Updates: New York police arrest 282 protesters after Columbia, CCNY raids

Thank you for joining us for updates on the pro-Palestine protests that have swept campuses in the US and elsewhere.

For more news, analysis, international reaction and opinions on Israel’s war in Gaza, please click here.

We will be closing this live page soon. Here’s a quick recap from today:

• In the United States, police have arrested 282 students protesting against Israel’s war on Gaza in a raid on New York’s Columbia University and the City College of New York as local authorities paint the crackdown on protesters as a necessity.
• Jewish Voice for Peace has condemned the New York Police Department’s actions against protesting students.
• A Palestinian solidarity encampment at the University of California campus in Los Angeles has been attacked by pro-Israel counterprotesters, and classes have been cancelled.
• University of South Florida police say 10 people have been taken into custody after protests on campus.
• Tulane University Police Department in New Orleans, Louisiana, says at least 14 protesters, including two Tulane students, have been arrested in connection with protests.
• Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory,  says she has been “horrified by the violent actions of police at US universities smashing protests against an ongoing genocide perpetrated by a foreign country”.
• In South Africa, unions have linked Workers’ Day commemorations to a march in solidarity with Palestinians. Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says the growing demonstrations are proof that Gaza is the world’s “first issue”.
• Campaigners in London have protested outside the Department for Business and Trade, calling on the UK government to halt arms supplies to Israel.

Brian Levin, the founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism and professor emeritus at California State University, has spoken to Al Jazeera about the violent scenes at UCLA overnight.

He said private security hired by the university was supposed to keep apart the two groups of protesters.

However, once the pro-Israel counterprotesters attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment, the security detail “retreated”, he said, adding, “They were overwhelmed. There was anarchy for hours, and that’s terrible.”

NYPD Deputy Commissioner Tarik Sheppard has displayed what appears to be a standard chain for a bike lock to suggest that student protesters at Columbia University are “professional” agitators.

“This is not what students bring to school. This is what professionals bring to campuses and universities,” Sheppard told MSNBC, describing the lock as “heavy industrial chains”.

But others were quick to point out that Sheppard was showing a widely used bike lock, which is available for sale on campus.

This bike lock is/was available for sale on campus via Columbia's Public Safety department under their "Crime Prevention Discount Bike, Locker and Laptop Lock Program".

See their flier with a discount here: https://t.co/cXudPIG70k https://t.co/RIjIoRCuw5 pic.twitter.com/hVb60tpFTC

— Aric Toler (@AricToler) May 1, 2024

At least 12 people have been arrested when police moved in to clear the encampment at the campus in Madison, Wisconsin, according to Wisconsin Public Radio.

That came two days after the encampment was set up. University administrators said camping is banned on campus.

Protest organisers promised to renew the demonstration after the tents were cleared.

Only a few tents left now, just after 8:30 am Wednesday pic.twitter.com/39eWxMKtql

— Sarah Lehr (@SarahGLehr) May 1, 2024

Many Democrats in Congress know that the images of pro-Palestinian student protests on college campuses, and police crackdowns on them, play badly among both liberal and conservative Americans.

That’s particularly problematic for the Democrats and President Joe Biden, with November’s election less than 200 days away.

“The longer they continue, and the worse that they get, the worse it’s going to be for the election overall,” a House Democrat told Axios, which also reported that Republicans were already putting together political ads linking the Democrats to the protests.

Images of attacks on police will also be sure to further alienate pro-Palestinian Americans, many of whom have pledged not to vote for Biden or the Democrats.

Columbia University student journalist Meghnad Bose told Al Jazeera he was inside the university gates when he witnessed the police “arresting pro-Palestinian protesters who had lined up right [in front of] the gates to prevent the NYPD from coming in”.

“I saw firsthand how the police dispersed those protests, arrested them and sometimes got pretty aggressive in making sure the protesters went away,” he said.

Bose said student journalists were present in front of Hamilton Hall to document the event when the police stormed the hall and forcefully moved the journalists out.

“Apart from a couple of journalists who still managed to remain there, most of my classmates, colleagues and fellow student journalists were removed from campus. They were stationed in front of Hamilton Hall because they knew that’s where the police action was going to be, but unfortunately, they couldn’t document or bear witness to any of the important things that happened on campus.”

“We’ve got very little footage of what took place … very easily they could have been stationed at a small or medium distance away from the hall without interfering in the police action taking place.”

Bose also said that the NYPD would have to provide evidence that some of those arrested were not students, as has been claimed by New York authorities.

Workers and members of the of Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT) have taken to the streets of Tunis to mark May Day and voice their support for Palestinians in Gaza.

Protesters waved Palestinian flags and chanted slogans as they gathered in front of the union’s headquarters in Tunisia’s capital.

“Labour Day this year came drenched in the blood of thousands of Palestinian children, women, the elderly and civilians, and is immersed with the wounds of tens of thousands of those who were rained down on by the Zionist war machine,” Noureddine Taboubi, UGTT secretary-general, told the crowd.

Although it seems very calm now, we’ve been in this situation before, and it can change just like that.

At 6am (10:00 GMT) on Tuesday, the police moved into an area where several protesters had spent several days camping out.

The university had sort of been tolerating them, but had been trying to get them to leave. The police showed up and said you’ve got to go; you’ve got half an hour. They then detained 36 people. Thirty were cited for trespassing and released, and six were arrested on misdemeanours and taken to the courthouse to be booked.

But that was by no means the end of the matter. Come 12 noon (16:00 GMT), they were back, and there were quite ugly scenes.

There were protesters supporting Palestinians. There were counterprotesters here. The police were deployed. We understand that at one point, there were officers from six different police departments, plus the sheriff.

There was pepper spray, and there was tear gas. Batons were being used, and at one point, the pro-Palestinian protesters took the US flag down. They replaced it with a Palestinian flag, which led to the chancellor turning up with police taking down the Palestinian flag and reinstating the American flag.

University of South Florida (USF) police say that 10 individuals have been taken into custody following protests on campus.

It said that on Tuesday approximately 75-100 protesters, including some students and individuals not affiliated with the university, arrived on campus with several items, including wood shields, umbrellas, and tents.

The police say that it was “determined that the protest was no longer peaceful, and participants must leave the area”.

After participants “refused to comply” with instructions to disperse from the event, fourteen individuals were taken into custody.

The police department reported that one of the individuals was carrying a concealed firearm.

The university is still closed. There are police outside the main gate and no one is allowed to go on campus unless you are a student. Everything at this point is pretty calm.

We don’t know how many [people] will be charged … They were arresting people, putting them in buses and taking them to police headquarters.

Just because someone is detained or arrested by the police does not necessarily mean they committed a crime; that will be up to the Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg.

The police will give him reports of what they believe the charges should be, but it’s ultimately up to the Manhattan district attorney to decide if any charges will be brought forward.

“We cannot allow what should be a lawful protest to turn into a violent spectacle that saves and serves no purpose. There’s no place for acts of hate in our city,” New York City mayor Eric Adams said at the news briefing, despite criticism that the police reaction was disproportionate to the student protests. Critics of the protests have tried to paint them as anti-Semitic, although protesters have emphasised that they are focused on ending Israel’s war on Gaza.

“I want to continue to commend the professionalism of the police department and to thank Columbia University. It was a tough decision, we understood that. But with the very clear evidence of their observation and the clear evidence from our intelligence division, that they understood it was time to move and the action had to end and we brought it to a peaceful conclusion,” he said.

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) has condemned the New York Police Department’s actions against more than 50 Columbia and Barnard students peacefully occupying a building, as well as dozens of protesting students at the City College of New York.

“It couldn’t be clearer: These students were brutalised to protect Columbia University and CCNY’s investments in Israeli apartheid,” the group said.

Earlier, we reported many instances of police violence against students. At Columbia, this included hundreds of police with drawn weapons deploying flash-bang grenades.

“It will forever be a stain on Columbia that the administration called riot police on its own student body rather than divest from the brutality of war and occupation,” JVP said

Stefanie Fox, the group’s executive director said, “America is in the business of war-making across the world, and the militarisation of US police forces is a direct result. The US has funded and supported the Israeli government’s oppression of Palestinians for decades, with private institutions across the country profiting from the same.”

She said that Columbia is on the wrong side of history once again as it was “in its oppression of the student anti-war movement of 1968, and wrong again in its oppression of the student movement against South African apartheid in 1985”.

Overnight, UCLA was rocked by violent scenes after counterprotesters attacked a pro-Palestine protest encampment.

Here is some information about the university:

• UCLA is part of the University of California system.
• It has about 32,000 undergraduate students and is the most applied-to four-year university in the US.
• Tuition and student fees for one academic year at the university cost $13,800 for California-resident undergraduates and $44,800 for out-of-state undergraduates.
• It is located in the residential neighbourhood of Westwood, just outside of Hollywood and central Los Angeles.
• In recent years, the university has been rocked by a series of sexual harassment scandals.
• It was also one of several universities named in the 2019 college admissions scandal.
• It boasts more than a dozen Nobel laureates among its alumni, as well as several Pulitzer Prize winners.