Police were deployed again yesterday to American college campuseswhere they took place new arrests, after operations on Los Angeles and New York, where student mobilization was unfolding against the war on the Gaza Strip that is rocking the US.

At the University of Texas at Dallas, the police broke up the camp yesterday protesters and arrested at least 17 people for “illegal arbitrary entry”, the institution informed.

Law enforcement also arrested several protesters at New York’s Fordham University, where they broke up an encampment that had been set up in the morning on the campus, officials said.

Already about 300 people had been arrested at two university sites in New York, the metropolitan police informed yesterday during a press conference.

On Tuesday night, law enforcement forces removed pro-Palestinian protesters with manu militari from a building at the prestigious Columbia University in Manhattan, where the wave of student demonstrations in support of the Gaza Strip began.

The police were “barbaric and aggressive towards us,” said Megan Bose, a student at Columbia who was present when the operation took place.

“They made arrests indiscriminately (…) many students were injured to the extent that they had to be admitted to hospitals,” complained an alliance of student organizations supporting the Palestinians at Columbia via Instagram.

“I’m sorry we’ve come to this,” Minous Shafiq, the president of the university, reacted yesterday.

The protesters are fighting for an “important cause,” but recent “disasters” blamed on both “students” and “off-campus activists” have forced her to call for law enforcement to intervene, she explained, while denouncing “anti-Semitic” statements during rallies.

Other protest camps were also broken up early yesterday on the campuses of the University of Arizona in Tucson and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (southwest and north respectively), according to media reports.

Masked

In the past two weeks, demonstrations in support of the Gaza Strip have proliferated across the US, from California to major universities in the Northeast, with the wave of protests reminding many of the movement against the Vietnam War.

The students called on higher education institutions to sever ties with Israel-linked universities and companies and denounced Washington’s support for its major ally in the Middle East.

On the UCLA campus in Los Angeles, they broke out clashes at night when a large group of counter-protesters, many of whom had their faces covered with masks, attacked a camp of pro-Palestinian protesters set up in green, an AFP photojournalist found.

The perpetrators of the attack tried to dismantle a makeshift barricade around the camp. Demonstrators and counter-demonstrators engaged in skirmishes with batons or throwing objects.

By yesterday morning, calm had been restored, but dozens of police vehicles remained at the scene.

“The university should discourage attacks by counter-protesters against those who are peaceful,” Daniel Harris, a 23-year-old student, told AFP, adding that the attackers “didn’t appear to be students, or people who have anything to do with the university.”

episodes

Foundation president Gene Block warned against violence and the presence of people unrelated to the foundation on campus.

On Sunday, pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel activists, backed by protesters outside the university, held hands and exchanged insults.

These events “caused, especially among Jewish students, deep anxiety and fear,” he added.

President Biden ‘must speak’

In contrast, with other institutions, Brown University, in Rhode Island, announced that it had reached an agreement with the protesters. Their camp was agreed to be disbanded in exchange for a university vote in October on the eventual “divestment” of “companies ‘enabling and profiting from the genocide in Gaza'”.

According to an AFP tally, law enforcement forces have made arrests in at least 30 university facilities since April 17.

Images of police in riot gear on college campuses have gone viral and sparked a political backlash six months before the highly polarized US presidential election.

The White House yesterday condemned the “small percentage” of students causing “riots”.

“Students have the right to go to class feeling safe,” said Karine Jean-Pierre, spokeswoman for the US presidency, adding that we will “continue to emphasize that anti-Semitism must be reported.”

During a campaign event in Wisconsin, former President Donald Trump yesterday described the intervention in Columbia as a “beautiful sight”, as according to him “New York was under siege last night” by “raging madmen and Hamas supporters” and President Joe Biden “needs to speak,” as he pointed out in an indignant tone.