Riot police have arrested more than 100 protesters at Northeastern University in Boston, amid a nationwide crackdown on anti-Israel activism. University authorities claim that the demonstrators were calling for the deaths of Jews.
Demonstrators set up tents on Northeastern’s campus earlier this week, following the lead of students at New York’s Columbia University and around 40 other educational institutions in the US and Canada.
Officers from the Boston Police Department, Massachusetts State Police, Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department, and the university’s own police force surrounded the encampment shortly after dawn on Saturday morning, before moving in and restraining around 100 demonstrators with zip ties, WBZ News reported.
Massachusetts State Police said that 102 people who refused to disperse were arrested and will be charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct. Northeastern University said that anyone who produced a student ID was released and would face disciplinary, but not legal, consequences.
“What began as a student demonstration two days ago, was infiltrated by professional organizers with no affiliation to Northeastern,” the university claimed in a statement. “Last night, the use of virulent antisemitic slurs, including ‘Kill the Jews,’ crossed the line. We cannot tolerate this kind of hate on our campus.”
The Massachusetts chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), however, claimed that anti-Semitic chants were not started by the protesters, but by “pro-Israel counter-supporters” attempting to discredit the pro-Palestinian side. Video footage shared by the DSA on Saturday apparently shows protesters shouting down someone who tried to start a chant of “Kill the Jews.”
Two reporters at the scene “heard someone say the statement, but could not identify who said it,” the Huntington News, a student newspaper, wrote on social media.
Protesters at campuses across the US have demanded that their universities “divest” from companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Lockheed Martin that have contracts with the Israeli government. They also want the US to stop giving money to Israel, citing its “genocide” of the Palestinians in Gaza.
The protest movement has drawn support from some progressive Democrats, but condemnation from establishment lawmakers in both parties. On Friday, New York Representatives Richie Torres and Mike Lawler introduced a bill that would appoint “anti-Semitism monitors” to federally funded college campuses and strip money from those that fail to sufficiently crack down on alleged hatred against Jews.
The bill was introduced two days after police arrested hundreds of protesters in similar raids on 21 campuses nationwide. Hundreds more were detained on Thursday and Friday, including 118 at Boston’s Emerson College.