On Tuesday night, May 30, Columbia University closed its campus after pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrated for the college’s divestment from businesses with ties to Israel. Since then, students have established their own camps at more than a dozen campuses across the country where they spend nights, hold teach-ins, recite prayers, and wave signs and Palestinian flags to try to get administrators to listen to their demands.
Police arrested 282 students demonstrating against Israel’s war on Gaza on New York’s Columbia University. Pro-Palestinian students have also been occupying campus grounds at UCLA for two days calling for the university to end its financial ties with Israel. Local television stations estimated 300 to 500 protesters were hunched down inside the camp, while around 2,000 more had gathered outside the barricades in support.
The demonstration against the war on Gaza at UCLA turned violent when a group of masked pro-Israel vigilantes attacked a solidarity camp occupied by peace-loving pro-Palestinian demonstrators. According to witnesses, the Los Angeles police department (LAPD) did not intervene for nearly four hours after the attacks, which began overnight into Wednesday, began with masked pro-Israel demonstrators in their hundreds outside the university campus throwing fireworks into the camp. Some Jewish groups have reported feeling unsafe and discomfort seeing the proliferation of these pro-Palestinian protests and encampments.
The U.S. police have taken a number of actions at colleges across the country, including at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Police at the University of South Florida say that 10 people have been arrested following protests on campus. Police at Tulane University in Louisiana say that at least 14 protesters have been arrested, two of them Tulane students.
The UN Special Reporter on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Francesca Albanese, has expressed her outrage at police violence at US universities in smashing protests against ongoing genocides committed by a foreign state.
Jewish Voice for Peace has denounced the New York Police Department’s violence against protesting students. Across the world, unions in South Africa have linked workers’ day commemorations to a solidarity march with Palestinians. Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says the growing demonstrations are being seen as proof that Gaza is the “first priority” of the world. Campaigners in London have marched outside the Department of Business and Trade, urging the UK government to cut off ties to Israel.
