From the Liveblog of
Monday, April 22, 2024
Police in riot gear arrest ‘scores’ of demonstrators at Yale anti-Israel protest encampment
Police are arresting “scores” of students staging an anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian demonstration at Yale University who had set up a protest encampment several days ago, The New York Post reports.
In photos and videos shared to social media, officers can be seen asking protesters to leave the Connecticut campus or face arrest.
Police move in to Yale University’s ‘Gaza Plaza Liberated Zone’ to warn all student protesters they will be arrested if they do not disperse.
“If you do not leave you will be arrested.”
— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) April 22, 2024
“Scores of protesters were cuffed for trespassing and hauled away on Yale University shuttle buses,” the report says, without giving an exact number of arrests.
Some of the officers are wearing riot gear, according to the Post’s report.
Protesters could reportedly be heard chanting “YPD (Yale Police Department) or KKK, IDF they’re all the same” and chanting, “Arab blood is not cheap, for the martyrs we will speak.”
Posts on social media say the pro-Palestinian protesters have moved to a different location on campus, despite the arrests and the police presence.
BREAKING: Police have flooded the encampment and given the warning, banging tents as they entered.
Students have locked arms around the flagpole, signaling their willingness to be arrested.
The crowd, several of whom are in tears, have begun singing “We shall not be moved.” pic.twitter.com/gyHXCXnbDZ
— Thomas Birmingham (@thomasbirm) April 22, 2024
The arrests follow several violent episodes during the days-long protest, with a Jewish student journalist who was reporting on the anti-Israel protest at Yale saying she was stabbed in the eye with a Palestinian flag.
According to The New York Post, the student, Yale Free Press editor-in-chief Sahar Tartak, was surrounded by taunting protesters after she was “singled out for wearing Hasidic Jewish attire.”
“There’s hundreds of people taunting me and waving the middle finger at me, and then this person waves a Palestinian flag in my face and jabs it in my eye,” Tartak is quoted as saying.
Antisemitic demonstrators at Yale this morning got arrested and released only to return to the demonstration in a slightly different location… pic.twitter.com/wstPGQ6VnW
— Sahar Tartak???????????????? (@sahar_tartak) April 22, 2024
Universities in the US have seen a flood of protests over the war since October 7, when 3,000 Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, massacred 1,200 people and abducted 253 — half of whom are still held captive in Gaza — sparking the war.
Hamas claims 33,000 Gazans have been killed, an unverifiable figure; Israel says it has killed over 13,000 gunmen in Gaza, as well as 1,000 terrorists in Israel on October 7.
Some 260 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza during the war.
