US police have arrested over 2,500 anti-war protesters in less than three weeks

Less than three weeks after the arrest of 108 students at Columbia University for forming the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, more than 2,500 people have been arrested and criminally charged across the United States for engaging in similar acts of civil disobedience.

Pro-Palestinian protesters shout slogans at University of Chicago police as they are kept away from the university campus on Tuesday, May 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

In many cases, students and faculty were charged with “trespassing” for sitting on the grass or occupying campus buildings, and journalists who filmed student arrests were also detained.

As of this writing, police are arresting faculty and students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The local chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) reported Tuesday evening that teachers had been arrested at their camp. The report included an image showing several people in orange safety vests being handcuffed.

SJP and PSC reported that riot police surrounded the camp, drawing jeers from a growing crowd who chanted, “Why are you wearing riot gear? We don’t see any rioting here.”

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In New York City, where Democratic Mayor Eric Adams has overseen the arrests of over 500 people, NYPD police again recorded assaults and mass arrests of protesters on Tuesday evening. Over 1,000 people demonstrated on the streets as part of an “All Out for Rafah” march.

Many of the protesters marched to the steps of the New York Public Library. Later that evening, a group of protesters broke off and joined the Gaza camp at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), a public university and the last school in the city where a camp still exists.

The police are currently preparing to evacuate the camp. Independent New York reporter Katie Smith documented “hundreds of officers stationed in and around the camp” after 10 p.m.

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The nationwide mass arrests of predominantly young people and their professors and lecturers are being controlled from the White House. President Joe Biden continues to repeat the big lie that resistance to the Zionist genocide of the Palestinian people is an expression of anti-Semitism in several statements, including a Tuesday address at the Capitol on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Commenting on the bipartisan attack on anti-war protesters, Socialist Equality Party candidate for US President Joseph Kishore wrote:

Biden once again smeared protesters as “anti-Semitic” and “violent,” even as he and the entire political establishment supported the brutal police repression of peaceful protests.

Kishore noted that House Speaker Mike Johnson compared “students protesting genocide to Nazis” in his speech at the Holocaust memorial event.

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“Johnson,” Kishore continued:

… outrageously compares the cultivation of Nazi ideology at German universities, promoted by the state and the ruling class, to the protests against the ongoing massacre of Palestinians, which are met with brutal police repression.

Both Biden and Johnson said universities have become hostile environments for Jewish students. In fact, many of the protesters are Jews. Jewish students were not threatened by demonstrators, but rather arrested and beaten by police.

The vilification of anti-genocide protesters as “anti-Semitic” and “terrorist” has led to an explosion of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab violence and harassment. On Tuesday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called for the arrest and firing of an Arizona Zionist professor after a video surfaced showing him threatening a Muslim woman who tried to walk away from him.

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In a press release Tuesday, CAIR-Arizona Executive Director Azza Abuseif wrote that Professor Jonathan Yudelman’s actions were part of “a broader pattern of Islamophobia and religious intolerance weaponized by pro-Israel and pro-genocide extremists.”

Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of more than 100 student organizations, reported Tuesday that a Zionist driver intentionally drove his car into the group during the protests. One person was injured and taken to hospital.

A spokesperson for the New York Police Department (NYPD) confirmed this Daily Beast that the driver of the vehicle was 57-year-old Reuven Kahane. The NYPD spokesman said Kahane will be charged with second-degree assault.

Next to Kahane, the Daily Beast confirmed that the NYPD also arrested 55-year-old Maryellen Novak, who was hospitalized after being hit by the car, and 63-year-old John Rozendaal. Novak was charged with criminal mischief and unlawful assembly, while Rozendaal was only charged with the former. Both were described by protest organizers as “de-escalators.”

Reuven Kahane is the cousin of Meir Kahane, the founder of the terrorist organization Jewish Defense League (JDL). A JDL flag was photographed on the UCLA campus less than 48 hours before genocide advocates attacked the student camp.

According to witnesses, Kahane observed protesters demonstrating outside the homes of wealthy Columbia and Barnard trustees and asked a protester for a flyer, at which point he grabbed the person’s arm. After the protester drove away, Kahane drove off but then turned back in his car. Witnesses claim he then drove onto the sidewalk and into the protesters.

Citing a previously unreleased video of the arrest, independent journalist Talia Jane witnessed police “making derogatory statements toward the student protesters, calling them ‘fucking idiots’ and telling them, ‘There are consequences for being an adult’.” . , witnesses observed police laughing and being “friendly” with Kahane.

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