A leftist-anarchist organisation has been encouraging students to escalate their anti-Israel protests on U.S. campuses and to use more violent methods, like arming themselves, intimidating the police, and hijacking university buildings. Media reports suggest that the pro-Hamas demonstrations are less than innocent, and have been infiltrated by professional radical protesters who are hiding behind students.
The protests have been staged in response to Israel’s offensive in Gaza, which it launched after Palestinian terror group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th, brutally killing 1,200 civilians. Protesters have been calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, an end to U.S. military assistance for Israel, university divestment from arms suppliers and other companies profiting from the war, and amnesty for students and faculty members who have been disciplined or fired for protesting.
Demonstrations on campuses have been ongoing for months but have become more violent in recent weeks, with protesters disrupting official university events, setting up tents, and occupying buildings. Jewish students have said they feel unsafe on campus and unnerved by antisemitic chants. Police have so far arrested over 2,000 protesters at colleges around the country. President Joe Biden has said Americans have the right to demonstrate but not to unleash violence.
According to The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, an anarchist website, CrimethInc.com has been guiding the participants of anti-Israel protests on university campuses across the United States on how to become more radical, and how to fight off school administrators and the police. “Behind the young idealists is an organized movement of leftists who want to spread disorder,” writes The Wall Street Journal. According to the New York Post, CrimethInc.com analyses the protests and gives students advice on how to escalate the situation.
The advice includes:
- student occupations should take buildings whenever possible;
- organisers should not concern themselves with de-escalation or remaining peaceful;
- protesters should be dynamic and meet the cops head-on;
- they should “surround” and “force out the police,” because the pro-Palestinian movement must be a movement against the police;
- participants should arm themselves with “plywood, insulation board, lumber, scrap wood, metal sheeting, garbage cans, and water barrels” or whatever other tools they can find on campus.
The protest guides reveal that universities are attracting professional demonstrators whose goal is to spread their knowledge to recruit and train another generation.
Arrests of violent protesters in recent weeks have made it clear that a number of those arrested were not students, and had no affiliation with the university whose territory they were demonstrating on. According to New York police, nearly half of the 300 protesters arrested at two campuses last week weren’t students. The University of Texas said that, of the 79 people arrested on its campus last week, 45 had no affiliation with the university. Some of the 25 demonstrators arrested on Saturday at the University of Virginia were “individuals unaffiliated with the university.”
