More than 30 students and two professors arrested for pro-Palestine protest on the campus of Indiana University

Administration suddenly announces new policy on tents in Dunn Meadow and has Indiana State Police clear encampment just hours after it was set up

Indiana State Police arrested more than 30 students and two professors who were protesting the genocide in Gaza on the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington on Thursday afternoon.

It’s the first time any local residents can remember protesters being confronted by a police line and arrested in Dunn Meadow — the wide-open green lawn in the northwest corner of the IU campus where political demonstrations have taken place for decades, and where tent encampments have sometimes remained for months.

This photo shows the line of State Police moving on the protesters who had their arms linked, protecting their encampment in the meadow:

Here is video of the protesters advancing on police and chanting: “Please Go Home!” It’s unclear if this was before or after the police advanced on them and took their tents:

https://x.com/mapofthekoo7/status/1783602306908352832

Here’s video of police pushing protesters, who appear to be guarding the tent encampment that police want to dismantle:

https://x.com/andrew_mmiller/status/1783588325397336070

Here’s a video of some of the arrests:

https://x.com/Sprinterfactory/status/1783615044367860016

Four hours after the arrests, men in green fatigues were still manning a large rifle with scope on a tripod on the roof of the Indiana Memorial Union, with the rifle pointed down at the protesters, who by that time were sitting in a large circle in the grass, facing inward, singing softly.

A video of the sniper from behind can be seen by clicking the image below:

https://x.com/togdali/status/1783654267041005923

Down on the ground, across the street from the protesters, Pro-Israel protesters wrapped in blue and white Israel flags were dancing and singing to loud Israeli music in front of the Chabad house.

Several times, they turned it up so that it was loud enough to drown out the pro-Palestinian protesters who were gathered in a large circle, listening to a speaker who was in the middle.

Few people wanted to speak on the record, but one woman who did told me she is an IU professor and is Jewish, but says she is also pro-Palestinian.

When asked what was driving her to stay in the meadow, on the Pro-Palestine side, rather than join the side of the Chabad students wrapped in the Israeli flags, she paused.

“Jews were victims of genocide,” she said, slowly and purposefully, “How can they be the perpetrators now? It destroys me. How can it be that a people that has experienced that kind of devastation are willing to practice it on another group of people?”

The arrest of the protesters and two professors is the first mass arrest on the IU campus that anyone can remember, and the first time a tent encampment has been forcibly cleared by police.

In this case, it was cleared on the very same day it was set up, after the IU Administration posted signs in Dunn Meadow on Thursday morning announcing a new policy: no overnight encampments, and permission needed for all structures in the meadow.

Neither Indiana University nor the IU Mauer School of Law, which is just around the corner from Dunn Meadow, had posted a statement to X as of late Thursday night.

But longtime IU Law professor Steve Sanders did post to X, saying the university’s policy on tents was just changed on Wednesday by “an anonymous group of functionaries without any clear authority in anticipation of today’s Gaza protest, allowing tents to be torn down immediately.”

“That makes it no longer viewpoint neutral and raises serious First Amendment problems,” he wrote.

Since 1969, IU’s policy has said that Dunn Meadow may be used for protests, but that no “structures” can remain overnight.

Following an attack by Hamas on a music festival in Israel on Oct. 7 in which dozens of people were taken hostage and many killed, Israel has launched a prolonged attack on the Gaza strip, killing more than 30,000 people, most of them women and children, with U.S.-made bombs. Every hospital in Gaza has now been bombed, and several Christian churches in addition to mosques and entire residential neighborhoods. The majority of the population of Gaza that remains is now huddled in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, which Israel is saying it will soon invade.

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For a detailed report of the protest and the arrests in the student newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student, click here: https://www.idsnews.com/article/2024/04/indiana-university-33-pro-palestinian-protesters-arrested-at-dunn-meadow-protest-encampment

For a different perspective on the pro-Palestine protests happening nationwide than you’ll find almost anywhere else, see this piece by Philip Giraldi, a former CIA agent and now the executive director of the Council for the National Interest:

Students Are Taking the Lead in Denouncing Gaza Atrocities https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/students-are-taking-the-lead-in-denouncing-gaza-atrocities/

Here’s a piece by Ron Unz that I would highly recommend. While Unz’s information may seem startling to a reader who is accustomed to more mainstream views, I have found him to be careful writer with a deep respect for the truth:

Israeli Assassinations and Public Scrutiny https://www.unz.com/runz/israeli-assassinations-and-public-scrutiny/