(Boston) Nearly 200 pro-Palestinian demonstrators were arrested on Saturday on three American campuses during the evacuation of their camps by the police, the latest episode in a growing student movement in the United States.
Starting ten days ago from Columbia University in New York, this new wave of support for the Palestinians and against the war led by Israel in the Gaza Strip has spread to a number of establishments, from California to the northwest of the United States. -United, passing through the center and the south.
Around a hundred pro-Palestinian demonstrators were briefly arrested by riot police at a Boston university.
The establishment, Northeastern University, announced on X “the arrest of approximately 100 individuals by the police”, specifying that “the students who presented their Northeastern U cards were released […] Those who refused were arrested.”
“Violent anti-Semitic insults” like “Kill the Jews” had been uttered on campus according to the university, which announced a “return to normal” at midday.
An “illegal” encampment of a few tents was dismantled there by university police officers and local law enforcement in riot gear, according to images posted on social networks.
PHOTO JOHN TLUMACKI, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Northeastern University police make arrests.
On the other side of the country, law enforcement at Arizona State University (ASU) “arrested 69 people on Saturday after setting up an unauthorized encampment,” the establishment said. accusing “most of not being ASU students or staff.” These people will be “pursued for illegal trespass”.
And in the central United States, 23 people were arrested when police, equipped with riot gear, evacuated a camp set up at Indiana University, the Indiana Daily Student newspaper reported.
Tent village
The presidency of Columbia, the New York epicenter of the student mobilization, has for its part given up on having the police evacuate a “village” of tents of 200 people on a lawn on its campus.
However, a leader of the movement is banned from entering after making anti-Zionist threats in a video dating from January. The young man later offered his “apologies,” according to CNN, which described the campus as “relatively quiet” on Saturday.
On the other hand, the situation has become tense at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), whose president resigned this winter after statements to Congress in Washington considered ambiguous on the fight against anti-Semitism. Following “credible reports of cases of harassment and intimidation”, the presidency ordered the immediate dismantling of a camp.
In California, the campus of Humboldt Polytechnic University will remain “closed” for the remainder of the semester, and classes will take place remotely, due to the “occupation” of two buildings, according to a press release.
And in neighboring Canada, a camp was set up for the first time at McGill University in Montreal where the movement has been going on since February. The establishment is worried about “a risk of escalation and confrontation”.
Riot police
Images of riot police arresting students, at the call of university leaders, went around the world.
They echo the uprising on American campuses during the Vietnam War. Even a painful memory, that of the Ohio National Guard opening fire in May 1970 at Kent State University, killing four students who were demonstrating peacefully.
The solidarity movement with Gaza took a political turn seven months before the American presidential election, between allegations of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism and defense of freedom of expression, 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.
All week across the United States, pro-Palestinian students and activists have been arrested and most often released without prosecution.
PHOTO NICOLE CRAINE, THE NEW YORK TIMES
Pro-Palestinian demonstration at Emory University in Atlanta
And in these gatherings, left-wing and anti-Zionist Jewish students support the Palestinian cause, keffiyeh on their shoulders, even denouncing a “genocide” allegedly perpetrated by Israel.
But other young American Jews express their discomfort and fear in the face of anti-Semitic slogans.
Skyler Sieradzky, 21, of George Washington University in the capital said this week that he was spat on when he arrived with an Israeli flag.
The war was triggered by the unprecedented attack on October 7 on Israeli soil by Hamas commandos which resulted in the death of 1,170 people, mainly civilians, according to an AFP report based on official Israeli data.
In retaliation, Israel promised to destroy the Islamist movement, and its vast military operation in the Gaza Strip left 34,388 people dead, mostly civilians, according to Hamas.