The New York Police Department on Wednesday cleared a short-lived anti-Israel camp on Fordham University’s Lincoln Center campus at the school’s request, authorities said.
New York City Police Department Deputy Commissioner of Operations Kaz Daughtry said officers in riot gear entered the Gaza Solidarity Encampment just before 6 p.m. and arrested several protesters who refused to leave.
The police action comes just hours after protesters set up an indoor tent city following the arrests of hundreds of like-minded demonstrators at Columbia University and the City University of New York on Tuesday night. It was conducted.
Fordham’s encampment, which began around 8 a.m. at a building at the Leon Lowenstein Center, a private Jesuit university in Manhattan, saw the number of protesters, estimated at 30, steadily dwindle throughout the day to about 12. Ta.
But hundreds of others rallied outside the main entrance at the corner of West 60th Street and Ninth Avenue.
The protesters, who refused to leave their camp, received notices from the university early Tuesday that they would be suspended and banned from campus.
A letter from Fordham University officials released by police said the university determined the encampment was a “clear and present danger to persons or property” and asked police to “assist in removing everyone from the encampment.” He asked them to do so.
The school also requested that police be stationed on campus until May 22, when the graduation ceremony ends.
About seven tents are gone, and all that remains are graffiti reading “Liberate Palestine” next to Fordham University’s main gate and stickers on windows calling for an end to “genocide.”
Earlier, demonstrators, some wearing face masks and keffiyeh, taped Palestinian flags to walls and beat drums while chanting, “Students, students! Hold on tight. NYPD backs down.” “Israeli bombs, Fordham reparations, how many children did they kill today?”
Shortly before noon, NYPD arrived outside the Lowenstein Center and set up fencing. Tensions escalated as NYPD buses, including one splattered with red paint, pulled up near the scene.
Approximately 200 student protesters moved and stood just outside the Lowenstein Center windows, refusing to leave.
The group shouted: “Move the police and leave. We know you have Israeli training.”
Brigitte Guilherme, 60, of Hell’s Kitchen, watched the protest in disgust for an hour and a half. Guilherme is half Christian and half Jewish.
“They’re not all bad kids. Someday some of them will wake up,” Guilherme said.
“Maybe they should go to Palestine, maybe they should go to the Gaza Strip, especially people who get killed as soon as they get off the plane,” she said. Palestine is not a free state.
“Maybe we should hand over these children to the Palestinians in exchange for hostages,” Guilherme added.
