After a day of protest and confusion on its Manhattan campus, Columbia University announced Monday evening that it had begun to suspend students who had not left a pro-Palestinian encampment by a 2 p.m. deadline.
The measure reflected the difficult balance Columbia administrators are seeking to strike as they try to avoid bringing the Police Department back to arrest those in the encampment, but also commit to the stance that the protest must end.
Students in the encampment, along with hundreds of supporters, had spent a tense afternoon rallying around the site in a show of force meant to deter the removal of its tents. But by 4 p.m., with no sign of police action, most of the protesters had begun to disperse, leaving only what appeared to be several dozen students and about 80 tents inside the encampment.
The police raided the protest camp before. Stop playing the zionist game of “before the moment i say, nothing relevant happened!”
The zionist game? That’s been the main playbook of all the Hamas supporters. “What do you mean we fired thousands of rockets aim at civilians before the IDF came in here? They’re just trying to oppress our rights to self expression”