New York police remove pro-Palestinian demonstrators from Columbia University | Middle East, the eternal conflict

The New York police intervened Tuesday evening at Columbia University, the epicenter of the pro-Palestinian mobilization on American campuses, in order to dislodge the demonstrators who had barricaded themselves in a building since the previous night.

American student anger has spread over the past two weeks from major universities on the East Coast to those in California, via the South and the Center, recalling the demonstrations against the Vietnam War at the end of the 1960s.

In New York on Tuesday evening, it was in riot gear, aided by an intervention vehicle with a ladder, that dozens, even hundreds of police officers, entered the campus.

Helmeted officers, climbing the ladder, then entered the occupied building through a window.

Dozens of people, some wearing keffiyehs, were arrested and placed in police buses, noted theAFP. Outside the campus the crowd was shouting Free Palestine!.

Last night’s events on campus gave us no choicewrote the president of the university, Minouche Shafik, in a letter made public asking the New York police to intervene on the perimeter of this private establishment in Manhattan.

For two weeks, she and many other university leaders across the country have faced protesters, sometimes just a few dozen, who have occupied their campuses to oppose Israel’s war in Gaza against Hamas.

In her letter to the New York police, Ms. Shafik asks law enforcement to maintain a presence on campus at least until May 17, in order to maintain order and ensure that no encampments are established.

During the night from Monday to Tuesday, a few dozen protesters barricaded themselves in a building, Hamilton Hall. The building was renamed Hind’s Hall by the pro-Palestinian group Columbia University Apartheid Divestin tribute to a six-year-old girl killed in Gaza.

On their Instagram account, this group denounced a invasion of campus.

Columbia’s presidency began Monday at to suspend administratively students who refused to leave the village of tents.

The White House is worried

Six months before the presidential election in a polarized country, the student movement worries the White House, and also theUN.

Joe Bidenpresident of the allied country unwavering of Israel, criticized the rekindled tensions at Columbia, a private university which trains the elite: Forcibly occupying a university building is the wrong approach and does not represent not an example of peaceful protestthundered John Kirby, spokesperson for the White House National Security Council.

At the United Nations, Secretary General Antonio Guterres judged essential in all circumstances to guarantee freedom of expression and peaceful demonstration while insisting on the fact that racist speeches are obviously unacceptable.

Joe Biden must do something against these paid agitatorsRepublican candidate Donald Trump said Tuesday evening on Fox News. We must put an end to the anti-Semitism that plagues our country todayhe added.

Before a duel between the ex-president Donald Trump and the outgoing Joe Bidenwho needs the youth vote, the Republican leader of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson denounced the absolute illegality and chaos on campuses in America and anti-Semitism and the failure to protect Jewish students.

He called for the departure of the president of Columbia, Minouche Shafik.

Pro-Palestinian protesters are demanding that their universities cut ties with patrons or businesses linked to Israel. Columbia refuses.

But another elite Northeast campus, Brown University in Providence in the Rhode Islandannounced an agreement with the students: dismantling of the camp against a vote by the university in October on possible divestments from “companies that make the genocide in Gaza possible and profit from it”.

Student Leo Corzo-Clark jumped for joy at this huge victory for this international movement and the people of Palestine.

Images of law enforcement officers in riot gear brutally intervening on campuses across the United States have gone around the world.

Arrests

Since last weekend, hundreds of students, teachers and activists from around twenty universities have been arrested, some arrested and detained.

At the University of Texas at Austin, nearly 80 people were in custody Tuesday and will face charges for trespass offenseaccording to the local sheriff’s office.

In California, police evacuated and secured at dawn two buildings at Cal Poly Humboldt University and arrested 35 people, in order to restore orderaccording to this establishment.

At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hilla group of students claimed to have raised a Palestinian flag in the center of campus before the police put up the colors of the United States, according to the press.

These new pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the United States have reignited the electric debate since October between freedom of expression and accusations of anti-Semitism.

The country has the largest number of Jews in the world after Israel, and millions of Arab-Muslim Americans.

The war in the Gaza Strip was triggered by the unprecedented attack by Hamas on October 7 on Israeli soil which led to the massacre of 1,170 people, mainly civilians, according to a report by theAFP based on official Israeli data. In retaliation, Israel promised to destroy the Palestinian Islamist movement and its vast military operation in Gaza left 34,535 people dead, mostly civilians, according to Hamas.