Aviva Fried with AFP / Photo credit: JOSEPH PREZIOSO / AFP
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8:04 a.m., April 28, 2024
Around a hundred people considered to be pro-Palestinian demonstrators were arrested Saturday morning at a Boston university and their “illegal” encampment evacuated by police in riot gear, the latest episode of a movement which is becoming widespread on American campuses. . Starting ten days ago from New York’s Columbia University, this new episode of the wave of support for the Palestinians and against the war led by Israel in the Gaza Strip has spread to a number of establishments in the United States. , from California to New England (northeast) via the south of the country.
On the campus of Northeastern University in Boston, “approximately 100 individuals were arrested by the police; students who presented their Northeastern U. cards were released (…) Those who refused to prove their affiliation were arrested”, according to a press release from the university on X (formerly Twitter).
— Northeastern U. (@Northeastern) April 27, 2024
“Killing Jews”
The school added that “violent anti-Semitic slurs” such as “killing Jews” were uttered on campus last night and that it “went too far.” An “illegal” encampment of a few tents was dismantled by university police officers and local law enforcement in riot gear, according to images posted on social media. “What began two days ago as a student protest has been infiltrated by professional organizers with no connection to Northeastern U.” the university said.
The arrested students will be subject to “disciplinary procedures” but “no legal measures”. Furthermore, the presidency of Columbia, the epicenter of the student mobilization movement, indicated Friday evening that it had given up on having the New York police evacuate a tent village of 200 people on a lawn on its campus, but announced that a leader of the movement had been banned from entering after comments deemed anti-Zionist in a video.
Tensions also rose a notch at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), whose president had to resign this winter after statements before the United States Congress considered ambiguous on the fight against anti-Semitism. The presidency on Saturday ordered the immediate dismantling of an encampment on campus after “credible reports of cases of harassment and intimidation”.
Riot police
Images of riot police arresting students, after university leaders called the police, went around the world. They echo the movement on American campuses during the Vietnam War. Even the painful memory when the Ohio National Guard opened fire in May 1970 on the campus of Kent State University, killing four peaceful students. The solidarity movement with Gaza has taken a very political turn seven months before the American presidential election, between allegations of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism and defense of freedom of expression which is a constitutional right in the United States.
The country has the largest number of Jews in the world behind Israel (some six million) and also millions of Arab-Muslim Americans. This week, across the United States – notably in California and Texas – hundreds of students and pro-Palestinian activists were arrested and most often released without legal action. And in these rallies for Gaza many Jewish students, often from the left, actively support the Palestinian cause, keffiyeh on their shoulders, also denouncing a “genocide” perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinians.
“They call us terrorists”
But many other Jewish American students have expressed discomfort, and even fear, over slogans they consider anti-Semitic. Thus, Skyler Sieradzky, 21, studies philosophy and political science at George Washington University (GW), in the capital, claimed to have been spat on when he arrived on Thursday with an Israeli flag. “They call us terrorists, they call us violent. But the only tool we have is our voices,” declared a student at Columbia who introduced herself only as “Mimi.”
The war was triggered on October 7 by an unprecedented attack carried out from Gaza against Israel by Hamas terrorists, which resulted in the death of 1,170 people, mainly civilians, according to an AFP report based on data Israeli officials. In retaliation, Israel promised to destroy the terrorist movement, and its vast military operation in the Gaza Strip has so far left 34,388 dead, mostly civilians, according to Hamas.