Police on Thursday militarily dismantled an encampment set up at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) by students protesting against the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip and arrested dozens of them.
• Read also: (IN PICTURES) Chaotic night: clashes on the UCLA campus near pro-Palestinian demonstrations
• Read also: Pro-Palestinian encampment at McGill: they are not ready to break camp
For two weeks, a wave of demonstrations in support of the Palestinians in Gaza has swept across American campuses where the police have intervened several times to dislodge the protesters.
At UCLA, dozens of demonstrators were arrested one by one, handcuffed then escorted after a tense face-to-face with the police, reports an AFP journalist on the scene.
For several hours, hundreds of members of the police in riot gear faced the students carrying umbrellas or white helmets and forming a line, clinging to each other’s arms.
- Yves Poirier tells Dutrizac how he was surrounded by police near the camp at McGill via QUB :
At the same time, police methodically dismantled wooden pallets and plywood panels from a barricade surrounding the camp and dismantled the tents of demonstrators, many of whom were wearing keffiyehs. “Liberate Palestine,” one could hear.
The previous night, clashes had broken out on this campus when counter-protesters, many of them masked, attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment.
The attackers had tried to break through a barricade. Demonstrators and counter-protesters then clashed with sticks and threw projectiles at each other.
Graeme Blair, professor of political science at UCLA, regrets Thursday a “so unnecessary” crisis.
AFP
“The university and the authorities had the opportunity to de-escalate. They sent the police very late against the extremists last night (during the attack on counter-protesters, Editor’s note) and now they are attacking students participating in a peaceful demonstration,” he confides to the AFP.
“Fear of Jewish students”
UCLA President Gene D. Block had warned before the violence against the presence of people from outside the campus. The incidents “have caused, especially among our Jewish students, deep anxiety and fear,” he added.
AFP
At the University of Texas at Dallas, police cleared a protest camp on Wednesday and, according to the institution, arrested at least 17 people for “criminal trespass.”
Law enforcement arrested several people at Fordham University in New York the same day and dismantled an encampment, according to officials.
Also on Wednesday, around 300 people were arrested in New York at two university sites, according to police.
- Listen to the interview with Mr. Neil G. Oberman, lawyer specializing in commercial and civil litigation, on Alexandre Dubé via QUB :
During the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, the police had already unceremoniously dislodged pro-Palestinian demonstrators barricaded in the prestigious Columbia University in Manhattan, the epicenter of the student mobilization.
“I regret that we have reached this point,” reacted Wednesday Minouche Shafik, the president of the university.
The demonstrators are fighting “for an important cause” but the recent “acts of destruction” carried out by “students and external activists” led her to resort to the police, she explained, also denouncing “anti-Semitic remarks” made during the rallies.
Other camps were also dismantled on Wednesday at the University of Arizona in Tucson and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, respectively in the southwest and the north of the United States, according to local media.
Biden almost silent
Over the past 15 days, actions in support of Gaza have multiplied across the American territory, from California to major universities in the northeast, reminiscent of demonstrations against the Vietnam War.
A mobilization that goes beyond the borders of the United States with pro-Palestinian rallies in France, in particular on sites of the prestigious Sciences Po school.
American students are calling on universities to cut ties with patrons or companies linked to Israel and denouncing Washington’s support for its Israeli ally.
Unlike other institutions, Brown University in the state of Rhode Island agreed with the demonstrators on the dismantling of their encampment in exchange for a vote on a possible “divestment” from “companies that make possible and profit from the genocide in Gaza.”
Images of riot police intervening on campuses went around the world and sparked a strong reaction from Israel.
Its president Isaac Herzog denounced Thursday the “terrifying resurgence of anti-Semitism” in the world, and particularly in the United States, where “renowned universities, centers of history, culture and education” are “contaminated by hatred and anti-Semitism.
Six months before the presidential election in a polarized United States, Democratic President Joe Biden remains almost silent on this subject likely to undermine his campaign.
What his Republican rival Donald Trump did not fail to point out. “Where is Joe-la-Crapule?” he asked Thursday on his Truth Social network. “The danger for our country comes from the left, not the right!!!”.
