Neither the Los Angeles Police Department nor the university answered queries from Reuters asking whether any arrests were made at the confrontation, which began around 11 p.m. local time and went on for two or three hours.
In New York City, scores of police officers in helmets and tactical gear arrested pro-Palestinian demonstrators occupying Hamilton Hall, an academic building at Columbia University.
Undergraduate students watching the extraordinary scene, many jeering at the police, fled into nearby buildings as police also cleared out a nearby protest encampment that had inspired similar protests at campuses across the country and abroad.
Police arrested about 300 people at Columbia and City College of New York, Mayor Eric Adams said. Many of those arrested were charged with trespassing and criminal mischief.
The clashes at UCLA and in New York were part of the biggest outpouring of US student activism since the anti-racism rallies and marches of 2020.
The protests follow the Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip and the ensuing Israeli offensive on the Palestinian enclave.
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 Gaza and 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, and some have demanded Columbia’s President Minouche Shafik resign.
Many protesters, some of whom are Jewish, reject allegations of antisemitism. Shafik has said the protests brought rancor to life at Columbia and created a “threatening environment” for many Jewish students and faculty, while also blaming some episodes of harassment and hostile rhetoric on outsiders drawn to the busy Manhattan streets surrounding the campus.
US President Joe Biden, who has angered many protesters by funding and arming Israel, plans to give a speech on antisemitism next week at a Holocaust memorial event. (Int’l News Desk)
