2024-05-08 14:15:33
After a pro-Palestinian protest at a university in New York was violently broken up, the situation is also escalating on the west coast of the USA.
According to media reports, violent clashes broke out between protest participants during pro-Palestinian protests on the campus of the University of California (UCLA) in Los Angeles. According to CNN, the clashes broke out early Wednesday morning between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel demonstrators. A spokesman for the mayor said on the online service X that the Los Angeles police “immediately responded to (the university chancellor’s) request for assistance on campus.”
Television footage showed protesters from both sides attacking each other with sticks and tearing down metal barriers. Others were seen setting off fireworks or throwing objects at each other in the darkness.
University Chancellor: Jewish students put in fear
UCLA Chancellor Gene D. Block had previously warned that protesters had set up a protest camp last week, including “both members of the UCLA community and others unaffiliated with our campus.” While many of the protesters and counter-protesters “behaved peacefully,” others’ tactics “were frankly shocking and shameful,” Block said in a letter posted Tuesday on the university website.
“We have seen cases of violence,” Block said. “These incidents have left many on our campus, particularly our Jewish students, in a state of fear and terror.”
Protests at several elite universities
In recent weeks, pro-Palestinian protests have spread to several elite US universities. At New York’s renowned Columbia University, police cleared a university building occupied by demonstrators on Wednesday night.
Video | Police storm US university over pro-Palestinian protests
According to their own statements, the protest is directed against the increasing number of deaths in the war between Israel and the Islamist Palestinian organization Hamas in the Gaza Strip. University President Minouche Shafik complained that many of the Jewish students had found the atmosphere at Columbia University in recent weeks “unbearable” and had therefore left the university.
In a letter to the New York Police Department, Shafik explained that the occupation of the building was led by people not associated with the university.