rewrite this content and keep HTML tags
8/5/2025–|Last update: 05:34 (Mecca time)
New York State Police stormed the headquarters of Colombia University on Wednesday evening to resolve a supportive sit -in for Palestine, and arrested dozens of protesters.
Reuters news agency said that dozens of protesters stood on the tables, carried the drums and raised support for the Palestinians in the reading hall of the main library at Columbia University.
The agency described the demonstration as one of the largest on the campus since the outbreak of the student protest movement last year against the war launched by Israel on the Palestinian Gaza Strip.
Reuters confirmed that a subordinate witness to the campus security personnel took people out of a gate and handed them over to police officers abroad.
For its part, the German News Agency quoted the American Associated Press as saying that videos showed a long class of New York police officers entering the library, hours after dozens of demonstrators exceeded university security and their rush into the building to demonstrate.
Other clips showed the security personnel preventing a second group of demonstrators from entering the library, while the two sides were paying each other.
Justice the police call
The university’s interim president, Claire Shibman, said in a statement that the demonstrators who were fortified inside the library’s reading hall had repeatedly asked them to highlight their identities and leave the place, but they refused. She added that the university asked the New York Police to intervene “to help secure the building and ensure the safety of the university community.”
“The summoning of the New York Police was very necessary to ensure the safety of our society,” NBC quoted the list of President of Colombia University as saying.
For his part, the mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, a democrat, said that the police intervened “to take out people who infringe on the property of others,” he said.
On the other hand, a student organization representing the demonstrators on social media said that the university’s security assaulted the demonstrators and that the activists refused to show identity cards to officials carrying out “military arrest.”
US President Donald Trump described last year’s protests as anti -Semitic, saying that she had failed to protect Jewish students.
The Board of Trustees of the University of Colombia is negotiating with the US administration after it canceled in March hundreds of millions of dollars in the university for the purposes of scientific research.
The university says that it works to address anti -Semitism and other forms of prejudice on its university campus, and also rejects accusations from civil rights groups that it allows the government to reduce the protection of freedom of expression in academic circles.
Rubio’s comments
In a sharp reaction by the US administration, Foreign Minister Marco Rubio said that the ministry has retracted the visas of students who participated on Wednesday in student demonstrations at Columbia University.
Rubio described the demonstrators as the perpetrators and the saboteurs, adding that those who described them as “Hamas thugs” are no longer welcome in our great homeland, he said.
