
Video Screengrab via Anthony Cabassa (@AnthonyCabassa_) / X
CV NEWS FEED // Pro-Palestine protests on college campuses continued to escalate nationwide this week resulting in a number of anti-Semitic altercations, violence, and the arrests of protestors.
Independent journalist Anthony Cabassa posted an over six-minute video to X (formerly Twitter) early Thursday, which he took as he walked through a massive encampment built by protestors at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
“I was able to get inside the Pro Palestine encampment tonight,” Cabassa wrote on X. “This video shows the complete inside layout, tents that include medical, food and sleeping quarters, and members FORTIFYING the makeshift perimeter barriers as police set to enter the area.”
At the beginning of Cabassa’s video, large amounts of graffiti on campus buildings are apparent. Spray-painted messages include “FREE GAZA,” and “INTIFADA” – an Arabic word meaning “rebellion” or “uprising,” often used by Hamas and other terrorist groups.
Throughout the video, loud chants of what appears to Arabic, can be heard, accompanied by a loud drumbeat. In particular, what appears to be the phrase “Ahallu Akbar” – widely associated with radical Islamic terrorism – can be heard at times.
Over a minute into the video, the Cabassa tells a group of male protestors he “just wanted to get some last pictures before they take it down.”
“Just soak it in!” one of the protestors enthusiastically tells him.
Just over three minutes into the video, a protestor politely reminds the undercover journalist to put on a mask. “Some folks are making a deal out of it,” the protestor states.
Most, but not all of the protestors in the video were wearing masks.
Just several hours after Cabassa posted his video of the encampment, reports surfaced stating that UCLA police had successfully dismantled it.
“UCLA campus looks like a landfill after pro-Palestine protesters, many of whom are also environmental activists, demolished the campus,” political commentator Collin Rugg wrote on X Thursday afternoon – accompanied by a video of the dozens of abandoned tents and other belongings.
“Police are dismantling the fortified camp after an intense night,” Rugg continued. “Police fired flash-bangs at the protesters last night before arresting about 100 of them.”
“The entire battle was documented by police helicopters,” he added. “There were an estimated 1000 protesters.”
“Police took 100 protestors into custody during a three-hour operation to dismantle the camp,” noted X personality Mario Nawfal – who posted a video of the protest’s aftermath to the platform.
Earlier this week, CatholicVote reported that UCLA protestors barricaded several areas on campus and “prevented multiple Jewish students from walking to class and the library.”
The mother of one of these students called campus police stating, “[The protestors] said because he’s Jewish he cannot enter that area and that they won’t issue him a wristband.”
“[A]re the protestors allowed to not allow a student who pays tuition access to their class in the library?” the Jewish student’s mother asked.
The woman on the other end of the call stated that while the protestors are not allowed, “unfortunately they have kind of taken over that little area” of campus.
>> PRO-PALESTINE PROTESTORS AT UCLA BLOCK JEWISH STUDENTS FROM CLASS <<
Another anti-Semetic incident perpetrated by pro-Palestine protestors this week occurred at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle.
UW Students Supporting Israel Co-President Olivia Feldman told a local FOX affiliate that she does not feel safe on campus and was told by protestors to “go back to the gas chambers.”
“I have been called names, I have been spit at, I have been laughed at,” said Feldman, whose great-grandparents were Holocaust survivors.
“It is a very, very visceral feeling in me when somebody tells me to go back to the gas chambers,” she added.
Meanwhile, in the state of Florida, several pro-Palestine protestors were arrested – many following violent clashes with law enforcement.
NPR member station WUSF reported Tuesday: “Police and state troopers arrested nine pro-Palestinian protesters late Monday who had occupied for days a campus plaza at the University of Florida [UF] in Gainesville.”
One of the protestors – a 20-year-old student – was charged with a felony for allegedly spitting in the face of a responding police officer.
“They were among the first college arrests in Florida involving national protests on campuses against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza,” WUSF added:
The administration at Florida’s flagship public university said in a statement the protesters had violated rules announced last week that included “no disruptions” and a ban on camping, sleeping, bullhorns and tents
>> LAST WEEK: UF STUDENT PROTESTORS PACK UP AFTER SCHOOL REMINDS THEM OF RULES <<
Another WUSF report from the previous day noted that at the University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa, a violent altercation between protestors and police culminated in a trio of arrests.
Per the Monday report: “A member of WUSF’s administrative support staff was among those taken into custody. University police also arrested a student and a person who is not affiliated with the university.”
“A group of [USF] students, which included members of Tampa Bay Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), gathered near the library around noon Monday,” WUSF went on:
After a tense exchange with the university’s event support team lead, Matt Marshall, the group moved away from the library, and eventually made their way to the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Plaza lawn.
There, people attempted to set up an encampment on the lawn. That’s when police clashed with the group and made arrests.
>> JEAN-PIERRE DEFLECTS WHEN ASKED ABOUT BIDEN’S SILENCE ON PROTESTS <<
In response to the continuing rampant protests, the Republican-controlled U.S. House Wednesday passed a bill seeking to expand the definition of anti-Semitism in federal law.
“The bill overwhelmingly passed the House by a 320-91 vote, netting a majority of Republicans and Democrats,” FOX News indicated.
“Seventy Democrats voted against the bill, while 133 voted [for] it. On the Republican side, just 21 voted against the bill, with 187 GOP lawmakers in support,” FOX added:
If passed by the Senate and signed by President Biden, the bipartisan Antisemitism Awareness Act would mandate that the Department of Education legally adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism when enforcing anti-discrimination rules.
