Nearly 200 pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested overnight Saturday at three US campuses as police evacuated their camps, the latest episode in a growing student movement in the United States.
This new wave of support for the Palestinians and against the war led by Israel in the Gaza Strip, starting ten days ago from Columbia University in New York, has spread to a number of institutions, from California to the northwest of the United States, passing through the center and the south.
Images of riot police arresting students at the request of university officials have circulated around the world.
The Gaza solidarity movement has taken a political turn seven months before the US presidential election, amid accusations of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism and defense of free speech, a constitutional right in the United States.
Jewish students among the protesters
The country has the largest number of Jews in the world after Israel (about six million) as well as millions of Arab-Muslim Americans. All week across the United States, pro-Palestinian students and activists were arrested and mostly released without prosecution.
And at these rallies, left-wing and anti-Zionist Jewish students support the Palestinian cause, keffiyehs on their shoulders, even condemning the “genocide” allegedly committed by Israel.
We do inventory by university.
One hundred arrested in Boston
Approximately one hundred pro-Palestinian protesters were briefly arrested by riot police at Boston University.
The organization, Northeastern University, announced the “arrest of approximately 100 individuals by police” on X, stating that “students who presented their Northeastern U. cards were released (…) Those who refused were arrested.”
“Violent anti-Semitic slurs” such as “Kill the Jews” were uttered on campus, according to the university, which announced a “return to normal” at midday.
According to images posted on social media, university police and local police officers dismantled an “illegal” encampment of several tents in the riots.
69 students arrested in Arizona
Police officers at Arizona State University (ASU) “arrested 69 people on Saturday after setting up an unauthorized camp,” the facility said, accusing “the majority of them of not being ASU students or employees.” These people will be “prosecuted for an illegal offence”.
23 arrests in Indiana
In the central United States, 23 people were arrested as police in riot gear evacuated a camp set up at an Indiana university. Indiana Day Student.
Tent City in New York
The president’s office at Columbia, New York’s epicenter of student mobilization, in turn resigned to the police evacuating a “village” of tents of 200 people on the lawn of its campus.
However, the movement’s leader is barred from entry after making anti-Zionist threats in a January video. The young man later “apologized,” according to CNN, which described the campus as “relatively quiet” on Saturday.
Tensions in Pennsylvania
On the other hand, the situation escalated at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), whose president resigned this winter after statements to Congress in Washington that were considered ambiguous in the fight against anti-Semitism. Following “credible reports of cases of harassment and intimidation”, the Bureau ordered the immediate liquidation of the camp.
Closed campus in California
In California, Humboldt Polytechnic University’s campus will remain “closed” for the remainder of the semester and classes will be held remotely due to an “occupation” of two buildings, according to a news release.