[News] UCLA clashes: Pro-Palestinian protesters attacked by Israel supporters

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 UCLA clashes: Pro-Palestinian protesters attacked by Israel supporters

*Police delay intervention into ‘shocking’ attack, featuring masked
vigilantes armed with pepper spray and fireworks.*
Israel supporters attack anti-war protesters at UCLA university in US
Published On 1 May 2024 -
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/1/ucla-clashes-pro-palestinian-protesters-attacked-by-israel-supporters
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A demonstration against Israel’s war on Gaza at the University of
California in Los Angeles (UCLA) turned violent
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/5/1/live-us-university-protests-spread-amid-growing-calls-to-end-gaza-war>
when a vigilante pro-Israel mob attacked a solidarity encampment occupied
by peaceful pro-Palestinian protesters.

Witnesses said the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) only intervened
after nearly four hours of the attacks, which started overnight into
Wednesday when masked pro-Israel counter-demonstrators, who appeared in
their hundreds from outside the university campus, hurled fireworks into
the encampment.

The attackers, carrying Israeli flags, then tried to tear down the
pro-Palestinian camp, assaulting students with pepper spray, sticks, stones
and metal fencing. Police stood by, failing to protect students, who
re-commandeered the metal fencing thrown at them to shield themselves, said
Joey Scott, an investigative journalist speaking to Al Jazeera from the
scene.

Before the police arrived, a group reportedly piled on one person who lay
on the ground, kicking and beating them until others pulled them out of the
scrum.

Eventually, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass issued a statement on X early on
Wednesday morning that police were responding to requests for support from
the UCLA administration. LAPD confirmed their intervention at about 2am
(09:00 GMT).

“Horrific acts of violence occurred at the encampment tonight and we
immediately called law enforcement for mutual aid support,” Mary Osako, a
senior UCLA official, told the campus newspaper the Daily Bruin.

Reporting from Los Angeles, Al Jazeera’s Rob Reynolds said the student
protesters had stood their ground. The number of injured was not yet known,
but reports on social media indicated that some people have been led away
with injuries, he said, as he described the “really shocking and ugly scene
of violence”.

The vigilante mob appeared to come from outside the campus. “They appear to
be all largely people who are not of student age and they’re not from the
UCLA campus, but what they’re doing is trying to harass and attack the
pro-Palestinian demonstrators,” said Reynolds.

Bass called the violence “absolutely abhorrent and inexcusable”.

The antiwar group said that “law enforcement simply stood at the edge of
the lawn and refused to budge as we screamed for their help. The only means
of protection we had was each other” as the attack went on for more than
seven hours.

“The university would rather see us dead than divest,” it added in a
statement posted on X.

Nationwide escalation

The UCLA attack is the latest escalation in two weeks of demonstrations
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/29/mapping-pro-palestine-campus-protests-around-the-world>
against Israel’s war on Gaza that have spread to universities across the
United States, and to some universities in other countries.

Pro-Palestinian students at UCLA had occupied campus grounds for the past
two days, calling for the divestment of the university’s financial ties to
Israel.

Late on Tuesday, New York City police arrested dozens of pro-Palestinian
demonstrators holed up in an academic building on the Columbia University
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/1/new-york-city-police-enter-columbia-campus-as-gaza-protest-escalates>
campus in Manhattan and removed a protest encampment that the Ivy League
school had sought to dismantle for nearly two weeks.

Columbia’s police action happened on the 56th anniversary of a similar move
to quash an occupation of Hamilton Hall by students protesting against
racism and the Vietnam War.

Just blocks away from Columbia, at The City College of New York,
demonstrators were in a standoff with police outside the public college’s
main gate. Video on social media showed officers shoving people around as
they cleared them from the street and pavements. Many arrested protesters
were driven away on city buses.

Scott said he believed the delayed police response to the UCLA violence
would serve as “inspiration” to potential attackers, seeking to force
pro-Palestinian protesters to drop their demands.

“If they are trying to quell future violence, they have done a terrible job
of that because it appears to be fully endorsed,” he said.

Al Jazeera’s Reynolds said the mob at UCLA reminded him of “settler
violence on the [occupied] West Bank
<https://www.aljazeera.com/tag/occupied-west-bank/> without the use of as
much lethal force, but this is clearly a violent, uncontrolled mob that is
bent on mayhem”.

One member of the pro-Israel mob carried a large yellow flag with a crown
and, emblazoned with the word “Messiah”. “These are symbols of radical,
far-right Jewish groups,” said Reynolds.

It was not known how the mob had organised.
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