132 were arrested early Thursday, May at the UCLA campus as the Pro-Hamas protests took a violent turn.
“Where were you last night,” protesters chanted about the violence that occurred on Tuesday night when counter-protesters attacked the encampment in a bloody rage that left many students with non-life-threatening injuries.
UCLA has its own police force with a dispatch center, so the jurisdiction doesn’t fall with the Los Angeles Police Department or the California Highway Patrol.
The campus had multiple students claim that the faculty did nothing to stop or curb the hate festering on campus that both the Jewish and Muslim students say they felt or were targets of.
Most of the claims at UCLA do come from Jewish students who claim that they were verbally assaulted, physically kept from going to class, and even pepper sprayed and tased for being Jewish.
One night the Jewish protesters played on a loop the acts done by Hamas on Oct. 7 2023, across from the Pro-Hamas encampments.
As the police came to dismantle the encampments and bring order back to the campus the protesters chanted “You want peace, We want justice.” Orders to disburse went unheeded, so with a helicopter, flash bangs, and zip ties the police acted.
For days the Pro-Hamas protesters were also reportedly chanting at the Jewish students to “Go back to the ovens” and “Israel, Israel you can’t hide, we want Jewish genocide.”
Middle Eastern television networks like Iranian State Television, Qatar’s Al-Jazeera, and even Israeli television networks have picked up what is happening on campuses like UCLA.
Many alumni and neighbors admitted to going to the UCLA campus to show support for the pro-Palestine protesters. “We need to take a stand for it, enough is enough,” says some of the people who lives nearby who came in support.
“The community needs to feel that the police are protecting them, not enabling others to harm them,” Rebecca Husaini Chief of Staff for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said in a news conference on the campus Wednesday.
Chancellor Gene Block is ordering an investigation of the response time from the police and the university’s actions.
Meanwhile, since the arrest and the dismantling of the encampment, students are back in droves as a crowd that looks to be the size of 1,000 students has converged on campus. Protestors have vowed, “We are not going anywhere, we are not leaving.” UCLA has moved all classes to online model.
President Joe Biden gave a four-minute speech saying that protesters “Have no right to cause chaos,” adding that “both free speech and the rule of law must be upheld,” also adding that antisemitism and Islamophobia are unacceptable.
Many other universities have made deals with these protesters that have let them continue demonstrations until June. We will have to wait to see if the same will happen with UCLA.
