Demonstrators, counter-protesters clash at UCLA campus over Israel-Hamas war

Police deployed in force on the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) campus on Wednesday morning after Israel supporters attacked a camp set up by pro-Palestinian protesters.

Witness footage from the scene, verified by Reuters, showed people wielding sticks or poles to attack wooden boards being used as makeshift barricades to protect the pro-Palestinian protesters.

Police were responding to UCLA chancellor Gene Block’s request for support, Zach Seidl, Los Angeles deputy mayor of communications, said on the social media platform X.

The Los Angeles Police Department said on X it was responding to UCLA’s request “due to multiple acts of violence within the large encampment on their campus,” to restore order and maintain public safety. By 5 a.m. they had erected a metal crowd barrier in front of the encampment and the area was quiet.

Groups of people fight over metal and makeshift barriers in a nighttime photo.
Counterprotesters try and dismantle a pro-Palestinian encampment set up on the campus of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) as clashes erupted late Tuesday and into the early morning hours. (Etienne Laurent/AFP/Getty Images)

Footage from the early hours showed mostly male counter-demonstrators, many of them masked and some apparently older than students, throwing objects and trying to smash or pull down the wooden and steel barriers erected to shield the encampment.

Some yelled pro-Jewish comments as pro-Palestinian protesters tried to fight them off.

“They were coming up here and just violently attacking us,” said pro-Palestinian protester Kaia Shah, a researcher at UCLA.

“I just didn’t think they would ever get to this, escalate to this level, where our protest is met by counter-protesters who are violently hurting us, inflicting pain on us, when we are not doing anything to them.”

A woman lowers a handkerchief to receive water on her face from a bottle in a nighttime photo.
A pro-Palestinian protester receives water in her eyes of after being maced at the campus of UCLA. (Etienne Laurent/AFP/Getty Images)

Demonstrators on both sides sprayed each other and fights broke out.

Another pro-Palestinian student protester, Sophia Sandino, said: “We had people [spraying] us, beating us with bats and sticks, throwing whatever they could to us and none of this law enforcement was here at all. So it’s kind of disappointing that we’re seen as the perpetrators here.”

Katy Yaroslavsky, a Los Angeles city council member whose district includes UCLA, posted on X: “Everyone has a right to free speech and protest, but the situation on UCLA’s campus is out of control and is no longer safe.”

UCLA is part of the University of California system. It has about 32,000 undergraduate students and is located in the residential neighborhood of Westwood just outside of Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles.

Last weekend, hundreds of counter-protesters had turned up there chanting support for Israel, hoisting signs and waving blue-and-white Israeli flags.

Supporters of Israel erected a screen that played a video loop of scenes from the Hamas Oct. 7 attack. The two sides taunted one another, pushed, shoved and threw punches while campus police struggled to contain the skirmishes.

A man with a mask on his face lifts a metallic fence and appears ready to throw it.
A counter-protester throws a metal fence at pro-Palestinian protesters next to their encampment set up on the campus at UCLA. (Etienne Laurent/AFP/Getty Images)

White House condemns violence, occupation

Protest encampments on campuses have been set up with greater frequency this month in several states in the U.S.in solidarity with students at Columbia University in New York City. There have also been encampments set up at some Canadian campuses.

On Wednesday morning, police were removing an encampment of pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Wisconsin’s Madison campus. Nearly 60 police officers, some with riot shields, arrived and began removing tents and other items, WISC-TV reported.

Three police officers wearing baseball caps carry a person wearing boots in an outdoor photo.
Police carry a demonstrator protesting the war in Gaza at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on Wednesday. (John Hart/Wisconsin State Journal/The Associated Press)

Video from WISC-TV showed police with riot shields pushing against protesters and the protesters pushing back while chanting slogans, including “Free Free Palestine.” The station said that at least 10 protesters were taken away by police with their hands zip-tied by officers.

Late on Tuesday, New York City police arrested dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators holed up in an academic building on Columbia’s Manhattan campus and removed a protest encampment that the Ivy League school had sought to dismantle for nearly two weeks.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Wednesday that about 300 people were arrested.

“We are processing the arrests to distinguish between who were actual students and who were not supposed to be on the ground,” said Adams.

Police officers in helmets are shown climbing a ladder to gain entry inside a stone building.
Using a tactical vehicle, New York City police enter an upper floor of Hamilton Hall at Columbia University in New York City on Tuesday night after the campus building was taken over by protesters earlier in the day. (Craig Ruttle/The Associated Press)

The White House, while expressing support for freedom of assembly, criticized “forcibly taking over buildings” in a statement on Tuesday.

The U.S. protests have been duly noted in Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called the demonstration antisemitic and intimidating to Jewish students.

LISTEN | Arielle Angel, Jewish Currents editor in chief, on the growing campus protests: 

Front Burner34:01The growing wave of campus protests

Many Jewish students are among the organizers of the Columbia protest, though, and bristle at allegations of antisemitism. 

About 1,200 people in southern Israel were killed in the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel led by Hamas, considered a terrorist group by many Western governments. The Israeli retaliatory assault has killed nearly 35,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to health ministry figures.

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