More than 2,000 people have now been arrested during pro-Palestinian protests across dozens of US college campuses in recent weeks.

Police arrested more than 300 pro-Palestinian demonstrators on college campuses on Wednesday night into Thursday morning, pushing the total past 2,000, according to an Associated Press tally.

More than 200 students were arrested at the University of California, Los Angeles, as police cleared a fortified encampment, and more than 90 students were arrested at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.

Dozens more were arrested at the University of New Hampshire and at the University of Buffalo. In Oregon, police moved into the school’s library on Thursday, which has been occupied by demonstrators since Monday.

“We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent,” said Joe Biden. “But,” he continued, “order must prevail.”

“Violent protest is not protected – peaceful protest is,” he said. Biden criticized what he called “violent” protests.

“Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations – none of this is a peaceful protest,” Biden said in a brief statement on Thursday morning.

“There’s the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos,” the US president said. In response to a reporter’s question, he said he did not think it was the right time to call the national guard.

In a Thursday report, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project said that although some clashes have broken out, “the overwhelming majority [of protests] – 99% – have remained peaceful”.

The protests are part of a movement to force schools to divest from businesses that support the war in Gaza, and they reflect how the war has become a major flashpoint in US politics. More than 34,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel began a campaign to dismantle Hamas, the Gaza health ministry has said. More people in Gaza have been thrust into near starvation, as Israel has limited food aid to the area.

On 7 October, Hamas killed more than 1,200 people and took roughly 250 hostages in an attack on Israel. Since the campaign against Hamas began, the US has provided substantial military support to Israel, including most recently in a $15bn aid package.

Student protests have grown across the country since an encampment sprang up at Columbia University in New York in mid-April. In many cases, faculty members have joined or supported student protesters, as police and universities have responded with force to demonstrations that threaten to continue into commencement season. Hundreds have been arrested in the weeks since the protests began.

Police cleared out a protest camp at UCLA in the early hours of Thursday, and arrested at least 200 demonstrators. The police operation followed a brutal hours-long attack on the encampment on Tuesday night by masked “instigators” who came to campus and assaulted students with projectiles and chemical agents, while campus security and police retreated or stood by without intervening.

At least 1,000 people gathered on UCLA’s campus late on Wednesday night, before police moved in, tearing down plywood and pallets that protesters had used to reinforce their encampment. Students described again being attacked with projectiles, fireworks and chemical agents. The chaotic operation lasted into the early hours of the morning.

By late Thursday morning, the campus had largely quieted down. The UCLA student newspaper the Daily Bruin posted pictures on social media of a campus building scrawled with graffiti saying, “Free Palestine” and “Bleep Israel”.

In New York, legal aid attorneys said they were still fighting to have protesters released more than 24 hours after they were first detained – many of whom were only charged with minor offenses and, attorneys said, should have never been arrested in the first place.

“Many protesters who were arrested earlier this week and arraigned last night were ultimately charged with criminal trespass, a low-level offense, and at that point, they should have been immediately released from custody,” said Tina Luongo, Legal Aid Society chief criminal defense practice attorney.

At Dartmouth, where an encampment had only recently sprung up, a professor said the university responded with “full force”, and posted a video of a white-haired colleague being grabbed and dragged away by police.

“In the hour or so it was allowed to exist, this was the model of a peaceful, inclusive protest,” Jeff Sharlet, a professor at Dartmouth, told the Washington Post. “They obstructed nothing; disrupted nothing; menaced nobody; and neither used nor displayed hate speech.”

The chaotic scenes at UCLA came after New York police burst into a building occupied by anti-war protesters at Columbia on Tuesday night, breaking up a demonstration that had paralyzed the school.

By Wednesday, a scrum had also broken out at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, after police with shields removed all but one tent and shoved protesters. Four officers were injured, including a state trooper who was hit in the head with a skateboard, authorities said. Four were charged with battering law enforcement.

In one rare example of authorities de-escalating protests, Brown University in Rhode Island agreed to a divestment vote in October – apparently the first US college to agree to such a demand.

Authorities have also made arrests and cleared protest encampments at City College, Fordham University and Stony Brook College in New York; Portland State in Oregon; Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff; Tulane University in New Orleans; and the University of Texas, Dallas.

Student protests have also sprung up in Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/02/university-protests-arrests-ucla-dartmouth

If Palestine was that sweet, they should be there schooling. They cry victim when under fire, but when they have upper hand, they know how to make the world a terrible place.
They are same people that killed Deborah and were celebrating. Watch the video of how Deborah was killed in cold blood. You will see them all, boys and girls, all smiling and enjoying the show with their hijab.
No mercy for any Islamic gatherings.

Don’t play Bleep around and find out

God bless Palestine!

Send them to Gaza
To go and study fight there

Arrest and send them to Rafah to join hamas in the fight. Not eating hamburger & fries while collecting benefits yet disturbing students from graduation

Wow

alienvirus:
God bless Palestine!

All terrorist should be killed

Lol. Freedom of speech is now alien to America.

If this were to be an African country, USA would have condemned them as stopping freedom of speech and calling them authoritarian.

Same USA that support Endsars thugs that burnt public properties and etc are now arresting American students for setting up camps.

Very good

Good

Good move.
They have been murdering Christians all over the world & nobody cares.

God is with Israel & will always defeat the god of the religion of peace

Islamists always wana start wars until war comes for them and they cry and start acting victim. Thunder faya Palestine and all their terrorist supporters

Proof Only Jews Have The Right To Claim Israel


1] In Islams religious book called the quoran,

Palestine is not mentioned once in the quoran?
If the land belongs to Palestine it would be mentioned in the quoran

Unlike Israel that is mentioned many times by God in the Bible.
AND
Unlike Israel mentioned many times by allah in the Quoran.

2] The God of the Bible states clearly the land belongs to Jews.

Gen 15:18 KJV
In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying,
Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:


Again allah too in the quoran states that the land belongs to the Jews

Surah 5
(20)And (remember) when Moses said unto his people: O my people!
Remember Allah's favour unto you, how He placed among you prophets,
and He made you kings, and gave you that (which) He gave not to any (other) of (His) creatures.
(21) O my people! Go into the holy land which Allah hath ordained for you.
Turn not in flight, for surely ye turn back as losers:
(22) They said: O Moses! Lo! a giant people (dwell) therein and lo!
we go not in till they go forth from thence. When they go forth from thence, then we will enter (not till then).

So with both God & allah saying the land belongs to the jews, why is islam calling for the destruction of Israel?

Ewedegubbler:
Islamists always wana start wars until war comes for them and they cry and start acting victim. Thunder faya Palestine and all their terrorist supporters

Imagine what they did to Deborah

Imagine if we give them the Israeli treatments and kill those Muslims students that killed her. Pursue them far into Niger and render them homeless, make them suffer serious pain both them and their miserable parents that brought them to the world

Sorry if I sound rude but I just don't get it with that religion....why do they always behave like people who r bin oppressed but if u look carefully, they r d ones causing problems here n there

Only under Biden!! They better pray Trump isn't reelected cos they gonna kiss their education goodbye with his massive deportation agenda.

Isreal will live to regret the killing of over 30,000 humans in 2024. Mark my words n note this is coming from a Christian too.

oluwaahmed:
Arrest and send them to Rafah to join hamas in the fight. Not eating hamburger & fries while collecting benefits yet disturbing students from graduation

TrackerSK:
All terrorist should be killed

Students who are supposed to be studying and graduating forming activism.They are a nuisance,they should go to Gaza where they will be more appreciated. No use your own spoil another person own.

LegendHero:
Lol. Freedom of speech is now alien to America.

If this were to be an African country, USA would have condemned them as stopping freedom of speech and calling them authoritarian.

Same USA that support Endsars thugs that burnt public properties and etc are now arresting American students for setting up camps.

Won't it be more meaningful if they did this inside Palestine or maybe Saudi Arabia?

Am sure the Nigerian government is learning what the US is doing

I thought PROTEST is part of democracy? Imagine if protesters had been clamped down upon in another (especially unfriendly) county to the US.

Please deport them...
They will finally get sense

Moniya4Real:
I thought PROTEST is part of democracy? Imagine if protesters had been clamped down upon in another (especially unfriendly) county to the US.

Peaceful Protest is part of democracy

socialmediaman:


Won't it be more meaningful if they did this inside Palestine or maybe Saudi Arabia?

They are Americans, they can do protest about anything in their country.

When some Nigerians walk for Trump and israel in solidarity the other time, do you agree if the government say they are arresting them?

Israel is currently making enemies for themselves. They have always been on the side of defence and it has always worked for them but seeing them push this war is swaying public opinion.

Even Trump said he would have handled the war in another manner

LOCK 'EM HAMAS TERRORIST SUPPORTERS UP.

USA BE SERIOUSLY IMPRESSING ME THESE DAYS