Violence erupts between pro-Israel, pro-Palestinian demonstrators at UCLA

LOS ANGELES ( KTLA ) – Dueling groups of protesters clashed early Wednesday at the University of California, Los Angeles, grappling in fistfights and shoving, kicking and using sticks to beat one another.

The violence erupted shortly before 11 p.m. Tuesday when the group of about 50 men believed to be supporters of the pro-Israeli counterprotest wearing dark clothing, hoods and white masks covering their faces stormed the barricade and tried to tear it down.

Unarmed security guards were forced to flee as fireworks were launched at the encampment, exploding near the tents that have overtaken Royce Quad.

Several of the counterprotesters, who appeared to be older outside agitators and not students, used what looked like bear spray to douse pro-Palestinian protesters, according to Nexstar’s KTLA.

Video showed fireworks exploding over and in the encampment. People threw chairs and at one point a group piled on a person laying on the ground, kicking and beating them with sticks until others pulled them out of the scrum.

After a couple of hours of scuffles, police wearing helmets and face shields formed lines and slowly separated the groups. That quelled the violence, and the scene was calm as day broke.

UCLA campus police and medical personnel had showed up briefly at the scene before retreating, KTLA reported.

Aerial footage from the station captured the chaotic scene, including countless clashes between protesters. The number of people injured and the severity of the injuries were unclear.

The encampment, populated by protesters demanding UCLA divest all interests in Israel, now occupies portions of the steps and sidewalks of Powell Library and Royce Hall.

Dueling demonstrations have been heated at times, but Tuesday night’s clash marked the greatest escalation to date.

“Horrific acts of violence occurred at the encampment tonight and we immediately called law enforcement for mutual aid support,” Mary Osako, a senior UCLA official, told the campus newspaper the Daily Bruin.

UCLA announced Wednesday morning that all classes would be canceled “due to the distress caused by the violence that took place on Royce Quad late last night and early this morning.”

Please avoid the Royce Quad area,” UCLA posted on X shortly before 8:30 a.m.

Before the escalation

Earlier in the day, Luke Veltz attempted to donate snacks and drinks to those in the encampment. While he’s not a student, he told KTLA that he supports calls for the university to divest from Israel and hopes for an end to the war and a free Palestinian state.

“When you’ve had genocide carry on for this long, people are just not going to be able to live side by side with two governments in the way that it’s been suggested, and I think that a free Palestine is the only way forward,” he said.

Counter-protesters calling for the release of Israeli hostages taken captive on Oct. 7 by Hamas have used screens and speakers to blast images and stories of survivors just feet away from the encampment.

“I think this is blatant antisemitism,” one young man, who was not identified, told KTLA. “This is crazy what’s going on, what they’re letting go on. They’re chanting to kill us. They’re chanting ‘ from the river to the sea ,’ which is just blatantly to kill us all. I wanted to see what’s going on and it’s scary.”

On Tuesday morning, protesters chanted “Let him go!” as a demonstrator carrying a Palestinian flag — who had scaled the scaffolding of a building near the encampment — was arrested.

The demonstrator was later released.

Vandals also sprayed graffiti on the doors of Royce Hall.

On Tuesday morning, a man on crutches who claimed to be an alumnus and was not part of either protest was tackled by UCLA security after trying to access a public walkway outside the encampment, Fenoglio reported.

“I told them I was disabled,” he said. “They said that I was trying to use [my crutches] as a weapon. It was on the ground behind me. It was insane. “

There were also reports of demonstrators in the encampment blocking students from getting to class. The university called this kind of behavior “abhorrent” and said these actions could lead to “suspension or expulsion.”

On Monday night, campus police broke up several fights after a group of about 60 pro-Israel demonstrators tried to push through the encampment’s barricade.

University officials ultimately decided to close Royce Hall until Friday and Powell Library until Monday.

Over at the University of Southern California, the main commencement ceremony remains canceled , though smaller graduation ceremonies will take place across campus.

University President Carol Folt released a statement, saying in part: “USC remains committed to free speech and peaceful protests while ensuring public safety.”

Folt also said she is in direct talks with the representatives from the pro-Palestinian group Divest from Death USC, which has established an encampment in Alumni Park.

The park erupted into a chaotic scene last week after the university called on the Los Angeles Police Department to forcibly remove protesters.

Protests on other campuses

Police have swept through other campuses across the U.S. over the last two weeks, leading to confrontations and more than 1,000 arrests. In rarer instances, university officials and protest leaders struck agreements to restrict the disruption to campus life and upcoming commencement ceremonies.

Late on Tuesday, New York City officers entered Columbia’s campus after the university requested help, according to a statement released by a spokesperson. A tent encampment on the school’s grounds was cleared, along with Hamilton Hall where a stream of officers used a ladder to climb through a second-floor window. Protesters seized the hall at the Ivy League school about 20 hours earlier.

“After the University learned overnight that Hamilton Hall had been occupied, vandalized, and blockaded, we were left with no choice,” the school said. “The decision to reach out to the NYPD was in response to the actions of the protesters, not the cause they are championing. We have made it clear that the life of campus cannot be endlessly interrupted by protesters who violate the rules and the law.”

A few dozen people were arrested at the building after protesters shrugged off an earlier ultimatum to abandon the encampment Monday or be suspended. It all unfolded as other universities stepped up efforts to end demonstrations that were inspired by Columbia .

Fabien Lugo, a first-year accounting student who said he was not involved in the protests, said he opposed the university’s decision to call in police.

“This is too intense,” he said. “It feels like more of an escalation than a de-escalation.”

Just blocks away from Columbia, at The City College of New York, demonstrators were in a standoff with police outside the public college’s main gate. Video posted on social media by news reporters on the scene late Tuesday showed officers putting some people to the ground and shoving others as they cleared people from the street and sidewalks.

After police arrived, officers lowered a Palestinian flag atop the City College flagpole, balled it up and tossed it to the ground before raising an American flag.

Brown University, another member of the Ivy League, reached an agreement Tuesday with protesters on its Rhode Island campus. Demonstrators said they would close their encampment in exchange for administrators taking a vote to consider divestment from Israel in October. The compromise appeared to mark the first time a U.S. college has agreed to vote on divestment in the wake of the protests.

Meanwhile, at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, police in riot gear closed in on an encampment late Tuesday and arrested about 20 people for trespassing, at least one of whom was thrown to the ground. University officials had warned earlier in the day that students would face criminal charges if they did not disperse.

First-year student Brayden Lang watched from the sidelines. “I still know very little about this conflict,” he said. “But the deaths of thousands is something I cannot stand for.”

Police also cleared an encampment Wednesday morning at Tulane University in New Orleans and took down all but one tent at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where police with shields shoved protesters, resulting in a scrum and at least a dozen arrests. Four officers were injured, including a state trooper who was hit in the head with a skateboard, according to University of Wisconsin police spokesperson Marc Lovicott.

California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, was tallying damage after police on Tuesday cleared protesters from two halls that they had occupied since early last week. Of those arrested, 13 are students, one is a faculty member and 18 are not students, the university said in a statement.

The nationwide campus protests began at Columbia in response to Israel’s offensive in Gaza after Hamas launched a deadly attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7. Militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. Vowing to stamp out Hamas, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the Health Ministry there.

As cease-fire negotiations appeared to gain steam, it wasn’t clear whether those talks would lead to an easing of protests.

Israel and its supporters have branded the university protests as antisemitic, while Israel’s critics say it uses those allegations to silence opposition. Although some protesters have been caught on camera making antisemitic remarks or violent threats, organizers of the protests, some of whom are Jewish, say it is a peaceful movement aimed at defending Palestinian rights and protesting the war.

Columbia’s police action happened on the 56th anniversary of a similar move to quash an occupation of Hamilton Hall by students protesting racism and the Vietnam War.

The police department earlier Tuesday said officers wouldn’t enter the grounds without the college administration’s request or an imminent emergency. Now, law enforcement will be there through May 17, the end of the university’s commencement events.

In a letter to senior police officials, Columbia President Minouche Shafik said the administration made the request that officers remove protesters from the occupied building and a nearby tent encampment “with the utmost regret.”

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that police had to move into Hamilton Hall “for the safety of those children.”

He again blamed outside agitators for the building takeover — an idea Shafik has also raised, though neither provided specific evidence to back up the contention, which was disputed by protest organizers and participants.

Adams, a Democrat who was formerly a police captain, insisted that while the people who entered Columbia’s Hamilton Hall included students, “It was led by individuals who were not affiliated with the university.”

“There is a movement to radicalize young people. And I’m not going to wait until it is done to acknowledge the existence of it,” Adams said. He said that, as mayor, he would “not allow that to happen.”

Pressed, however, to give details on the identities of the “outside agitators” cited by the mayor, officials repeatedly declined to provide details. Police commanders talked generally about tactics demonstrators had used, like using chains to secure doors, saying those strategies must have been taught.

Rebecca U. Weiner, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, simply said that some of the people present at the campus protests were “known” to the department to have participated in past protests.

Adams also declined, saying revealing those details would be “too sensitive” to an ongoing law enforcement investigation.

The police department’s deputy commissioner for public information, Tarik Sheppard, said 40 to 50 people were arrested at Hamilton Hall and that there were no injuries. Adams later said that about 300 people were arrested at Columbia University and City College in police crackdowns.

Protesters first set up a tent encampment at Columbia almost two weeks ago. The school sent in police to clear the tents the following day, arresting more than 100 people, only for the students to return.

Negotiations between the protesters and the college came to a standstill in recent days, and the school set a deadline for the activists to abandon the tent encampment Monday afternoon or be suspended.

Instead, protesters defied the ultimatum and took over Hamilton Hall early Tuesday, carrying in furniture and metal barricades.

Ilana Lewkovitch, a self-described “leftist Zionist” student at Columbia, said it’s been hard to concentrate on school for weeks. Her exams have been disrupted with chants of “say it loud, say it clear, we want Zionists out of here.”

Lewkovitch, who is Jewish, said she wished the current pro-Palestinian protests were more open to people like her who criticize Israel’s war policies but believe there should be an Israeli state.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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