Masked Israel Supporters Attack UCLA’s Palestine Solidarity Encampment with Weapons
ACTIVISM, 6 May 2024
Niko Georgiades | Unicorn Riot - TRANSCEND Media Service
Unicorn Riot
1 May 2024 – Over more than five hours on Tue 30 Apr night, pro-Israel Zionist agitators violently beat, pepper sprayed and threw fireworks at hundreds of college students and protesters in a “unilateral, surprise attack“ as they held UCLA’s Palestine solidarity encampment while security and police stood by idly. Though police didn’t intervene until the fifth hour of the attack, the encampment stayed intact with the students repelling the continuous onslaught as they defiantly chanted “we’re not leaving” and “Free Palestine.”
The students kept the encampment together despite the violence with a policy to not engage and acting in a defensive posture. Students maintained some of the barricades made of wood and metal that protected the encampment while being punched, pummeled, kicked, hit with projectiles and sprayed with chemicals.
A communique from a group of autonomous UCLA students that was sent out to media is posted at the end of the article and notes that the students feel like the violence they faced was “aided and abetted by [the] administration.”
Here is the first 24 minutes of the attack at UCLA.
Make no mistake: the attacks were solely initiated by the pro-Israel side. pic.twitter.com/924IuaEAaf
— Film The Police LA (@FilmThePoliceLA) May 1, 2024
The pro-Israel vigilantes, many donning all black with masks on, became more emboldened as the night went along. A large police contingent that showed up four hours into the attack waited in the grass across the quad for an hour as dozens more attacks occurred.
Attackers were recorded screaming “second Nakba” referring to the violent mass expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians in 1948 to make way for the state of Israel. Al Jazeera’s Rob Reynolds said live during their broadcast that to him, the scenes were “reminiscent of settler violence” against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank without the guns.
Here are some of the people trying to storm the encampment pic.twitter.com/qivP6BFsXU
— Jack Ross (@m0thercity) May 1, 2024
Imagine if encampment students started physically attacking Jewish students & began chanting “Second Holocaust.”
These Zionist students are calling for massacres & ethnic cleansing while deploying physical violence, but it’s ok because the victims are advocates against genocide https://t.co/ocQWl7TxxL
— Remi Kanazi (@Remroum) May 1, 2024
Tags: Activism, Demonstrations, Gaza, Genocide, Israel, Official Lies and Narratives, Protests, Students Anti-Genocide Gaza, USA
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 6 May 2024.
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