Zionists violently attack UCLA encampment while university and LAPD stand down.
Televised videos of local police and university security forces breaking up Gaza encampments filled the news last week.
What didn’t get as much reporting is what took place at the UCLA encampment in front of the historic Royce Hall.
Credit must be given to the Washington Post which did an hour by hour timeline of the bloody events.
What had been a week-long non-violent protest by UCLA students and faculty calling for University of California divestment from Israel turned into a bloody and violent attack by Zionist thugs in the dark of night while campus, California Highway Patrol and Los Angels Police Department officers stood down and allowed the thugs to have their way.
In the hours before they took action, at least 16 people were visibly injured, the majority of them pro-Palestinian, including two protesters who could be seen with blood streaking across their faces and soaking into their clothes, videos and images show. The counterprotesters ignited at least six fireworks; struck protesters at least 20 times with wooden planks, metal poles and other objects; and punched or kicked at least eight protesters.
All the while the cops were nowhere to be found.
Someone might have thought there was coordination.
It was very different here in Chicago where campus security at the University of Chicago dismantled the encampment on its campus using a heavy hand on students and faculty. At the encampment at the Art Institute of Chicago the city’s police department converged on the sculpture garden using the kind of force that reminded many of us of the Democratic Convention in 1968.
This year’s Democratic Convention is returning to Chicago in August. Protesting at the United Center where the convention is to be held has been forbidden. All permits to march have been denied except in a small location far from the convention action.
Back at UCLA.
Law enforcement’s tepid response on April 30 contrasts starkly with their aggressive maneuvers the following night, when officers in riot gear, some firing projectiles, swiftly dismantled the UCLA camp and arrested 210 people for refusing to leave.
In contrast, no arrests were made the night of the Zionist attack.
“There have only been a couple times in my life where I’ve had trouble understanding what’s real and what’s maybe a nightmare, and this was definitely one of them,” Nicholas Shapiro, an assistant professor and a former EMT who helped treat injured students, later told The Post.
Shapiro arrived home with dark stains on his fingers and palms.
“Surreal,” he texted a group of professor friends at 3:47 a.m., “to be ending the night cleaning a student’s blood off my hands.”