NEW YORK: Police arrested dozens of Columbia University students who seized part of the school’s main library on Wednesday in one of the biggest pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus since last year’s wave of protests against the Zionist entity’s war in Gaza. At least 40 to 50 students, their hands cuffed with plastic zip-ties, were seen being loaded into New York Police Department vans and buses outside Butler Library as NYPD officers swept through the six-story building to round up other protesters who refused to leave.

Police arrived on campus in force at the request of Columbia officials who said the student demonstrators occupying the library’s second-floor main reading room were engaged in trespassing. Videos and photographs on social media showed protesters, most wearing masks, standing on tables, beating drums and unfurling banners saying “Strike For Gaza” and “Liberated Zone” beneath the chandeliers of the Lawrence A Wein Reading Room.

US President Donald Trump had lashed out at Columbia over pro-Palestinian protests on campus last year, saying they were “antisemitic” and showed a failure to protect Jewish students. Student protesters, including some Jewish organizers, counter that Trump and fellow conservative politicians who are strongly pro-Zionist are unfairly conflating pro-Palestinian protests and antisemitism. Columbia University said late on Wednesday that it had requested NYPD assistance “in securing the building”, and that two of its public safety officials were hurt in the standoff.

Protesters are escorted out of Butler Library after their arrest for occupying the library space.

An NYPD spokesperson confirmed “multiple arrests” of protesters who occupied the library but did not provide an exact number. “Everyone has the right to peacefully protest. But violence, vandalism or destruction of property are completely unacceptable,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said on social media. Before police arrived on the scene, university public safety personnel were seen locking the front doors to the library, preventing any more students from entering the building and sparking a brief episode of pushing and shoving outside.

One student appeared to have been injured in the fracas. Another individual was seen being carried out of the building on a stretcher. With further entry to the library barred, a growing crowd of demonstrators outside the building moved to the streets just beyond the campus gates. One student organization representing the protesters said on social media that school security had assaulted demonstrators and acknowledged that some activists had refused to show their IDs to officials.

Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a collection of student groups, recirculated long-standing demands on social media on Wednesday for the university to no longer invest its $14.8 billion endowment in weapons makers and other companies that support the Zionist entity’s military occupation of Palestinian territories. The protesters in the library also demanded the release of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist and Columbia graduate student who remains in a Louisiana immigrant jail after he was among the first to be arrested for possible deportation.

On Monday, pro-Palestinian protesters occupied a University of Washington building, demanding the school cut ties with Boeing over its contracts with the Zionist military. The university said 34 protesters were arrested, and charges of trespassing, property destruction and disorderly conduct would be referred to prosecutors. On Wednesday, it said the 21 students who were among those arrested have been suspended and banned from all of the school’s campuses.

Separately, the US Department of Justice charged a New York man with federal hate crimes in an indictment unsealed on Wednesday, accusing him of assaulting Jewish victims, including two Columbia University students, during three separate protests over the war in Gaza. The DOJ said that Tarek Bazrouk, 20, “deliberately targeted and assaulted Jewish victims at protests relating to the (Zionist)/Gaza war.” Bazrouk was arrested on Wednesday morning. — Reuters

Bazrouk’s case appears to be the first time the DOJ has brought federal hate crime charges related to the recent Columbia protests. The assaults allegedly all took place in Manhattan, at an April 2024 protest outside the New York Stock Exchange, a Dec 2024 protest outside Columbia University, and a January 2025 protest near Gramercy Park. The DOJ said that Bazrouk showed support for Hamas and called himself a “Jew hater” in text messages obtained from a search of his cell phone. Bazrouk is charged with three counts of committing hate crimes, each of which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, according to DOJ. — Reuters