State and local police arrested 12 activists Thursday evening as they dismantled a new pro-Palestinian “encampment” at the University of California Berkeley that was set up after a deal had been struck with the university to dismantle one on campus.
As Breitbart News reported, activists took over a building at Berkeley just hours after an agreement was announced under which the campus “encampment” would be dismantled in exchange for meetings with administrators over the university’s investment policies.
The agreement stopped short of promising divestment from Israel.
A group of activists took over an empty university building and spray-painted pro-Hamas slogans on it, while tents and barricades went up on the lawn.
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA – MAY 16: Barricades remain after police arrested at least a dozen people who occupied UC Berkeleys condemned Anna Head Alumnae Hall on Haste Street near Bowditch Streets in Berkeley, Calif., on Thursday, May 16, 2024. (Jane Tyska/Digital First Media/East Bay Times via Getty Images)
After 24 hours, the San Francisco Chronicle reports, police moved in:
At least 12 pro-Palestinian protesters who participated in a takeover of an abandoned UC Berkeley building near the campus were arrested Thursday after police cleared the encampment, which was set up a day earlier.
More than 50 officers with the university, Oakland, California Highway Patrol and Alameda County Sheriff’s Office tore down barricades protesters had placed around the abandoned building, Channing Hall, on Bowditch Street and Channing Way, just before 7 p.m. Officers pushed away protesters who were outside the building, entered the building and began removing protesters who were inside.
Police began filling dump trucks they brought to the site with plywood, tents and debris from the encampment. Police from South San Francisco, Colma, San Bruno and the S.F. sheriff’s office also took part in the action.
The Chronicle noted that the United Auto Workers (UAW), which represents many graduate students in the University of California system, called a strike on Wednesday in support of the pro-Palestinian students’ right to protest.
The UAW has supported calls for a ceasefire in Gaza for months, despite the fact that a ceasefire would have allowed Hamas to keep its hostages and its weapons, delivering a victory to a radical Islamic terror organization.
There were even more arrests on Wednesday at the University of California Irvine, as police took 47 activists into custody. The Orange County Register reported that UC Irvine Chancellor Howard Gillman acted when the protest escalated:
“I was prepared to allow a peaceful encampment to exist on the campus without resorting to police intervention, even though the encampment violated our policies and the existence of the encampment was a matter of great distress to other members of our community,” [Gillman] said. “I communicated that if there were violations of our rules we would address them through the normal administrative policies of the university and not through police action.”
Around 2 p.m. Wednesday, a crowd that swelled to an estimated 500 people, according to a university spokesperson, expanded the footprint of the encampment that was in a quad in front of the Physical Sciences Lecture Hall using pop-up tents, wood pallets, coolers and other supplies as fortification. A small group barricaded themselves inside the building. UCI issued an emergency campuswide alert confirming a “violent protest” in the area, although it did not detail the nature of the violence.
“And so after weeks when the encampers assured our community that they were committed to maintaining a peaceful and nondisruptive encampment, it was terrible to see that they would dramatically alter the situation in a way that was a direct assault on the rights of other students and the university mission,” Gillman said.
Dozens of campus “encampments” have taken place on campuses across the country, many spewing antisemitic and pro-terror rhetoric, and some using force to exclude Jewish and Israeli students from public areas or from classes.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.