Israel Protests in New York: “Evacuating the Building” – Police Attack Columbia University

As of: 5:44 am | Reading Time: 3 minutes

DPro-Palestinian protests have intensified at Columbia University in New York. New York police entered the university's Hamilton Hall with a heavy force to disperse activists who had occupied the building after 9pm on Tuesday. “We're clearing the building,” shouted police officers from a riot squad as they advanced toward the building's barricaded entrance.

Police used a special vehicle equipped with a ladder to gain entry. Many people were detained and taken away on buses – at least 50, according to US broadcaster CBS, as authorities searched dozens of tents at the so-called solidarity camp at the site. “Shame! Shame!” Many students stood and shouted in the campus.

The occupation began that night, when protesters broke windows, entered the building, and unfurled a banner reading “Hind's Hall,” symbolically naming the building after a six-year-old Palestinian child killed by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip. Outside the eight-story neoclassical building, protesters blocked the entrance with tables, folding their arms in human barricades and chanting pro-Palestinian slogans.

At a news conference the evening before police arrived, Mayor Eric Adams and law enforcement officials said the Hamilton Hall occupation was instigated by “outside insurgents” unrelated to Columbia and known to law enforcement. Police based their decisions in part on the escalating behavior of the squatters, including vandalism, erecting barricades to block entrances and destroying security cameras.

Adams suggested that some of the protesting students were not fully aware of the “external actors” in their midst. One of the leaders of the protest, Palestinian student Mahmoud Khalil, denied claims that outsiders had started the occupation. “They are students,” he told Reuters.

The university had previously threatened students with exmatriculation. “If they continue like this, there will be clear consequences,” university spokesman Ben Chang said Tuesday, referring to the protesters' behavior. The students “decided to escalate”.

The situation at Columbia University joins a wave of Gaza-related protests at other American universities. Demonstrations against the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians have rocked the university landscape in recent weeks and divided the public. Palestinian advocacy groups have called on universities to stop investing in companies that support or profit from Israel's military operations in the occupied Palestinian territories.

More than 1,000 protesters have been arrested in the past two weeks at universities in states including Texas, Utah, Virginia, North Carolina, New Mexico, Connecticut, Louisiana, California and New Jersey.