Supporters of Israel attack pro-Palestinian camp in Los Angeles, 300 Gaza protesters arrested in New York

Supporters of Israel attacked a pro-Palestinian protest camp at the University of California in Los Angeles on Wednesday, while New York's mayor said a pro-Palestinian protest at Columbia University broken up by police had been led by outsiders.

Witness footage from UCLA, verified by Reuters, showed people wielding sticks or poles to hammer on wooden boards being used as makeshift barricades to protect the pro-Palestinian protesters before police were deployed to the campus.

On the other side of the country, New York police arrested pro-Palestinian demonstrators holed up in a building at Columbia University and removed a protest encampment on Tuesday night.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said about 300 people had been arrested and he blamed the protests on outside agitators, but without offering concrete evidence.

The Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip and the ensuing Israeli offensive on the Palestinian enclave have unleashed the biggest outpouring of US student activism since the anti-racism protests of 2020.

As student rallies have spread to dozens of schools across the US in recent days expressing opposition to Israel's war in Gaza, police have been called in to quell or clear protests.

About 1,200 people in southern Israel were killed in the Oct. 7 attack but the Israeli retaliatory assault has killed nearly 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health ministry figures, obliterated much of the enclave's infrastructure, and created a humanitarian crisis verging on famine.

The student protests in the United States have also taken on political overtones in the run-up to the presidential election in November, with Republicans accusing some university administrators of turning a blind eye to antisemitic rhetoric and harassment.

Reuters