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Dozens Arrested After Pro-Hamas Takeover of Columbia University Building
Pro-Palestinian protesters are detained by NYPD after taking part in a demonstration at Butler Library on the Columbia University campus in New York, US, May 7, 2025. Photo: Dana Edwards via Reuters Connect.
New York City Police Department (NYPD) officers on Wednesday arrested over 75 members of a pro-Hamas student group that occupied Columbia University’s Butler Library and vowed not to leave unless school officials accede to a list of five demands calling for, among other things, a boycott of Israel and divestment from armaments manufacturers.
“When Columbia speaks of its rich history and commitment to upholding its values, these are the values it speaks of: death dealing, displacement, imperialism, segregation, colonialism, nazism, state violence, abductions, anti-Black racism, zionism, and white western hegemony [sic],” the group, Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), said in a social manifesto issued after commandeering the Butler Library. “It is our duty to rise to this moment, for the people of Gaza. It is our duty to escalate. It is our duty to be brave. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
According to The Columbia Spectator, the demonstration soon faltered after CUAD was out maneuvered by Columbia’s private security forces, who effectively detained the students inside the Butler Reading Room by locking it from the outsider to prevent others, including faculty who wished to offer themselves as “mediators,” from coming in. Meanwhile, the Spectator said, the university dispatched a team of “special patrol officers” and others who initiated negotiations to end the demonstration.
“We don’t want to bring NYPD on campus, we don’t want to have to fight you on this one, please,” an officer told one of the leading protesters, who demanded in response that students be allowed to exit Butler of their own volition. The officer said they would be allowed to do so in exchange for presenting identification, a condition the students reportedly rejected with laughter. Some students later attempted to leave Butler without permission from the officers. The effort did not succeed.
“We refuse to show our IDs under militarized arrest,” CUAD later said a statement, referencing the negotiations. “We refuse to go down quietly.”
Having reached an impasse, interim Columbia University president Claire Shipman — the school’s third new chief executive in two years — requested the help of the NYPD, a decision she justified in a statement as “necessary” for preserving Columbia’s academic mission. By the time the remarks were published, two Columbia officers had been assaulted by a crush of demonstrators who resolved to enter Butler by storming it.
“Columbia has taken the necessary step of requesting the presence of NYPD to assist in securing the building and the safety of our community,” Shipman said. “Disruptions to our academic activities will not be tolerated and are violations of our rules and policies; this is especially unacceptable while our students study and prepare for final exams. Columbia strongly condemns violence on our campus, antisemitism, and all forms of hate and discrimination, some of which we witnessed today. We are resolute that calls for violence or have no place at our university.”
The NYPD’s operation to clear Butler was quickly completed after officers arrived there at 7:25 pm, the time cited by the Spectator. Bundling them “20 at a time,” the officers relocated the students to an NYPD bus used for mass arrests.
Even with those numbers, however, the protest betrayed the attenuating momentum of the pro-Hamas movement at Columbia University. Last year, police arrested 109 protesters for commandeering Hamilton Hall. This year’s occupation saw a 31 percent reduction in arrests and a noticeable drop in student participation, a trend seen elsewhere, as campus newspapers have reported less interest in protesting in support of terrorism.
On Thursday, Shipman declared that “Butler is Now Open!” in a triumphant statement which stressed the campus’ swift return to normalcy.
“Butler Library is now open to students, and the third floor reading room — with thanks to the efforts of a large and dedicated overnight facilities team — is restored and ready for use,” Shipman said. “Butler will, as is usual, remain open overnight this evening, and we will have normal operations across all other libraries today…Thank you again, for your resilience, and best of luck to all of our students as finals begin. I look forward to seeing members of our community on campus today.”
Columbia University is not the first school to quell an attempt to establish a pro-Hamas encampment in recent weeks. Swarthmore College and the University of Washington (UW) did so between Saturday and Monday, securing the arrest of over 30 students.
At UW, a pro-Hamas student group calling itself “Super UW” commandeered the school’s Interdisciplinary Engineering Building (IEB) and refused to leave unless school officials terminated partnerships with The Boeing Company, whose armaments manufacturing they identified as a resource aiding Israel’s war to eradicate Hamas from Gaza.
The illegal demonstration involved students erecting blockades near the building using “bike rack[s] and chairs,” burning trash — setting off sizable fires — that they then left unattended, and calling for violence against the police. Law enforcement officers eventually entered the building equipped with riot gear, including helmets and batons, and proceeded to arrest over two dozen protesters.
According to The Phoenix, Swarthmore College’s independent campus newspaper, the encampment there was stationed by Students for Justice in Palestine, a campus group which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations, last week in an attempt to “revive” similar demonstrations staged last year. Naming the encampment the “Hossam Shabat Liberated Zone,” SJP called on its supporters to “escalate” and establish a “site of colonial resistence [sic].”
Columbia University had ample motivation to thwart CUAD’s demonstration. In March, the Trump administration impounded $400 million in taxpayer funded research grants and contracts after determining the university failed to respond to last year’s pro-Hamas takeover of Hamilton Hall and was derelict in protecting Jewish students from antisemitism.
On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio vowed to take legal action against expatriate protesters who are visiting the US to attain an education.
“We are reviewing the via status of the trespassers and vandals who took over Columbia University’s library,” Rubio said, writing on the X social media platform. “Pro-Hamas thugs are no longer welcome in our great nation.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Dozens Arrested After Pro-Hamas Takeover of Columbia University Building first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Security Warning to Israelis Vacationing Abroad Ahead of holidays
A passenger arrives to a terminal at Ben Gurion international airport before Israel bans international flights, January 25, 2021. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – Ahead of the Jewish High Holidays, Israel’s National Security Council (NSC) published the latest threat assessment to Israelis abroad from terrorist groups to the public on Sunday, in order to increase the Israeli public’s awareness of the existing terrorist threats around the world and encourage individuals to take preventive action accordingly.
The NSC specified that the warning is an up-to-date reflection of the main trends in the activities of terrorist groups around the world and their impact on the level of threat posed to Israelis abroad during these times, but the travel warnings and restrictions themselves are not new.
“As the Gaza war continues and in parallel with the increasing threat of terrorism, the National Security Headquarters stated it has recognized a trend of worsening and increasing violent antisemitic incidents and escalating steps by anti-Israel groups, to the point of physically harming Israelis and Jews abroad. This is in light of, among other things, the anti-Israel narrative and the negative media campaign by pro-Palestinian elements — a trend that may encourage and motivate extremist elements to carry out terrorist activities against Israelis or Jews abroad,” the statement read.
“Therefore, the National Security Bureau is reinforcing its recommendation to the Israeli public to act with responsibility during this time when traveling abroad, to check the status of the National Security Bureau’s travel warnings (before purchasing tickets to the destination,) and to act in accordance with the travel warning recommendations and the level of risk in the country they are visiting,” it listed, adding that, as illustrated in the past year, these warnings are well-founded and reflect a tangible and valid threat potential.
The statement also emphasized the risk of sharing content on social media networks indicating current or past service in the Israeli security forces, as these posts increase the risk of being marked by various parties as a target. “Therefore, the National Security Council recommends that you do not upload to social networks, in any way, content that indicates service in the security forces, operational activity, or similar content, as well as real-time locations.”
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Israel Intensifies Gaza City Bombing as Rubio Arrives
Displaced Palestinians, fleeing northern Gaza due to an Israeli military operation, move southward after Israeli forces ordered residents of Gaza City to evacuate to the south, in the central Gaza Strip September 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Israeli forces destroyed at least 30 residential buildings in Gaza City and forced thousands of people from their homes, Palestinian officials said, as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived on Sunday to discuss the future of the conflict.
Israel has said it plans to seize the city, where about a million Palestinians have been sheltering, as part of its declared aim of eliminating the terrorist group Hamas, and has intensified attacks on what it has called Hamas’ last bastion.
The group’s political leadership, which has engaged in on-and-off negotiations on a possible ceasefire and hostage release deal, was targeted by Israel in an airstrike in Doha on Tuesday in an attack that drew widespread condemnation.
Qatar will host an emergency Arab-Islamic summit on Monday to discuss the next moves. Rubio said Washington wanted to talk about how to free the 48 hostages – of whom 20 are believed to be still alive – still held by Hamas in Gaza and rebuild the coastal strip.
“What’s happened, has happened,” he said. “We’re gonna meet with them (the Israeli leadership). We’re gonna talk about what the future holds,” Rubio said before heading to Israel where he will stay until Tuesday.
ABRAHAM ACCORDS AT RISK
He was expected to visit the Western Wall Jewish prayer site in Jerusalem on Sunday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and hold talks with him during the visit.
US officials described Tuesday’s strike on the territory of a close US ally as a unilateral escalation that did not serve American or Israeli interests. Rubio and US President Donald Trump both met Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani on Friday.
Netanyahu signed an agreement on Thursday to push ahead with a settlement expansion plan that would cut across West Bank land that the Palestinians seek for a state – a move the United Arab Emirates warned would undermine the US-brokered Abraham accords that normalized UAE relations with Israel.
Israel, which blocked all food from entering Gaza for 11 weeks earlier this year, has been allowing more aid into the enclave since late July to prevent further food shortages, though the United Nations says far more is needed.
It says it wants civilians to leave Gaza City before it sends more ground forces in. Tens of thousands of people are estimated to have left but hundreds of thousands remain in the area. Hamas has called on people not to leave.
Israeli army forces have been operating inside at least four eastern suburbs for weeks, turning most of at least three of them into wastelands. It is closing in on the center and the western areas of the territory, where most of the displaced people are taking shelter.
Many are reluctant to leave, saying there is not enough space or safety in the south, where Israel has told them to go to what it has designated as a humanitarian zone.
Some say they cannot afford to leave while others say they were hoping the Arab leaders meeting on Monday in Qatar would pressure Israel to scrap its planned offensive.
“The bombardment intensified everywhere and we took down the tents, more than twenty families, we do not know where to go,” said Musbah Al-Kafarna, displaced in Gaza City.
Israel said it had completed five waves of air strikes on Gaza City over the past week, targeting more than 500 sites, including Hamas reconnaissance and sniper sites, buildings containing tunnel openings and weapons depots.
Local officials, who do not distinguish between militant and civilian casualties, say at least 40 people were killed by Israeli fire across the enclave, a least 28 in Gaza City alone.
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Turkey Warns of Escalation as Israel Expands Strikes Beyond Gaza
Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a press conference with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis (not seen) at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey, May 13, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas
i24 News – An Israeli strike targeting Hamas officials in Qatar has sparked unease among several Middle Eastern countries that host leaders of the group, with Turkey among the most alarmed.
Officials in Ankara are increasingly worried about how far Israel might go in pursuing those it holds responsible for the October 7 attacks.
Israel’s prime minister effectively acknowledged that the Qatar operation failed to eliminate the Hamas leadership, while stressing the broader point the strike was meant to make: “They enjoy no immunity,” the government said.
On X, Prime Minister Netanyahu went further, writing that “the elimination of Hamas leaders would put an end to the war.”
A senior Turkish official, speaking on condition of anonymity, summed up Ankara’s reaction: “The attack in Qatar showed that the Israeli government is ready to do anything.”
Legally and diplomatically, Turkey occupies a delicate position. As a NATO member, any military operation or targeted killing on its soil could inflame tensions within the alliance and challenge mutual security commitments.
Analysts caution, however, that Israel could opt for covert measures, operations carried out without public acknowledgement, a prospect that has increased anxiety in governments across the region.
Israeli officials remain defiant. In an interview with Ynet, Minister Ze’ev Elkin said: “As long as we have not stopped them, we will pursue them everywhere in the world and settle our accounts with them.” The episode underscores growing fears that efforts to hunt Hamas figures beyond Gaza could widen regional friction and complicate diplomatic relationships.