About 250 pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested at Columbia University in New York on Tuesday night after police raided a building on campus at the request of the university administration.
While being presented as ‘pro-Palestinian protests,’ the manifestations have proven to be anti-Israel and antisemitic. “Disruptions on campus have created a threatening environment for many of our Jewish students and faculty and a noisy distraction that interferes with the teaching, learning and preparing for final exams,” the university said in a statement on Tuesday.
The arrested could face charges of burglary, trespassing, and criminal mischief after occupying Hamilton Hall and blocking entrances with chains and bike locks, according to New York Daily News. The students’ Tuesday morning occupation of Hamilton Hall came after weeks of pro-Palestinian protests on campus. Administrators announced the suspension of students who refused to break up the tent city they had established on campus, limiting access to the area, which led a group of protestors to occupy Hamilton Hall.
A spokesman for the university said on Tuesday night,
We regret that protesters have chosen to escalate the situation through their actions. After the university learned overnight that Hamilton Hall had been occupied, vandalized, and blockaded, we were left with no choice. Columbia public safety personnel were forced out of the building, and a member of our facilities team was threatened. We will not risk the safety of our community or the potential for further escalation.
Among the arrested was a woman whose husband is a convicted terrorist, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said. Adams has previously voiced concerns that the protesters were receiving instructions by outside agitators.
These were professionals that were here, and I just want to send a clear message out: There are people who are harmful, who are trying to radicalize our children, and we cannot ignore this.
Columbia University President Minouche Shafik told The Wall Street Journal that while students were involved in the occupation of Hamilton Hall, she believed the group was led by “individuals not affiliated with the university.”
New York police also detained dozens of protesters at City College of New York Tuesday night.
Leftist anti-Zionist NGO Jewish Voice for Peace said in a statement on Wednesday that the organization “condemns the NYPD’s arrests and assaults” and described the events as student protestors being “brutalized by the NYPD—in order to protect their universities’ investments in Israeli apartheid.”
After anti-Israel protesters replaced the American flag with the Palestinian flag at City College, NYPD officers pulled it down and “assisted @CityCollegeNY in restoring order on campus, culminating in raising Old Glory once again on their campus flagpole,” NYPD Deputy Commissioner Kaz Daughtry wrote on X.
Meanwhile, at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), pro-Israeli protestors gathered to breach the ongoing pro-Palestinian protest after a Jewish girl was beat unconscious by pro-Hamas activists on campus. Los Angeles police were deployed to UCLA after “multiple acts of violence”
The Columbia University law enforcement action appears to have set the tone for other jurisdictions as well. According to The Washington Post, police action and arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters have also taken place on college campuses in Wisconsin, Arizona, and Louisiana,
