A Riot Broke Out at UCLA Last Night

AP Photo/Brian Melley

There was a really different sort of escalation at UCLA last night. Instead of police vs. protesters, this was two angry groups skirmishing with one another on the campus for several hours before police finally arrived. There's a backstory here which explains why things escalated. It started with word circulating on campus that members of the pro-Palestinian protest group had taken a Jewish student hostage. This video reportedly shows the moment a Jewish student tried to escape the camp and was prevented from leaving.

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Also yesterday a student who goes by ThatKoreanJew on Instagram posted video which they claimed showed a Jewish girl being injured as members of the pro-Palestinian camp tried to step on her Israeli flag.


To be clear, I can't verify what happened here but the story that was spread was that the girl was taken to the ER and had a concussion.

Finally, yesterday UCLA declared the pro-Palestinian camp unlawful. In response the group announced "self-defense training," apparently planning on fighting with police.

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There was even video showing them doing some kind of fight training yesterday.

So the bottom line is that you had a pro-Palestinian group that seemed pretty aggressive and belligerent and then last night you had a growing group of counter-protesters who showed up at the UCLA campus last night, possibly because they'd heard the stories about the young woman sent to the ER or the young man allegedly held hostage. The result was two groups that wanted to fight.

By 11:30 the barriers between the two groups had been torn down. Members of both opposing groups started throwing things and squaring off.

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By midnight there were scuffles and people were getting hurt but security had completely backed off.

Reporter Anthony Cabassa described it as total anachy.

Sergio Olmos was also there recording the chaos.

The brawl just kept going on, with no response from police.

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Police did eventually arrive but even then they just sat back and watched for a while. Mayor Bass had a late night tweet saying police had arrived.

But the brawl had been going for more than 2 hours at this point and it kept going as police watched.

Eventually, about an hour after police arrived at the scene, they moved in to separate the combatants.

Naturally, the pro-Palestinian camp began shouting slogans at the police.

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And that was it for the night. There was no more brawling but also no arrests. Police just separated the groups and left it at that.

Ironically, the protesters who were training to fight off the police issued a message last night blaming the school for not sending in the police sooner to protect them.

In another statement released at 3:30 a.m., protesters inside the encampment said the university has not done enough to protect students, and they repeated earlier calls for the university to meet their demands.

“The life-threatening assault we face tonight is nothing less than a horrifying, despicable act of terror,” they said in the statement. “Law enforcement simply stood at the edge of the lawn and refused to budge as we screamed for their help.”

This is always how it goes. Leftists declare a "Liberated Zone" where police are not welcome, and then scream about the lack of security when violence breaks out.

Fox News interviewed a Jewish student about the riots last night. He said the people who showed up were local Jews who were sick of the way fellow Jews were being treated by the pro-Palestinian protesters.

"The reason why this is happening is because Jews in L.A. have had enough. They've seen how these pro-Hamas protesters are treating Jewish students on campus, and they said, 'Fine, if the UCLA administration is not going to do anything, if LAPD is not going to do anything, we're going to do something about it,'" Eli Tsives said while appearing on "Fox & Friends."...

"The average age of those people was around, 26 [through] 29. They were all a lot older and, they were just, L.A. residents, Jewish L.A. residents that have noticed how these pro-Hamas protesters are treating Jewish students at UCLA, and they said, ‘Enough is enough.’"

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Hopefully, UCLA will finally allow the LAPD to shut the camp down. What more are they waiting for?

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