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New York, New York – Peaceful demonstrators at two different New York universities that opposed the Israeli-led genocide of Gaza were subjected to a brutal NYPD crackdown Tuesday evening.
The paramilitary incursion, which saw the use of armored vehicles, shields, and batons, came just eight days after Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt demanded protests be shut down to keep Jewish kids “safe” from those opposing mass murder.
“Jewish students don’t feel safe on campus because they are not,” said Greenblatt in a video to his personal X, formerly Twitter account last week.
“We need President Minouche Shafik to do three things. Number one, we need NYPD back on this campus or bring in the National Guard,” he continued. “Number two, no masks on campus…And number three, the students who behave this way need to be suspended immediately.”
On Tuesday, Greenblatt’s words appeared to echo as hordes of New York’s finest converged to shut down nonviolent student protests at both Columbia University and the City College of New York. Using armored vehicles equipped with ladders, officers huddled in formation and forcibly evicted demonstrators encamped inside Columbia’s Hamilton Hall.
The operation kicked off late Tuesday night, and culminated in the arrest of nearly 300 people who opposed Israel’s war on Gaza. At Columbia, 119 arrests were made over minor charges, while 173 were arrested at CCNY.
At a news conference celebrating the crackdown, New York’s controversial Black Mayor, Eric Adams, blamed an uptick in anti-Israeli rhetoric on alleged “outside agitators” whose goal was to “radicalize young people.”
Rebecca Weiner, the NYPD’s Jewish Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism—whose grandfather helped develop nuclear weapons later used to obliterate Japan at the end of World War 2—said the crackdown was necessary after individuals were spotted posing an “elevated concern.”
Shocking videos of the military-style assault quickly went viral on social media, depicting scenes of armored shock troops clambering into the school’s windows via a mobile “siege tower.” Officers were said to have set up a security cordon four blocks around Columbia University, using pepper spray to neutralize those attempting to stop busloads of demonstrators from being transported to central booking.
By the night’s end, masked members of the NYPD’s “counterterrorism” unit at CCNY placed a neighborhood on total lockdown, commandeering civilian buses to facilitate the mass arrests of students. According to X/Twitter user Jeremy Loffredo, the officers would later use the same buses for their own transportation needs.
“This entire city-wide militarized operation was in response to college students allegedly expressing “hateful” and “antisemitic” rhetoric [hate speech],” he commented.
Columbia University, like many prestigious American schools, has come under fire from Jewish power figures for a perceived failure in raking in anti-Israel rhetoric on campus. Columbia had previously escaped scrutiny, however, thanks to rules that prevented pro-Palestine protestors from acting unless they gave the school ten days’ notice.
When students defied the new rules and set up a pro-Palestine encampment anyway, the school quickly became the focus of Zionist interests, which triggered a site visit by Greenblatt.
Greenblatt’s ADL has waged war on growing pro-Palestine activism on campuses across the country. Leaked audio obtained from a clandestine ADL meeting late last month revealed the organization’s new report card system for so-called “antisemitism,” which includes plans to launch massive litigation campaigns against universities that fail to meet up to certain rhetorical standards.
“Why do these groups get to promote Hamas propaganda?” Greenblatt can be heard in the leaked audio. “We want to cast a bright light on these groups. I think what they’re doing is a breach of the criminal code.”
Taking cues from the ADL and other Zionist interest groups, mainstream politicians in states like Texas, California, and Florida have turned student protests into veritable battlegrounds, using accusations of “antisemitism” as the trigger. Republicans like Tom Cotton, Greg Abbott, Josh Hawley, and others have emerged from the unrest, appearing all too eager to flex state power to repress the First Amendment rights of their own citizens.
The alarmingly widespread disregard for constitutional protections has since sparked renewed debates on free expression and the legitimacy of the American empire as a whole.
White Civil rights activist and staunch opponent of the state of Israel, Mike Peinovich, used the opportunity to remind followers that heavy-handed policing by the NYPD was nonexistent during the 2020 summer of racial reckoning. He also suggested that operations like these were just part of an overall strategy to make support of Palestine a forbidden subject in the leftist milieu.
“Look at the tactics the NYPD is using. Tactics like this were never deployed against BLM riots which were far more widespread and far more violent,” said Peinovich on X/Twitter. “This began as a campus sit-in, and the police and Jewish agitators have provoked all of the violence. This is Jewish privilege.”
“From the perspective of Jews, these campus Palestine protests are just as unacceptable as White Nationalism…That is why the same level of force is being used, and they will follow up with similar legal and social punishments,” he commented.
“We are about to see whether leftists are really better activists than right-wingers or whether this appearance is purely the result of system approval. When leftists engage in non-system-approved actions, will they fall victim to the same systemic traps? I honestly don’t know,” he said.
“This began as a campus sit-in, and the police and Jewish agitators have provoked all of the violence. This is Jewish privilege.”
Mike Peinovich, X/Twitter
As Israel’s ongoing military campaign against Gaza continues into 2024, civil unrest tied to the conflict has only exploded internationally, with no clear signs of it slowing down. At the time of press, more than 34,535 Palestinians are believed to have been killed from Israeli war strikes and incursions, many of them innocent women and children. Additionally, 77,704 have been wounded.
To make matters worse, the Biden administration is currently mulling over a strategy to relocate thousands of Palestinians to the US homeland, in a move said to provide a “permanent safe haven” for refugees forced out of their native homeland by Israeli Defense Forces.
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