LOSANGELES/NEW YORK: 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 US 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.
The clashes at UCLA and in New York are part of the biggest outpouring of US student activism since the anti-racism rallies and marches of 2020. The protests were triggered by the Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamass 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 US 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, some demanding that Columbia’s president resign. Many protesters, some of whom are Jewish, reject allegations of antisemitism.
UCLA officials declared on Tuesday that the encampment was unlawful, violated university policy and included people unaffiliated with the campus.
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