Well over a dozen were arrested Thursday as Columbus became the latest site of student protests against Israel as hundreds of Ohio State University students, faculty and members of the Ohio Arab community rallied and set up tents outside the student union.
Just before 11 p.m., protestors were starting to leave the South Oval, after nearly six hours of chants, prayers and construction of tents. Police lined College Road South and 12th Avenue, as protest organizers encouraged people to go home. An hour before, dozens of police, including Ohio State Highway Patrol troopers surrounded what at one point had been hundreds of protestors, trying to break up the peaceful demonstration.
Columbus Dispatch reporters at the scene witnessed police arresting more than a dozen people.
Skyler Goody, 21, an OSU junior, said she and her roommate was nearly arrested as she helped form a circle around the encampments, but had moved out of the circle.
“People of Columbus, look at how your cops treat people,” Goody said. “I don’t know what the students were doing that warranted riot gear and pushing people over while they’re praying.”
A couple hours earlier, around 8 p.m., demonstrators stepped up chanting, but Ohio State police officers previously informed the crowd to disperse in 15 minutes, around 7:30 p.m., with another warning 10 minutes after that.
The protest began around 5 p.m., calling for Ohio State and others to divest investments from companies with links to Israel.
University spokesman Ben Johnson said state law prohibits state entities like Ohio State from divesting in Israel.
“Ohio Revised Code Section 9.76 prohibits the university from divesting any interests in Israel and prohibits adopting or adhering to a policy that requires divestment from Israel or with persons or entities associated with it,” Johnson said in a statement.
Tent encampments at university campuses have become a visible symbol of a student movement that has spread across the country at schools like Columbia University and the University of Texas Austin, USA TODAY reported.
Demonstrators across the nation are protesting the civilian toll in Gaza, where more than 34,000 people have died since the Israeli invasion that followed a Hamas-led attack that killed almost 1,200 people in Israel. Students oppose U.S. military aid to Israel and want their schools to stop investing endowment money in companies with Israeli links.
While not as large scale as other universities, police arrested three individuals Thursday morning on campus as part of a demonstration of around 25 people, The Dispatch previously reported. On Tuesday, two Ohio State students were arrested during another on-campus protest.
Protestors call on Ohio universities to divest from Israel
The event was organized by a collection of local Ohio university chapters of the Students for Justice in Palestine, organizers told The Dispatch. Omar Heif, 21, a University of Toledo student and event organizer, said the event was intended to send a message that university students across the state are in support of divestment.
“You can silence us, you can beat us, you can arrest us, but at the end of the day, we’re all connected,” Heif said.
Laila Shaikh, 19, event organizer and University of Cincinnati student, stressed that the event was meant to be a peaceful demonstration and they wanted to exercise their rights to free speech.
“We have members from the Jewish community members of the Christian community and members of the Muslim community coming together again to show our shared humanity — and I want to reiterate — we are not doing anything that’s violent,” Shaikh said.
Amy Shuster, an OSU philosophy professor and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace Central Ohio, said she and other members of the organization wanted to spread a message that “Jewish safety is absolutely bound up with the safety of the Palestinian people.”
“These things are not mutually exclusive, and they’re not in competition with each other,” Shuster said. “There’s nothing Jewish about genocide. There’s nothing Jewish about ethnic cleansing.”
Jewish OSU student calls demonstration ‘disgusting’
Adam Kling, 21, a Jewish OSU student studying biology, was there alongside over a dozen other Jewish students, some wrapping themselves in Israeli flags, observing the demonstration.
He said what he’s seen on college campuses across the country in recent days was “disgusting.”
“It’s terrifying,” Kling said. “I don’t feel unsafe — I do think that a large portion of the Jewish community feels unsafe, and I do think that’s what they’re trying to do.”
Kling said he feels like OSU and other college campuses are divided.
“I don’t want it to happen, but when you walk out of your house, you walk out of your class and there are people wishing for your friends to be dead,” Kling said. “For you to be kicked out of campus and for your home country to be destroyed. It’s really disheartening to hear from fellow students.”
Dispatch reporter Sheridan Hendrix contributed to this report.
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