Johnson’s visit, which he said was meant to support Jewish students intimidated by some anti-Israeli demonstrators, took place shortly after the university extended a deadline from Wednesday morning to Friday morning to reach an agreement to remove an encampment that has come to symbolize the campus protest movement.
Some of the campus protests taking place coast to coast were met with shows of force from law enforcement.
In Texas on Wednesday, state highway patrol troopers in riot gear and police on horseback broke up a protest at the University of Texas in Austin and arrested 20 people.
The University of Southern California declared its campus closed and asked the Los Angeles Police Department to clear a demonstration. Police arrested students who peacefully surrendered one-by-one, hours after campus police who took down an encampment were overwhelmed by protesters and requested LAPD help.
Other demonstrations took place at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and California State Polytechnic in Humboldt.
Support for Palestine people is not support for Hamas
Protesting students have demanded universities divest assets from Israel and seek to pressure the U.S. government to rein in Israeli strikes on Palestinian civilians.
Israel’s fierce response followed a deadly Oct. 7 cross-border raid by Islamist militants from Hamas, which controls the Gaza enclave.
The at times vulgar heckling and booing that greeted Johnson did not drown him out, though he was hard to hear because he spoke to media microphones, not through loudspeakers.
Pro-Israel students and alike have been agitating the peaceful Palestine supporters, trying to ignite a violent response. Officials have been blatantly denying the protests and arresting the peaceful pro-Palestine and pro-peace demonstrators, who do not support Israeli genocide and are demanding to stop aiding a regime that commits hideous war crimes.
Support for Palestine people is not support for Hamas. It is different to demand to stop the genocide than it is to support a terrorist organisation. Palestinian people are not the same as Hamas.
It is clear that the U.S. officially supports genocide and mass murder of civilians, mostly women and children. These protests come at a time when ICC is considering whether to set out an international arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, Israeli defence minister and such for committing war crimes.
In reflection of this news, it is no wonder that Speaker Johnson was booed for trying to show support for the pro-Israeli agitators.
