New York arrests, violent attack in California as Gaza campus protests rage
Al Jazeera
Demonstrations continue to face police crackdown as protesters vow to more pressure on universities.
Demonstrations against Israel’s war on Gaza have continued to rage at universities across the United States, in a night capped by mass arrests in New York and an attack by counter-protesters in California.
In New York, the NYPD said it had arrested 282 people at Columbia University and the City College of New York into Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. That came as police cleared students who had occupied Columbia University Hamilton Hall since April 30.
The building had been dubbed building “Mandela Hall” when students took similar action in support of South African liberation in 1985. This time around, protesters named the building “Hind’s Hall” in honour of six-year-old Hind Rajab, who was killed alongside her family by Israeli forces in Gaza.
Columbia University student journalist Meghnad Bose told Al Jazeera he was inside the university gates when he witnessed the police “arresting pro-Palestinian protesters who had lined up right [in front of] the gates to prevent the NYPD from coming in”.
“I saw firsthand how the police dispersed those protests, arrested them and sometimes got pretty aggressive in making sure the protesters went away,” he said.
