A hundred pro-Palestinian students arrested in Boston

Latest episode of a movement which is becoming widespread on American campuses, around a hundred people considered to be pro-Palestinian demonstrators were arrested on Saturday morning at a university in Boston, in the northeast of the United States. Simultaneously, their “illegal” camp was evacuated by police in riot gear.

Left ten days ago New York Columbia Universitythe wave of support for the Palestinians, and against the war that Israel is waging in the Gaza Strip, has extended to a number of establishments in the United States throughout the country.

On the campus of Northeastern University in Boston, “around 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 university press release on X (formerly Twitter).

The institution added that “violent anti-Semitic slurs” such as “killing Jews” were uttered on campus last night and that this “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”.

For its part, the presidency of Columbia University indicated Friday evening that it had given up on having the New York police evacuate the tent village of 200 people installed on a lawn on its campus. But she 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). The presidency on Saturday ordered the immediate dismantling of an encampment on campus after “credible reports of cases of harassment and intimidation.”

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 in 1968. 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 (around 6 million) but also millions of Arab-Muslim Americans.

This week, across the United States and particularly in California and Texas, hundreds of pro-Palestinian students and activists were arrested and most often released without prosecution.

And in these rallies for Gaza, many Jewish students, often from the left, appeared to actively defend the Palestinian cause, keffiyeh on their shoulders, also denouncing a “genocide” perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinians.

But many other Jewish American students have expressed discomfort, and even fear, over slogans they consider anti-Semitic.