The pre-dawn police crackdown at UCLA marked the latest flashpoint for mounting tensions on US college campuses over Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza.
The best photos from the international wire agencies as chosen by our picture editors.
The sight of law enforcement officers in and around a prestigious college campus is somewhat jarring,even with its history of activism.
Pro-Israel supporters harassed a student encampment at Monash overnight while a Jewish rally confronted the University of Melbourne’s pro-Palestine camp on Thursday.
Eyewitness videos showed people wielding sticks or poles to hammer on wooden boards being used as makeshift barricades to protect the pro-Palestinian protesters before police were called to the campus.
Vice chancellor Mark Scott says a few pro-Palestinian student activists were under investigation for inappropriate behaviour but their protest campsite will remain on campus.
Unrest at UCLA comes a day after police in riot gear stormed New York’s Columbia University,which has become the centre of America’s student uprising over the war in Gaza.
New York City police raided Columbia University arresting dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators,some of whom had seized an academic building,and attempting to remove a protest encampment the Ivy League school had sought to dismantle for nearly two weeks.
American universities are “walking a tightrope” as one of the nation’s most storied higher education institutions becomes the centre of a national student uprising.
Here we are,with thousands rallying in the streets to stop violence against women;and yet again it’s become a lunatic lightning rod for political brawling.
A “kids’ excursion” to the pro-Palestine encampment at the University of Sydney saw young children led to chant calls for “intifada”.