On Monday night, the NYPD arrested around 133 pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
By Vered Weiss, World Israel News
The NYU Palestine Solidarity Coalition staged a student walk-out on Tuesday following violent clashes with police and arrests during a massive demonstration on Monday.
As Jews celebrated Passover seders on Monday night, pro-Palestinian protests overtook the NYU campus which resulted in violence and the arrest of around 133 demonstrators.
On Tuesday, the pro-Palestinian group said they gathered in Washington Square Park in New York City “to reflect, debrief [and] strategize.”
The NYU Palestine Solidarity Coalition set up a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on Monday.
The protests quickly became disruptive as the group broke through school barricades and acted in a “disorderly, disruptive and antagonizing” manner.
Many of the protesters were not university students but came from the outside, as reported by witnesses.
Prior to the arrests, those gathered were warned to disperse and leave campus.
NYPD officers arrived on the scene, many wearing riot gear, and began using handcuffs and zip ties to detain 133 protesters while they loaded them onto vans which took them to the police station on charges of trespassing.
The NYU Palestinian Solidarity Coalition said its goal was to “end all war profiteering and investment in genocide,” a “complete academic boycott of Israel,” the removal of NYPD on campus, and that NYU “must protect free speech on campus and provide full amnesty to all students and faculty penalized for their pro-Palestinian activism,” as reported by Fox News.
Although they acknowledged that violence did erupt at the demonstration, they maintained that “the violence we faced is only a fraction of the violence that Palestinians face on the ground every day.”
The unrest at NYU comes as other campuses, including Columbia and Yale, are facing disruptive pro-Palestinian protests that are crossing the line into antisemitic bullying and in some cases violence.
Pro-Palestinian activist ThizzL posted on social media on Friday night videos of students chanting, “We say justice, you say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground. Go Hamas, we love you. We support your rockets too.”
Earlier in the week, ThizzL posted videos of protesters yelling, “Kill another soldier now.”
A speaker was live-streamed by the Palestinian Solidarity Working Group praising the atrocities against Israelis on October 7th.
“Let it be known that it was the Al-Aqsa Flood that put the global intifada back on the table again,” they said.
The speaker added, “It is the sacrificial spirit of the Palestinian freedom fighters that will guide every struggle on every corner of the earth to victory.”