“People Could Have Died”: Police Raid UCLA Gaza Protest After Pro-Israel Mob Attacked Encampment

We get an update from the University of California, Los Angeles, where police in riot gear began dismantling a pro-Palestinian encampment early Thursday, using flashbang grenades, rubber bullets and tear gas, and arresting dozens of students. The raid came just over a day after pro-Israel counterprotesters armed with sticks, metal rods and fireworks attacked students at the encampment. The Real News Network reporter Mel Buer was on the scene during the attack. She describes seeing counterprotesters provoke students, yelling slurs and bludgeoning them with parts of the encampment’s barricade, and says the attack lasted several hours without police or security intervention. ”UCLA is complicit in violence inflicted upon protesters,” wrote the editorial board of UCLA’s campus newspaper, the Daily Bruin, the next day. Four of the paper’s student journalists were targeted and assaulted by counterprotesters while covering the protests. We speak with Shaanth Kodialam Nanguneri, one of the student journalists, who says one of their colleagues was hospitalized over the assault, while campus security officers “were nowhere to be found.” Meanwhile, UCLA’s chapter of Faculty for Justice in Palestine has called on faculty to refuse university labor Thursday in protest of the administration’s failure to protect students from what it termed “Zionist mobs.” Professor Gaye Theresa Johnson, a member of UCLA Faculty for Justice in Palestine, denounces the administration’s response to nonviolent protest and says she sees the events as part of a major sea change in the politicization of American youth. “This is a movement. It cannot be unseen. It cannot be put back in the box.”

[ggttuuxx]

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”
― Abraham Lincoln

[TheReaverOfDarkness]

“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” -Kevin Alfred Strom, spoken in irony

[kikibean]

"What's the point of free speech if they decide what speech is free?"

[TheVersipelis]

Lots of Americans are waking up to, who has the “Real Power” in America. 🇮🇱

[thevoicehj]

Why aren’t those attackers being prosecuted

[beatriz]

Do Americans still believe that they are free and that they have free speech?
Do Americans still believe that they live in a democracy?

[artinvartanian]

Where were the police when the mob violently attacked the protesters?

[DiegoLuna-nnws]

Today, outside a Walmart i saw a homeless American family begging for money. And so it makes me so "happy" that we are sending billions of dollars to a country that's 8 thousand miles away; money to fund a war we have no business being in. God Bless The United States of Israel! Cause America checked out a long time ago....

[Koobygus]

There is no prison that can hold all of us at once

[Amp]

Why isn't the LA police department investigating the thugs who came on to the encampment and beat people with rods and batons, while throwing bricks, rocks and flash-bang grenades? Who were these thugs? Who organized them? Why did it appear that they knew they could act with impunity? Were they paid by someone? Why did it take hours for the police to arrive? Why didn't the police stop the thugs? Why wewe they permitted to assault the anti-Izzrull student protesters? Why isn't the U.S. justice department investigating this obvious hate crime? This reminds me of strike breaker tactics of the nineteenth and early twentieth centurys in the U.S.

[BMinquaGrl]

We are not a democracy, we are a CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC.

[clerawk]

Shame on mainstream media for ignoring this story. Thanks Democracy Now. You are the best!

[TruthIsEasytoFIND]

This is a humanity test … Last call
to be or not to be

[marcospontes]

They want to silence the truth around the world. But now that, students brought to them the responsibility to open the Pandora box, they can't stop it anymore. They know it and they are desperate.

[Meldeeb]

If Americans are selling their brightest most privileged children like this, how should the world view Americans? Knowing how every people defend their own children, what is left to say

[danguzman]

May 4 1970 Neal Young Song (OHIO) Kent State University Vietnam Protesters. 4 Students shot dead for Protesting as Students on the Campus grounds. History repeats for those who do not remember their History.

[TheDenizxo]

I watched it live looks like no cops gave a fk for hours

[selalewis]

This is what happens when you only see yourself as an observer of history and not an active participant of history.

[jdreis]

and the actual police were told to not engage on campus by ucla leaders.

[Jim.Simpson]

At least they are wearing masks and won't spread their disease.