Anti-Israel agitators at MIT take down barrier, retake campus encampment after police cleared it
Anti-Israel agitators at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology took back their campus encampment after it was initially cleared by police.
Administrators at MIT in Cambridge have been forced to deal with a new encampment on a site that was cleared but immediately retaken by demonstrators as they seek to continue their anti-Israel protest. The agitators have called for the school to divest from Israel and to stop investing in companies that assist the Jewish country.
Protesters at MIT were given a Monday afternoon deadline to voluntarily leave or face suspension. Many cleared out of the area, according to the school spokesperson. Dozens of protesters remained at the encampment through the night.
No arrests had been made as of Monday night, according to the MIT spokesperson. By Tuesday morning, demonstrators returned to the area.
Sam Ihns, a graduate student at MIT studying mechanical engineering, said the anti-Israeli protesters have been at the encampment for two weeks and that they were calling for an end to a mounting civilian death toll in Gaza.
"Specifically, our encampment is protesting MIT’s direct research ties to the Israeli Ministry of Defense," the student told the Associated Press.
According to the school spokesperson, demonstrators from outside the university joined the protesters and breached fencing on the campus.
The encampment at MIT joins demonstrations at elite colleges and universities across the country who want their respective schools to divest from companies that do business with Israel. Other protesters are simply calling for a ceasefire or to call attention to mounting civilian death tolls in Gaza.
These student protests have spread to Europe, including a demonstration at the University of Amsterdam, where police broke up an encampment and arrested about 125 people early Tuesday morning. Other demonstrations have been witnessed in Finland, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Spain, France and the United Kingdom.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas, the terror group that governs Gaza, after it carried out the deadliest terror attack in Israel’s history on Oct. 7.
While the two sides have spent months negotiating a ceasefire deal, Israel has rejected any proposal that would keep Hamas in power.
On Monday, Hamas accepted an Egyptian-Qatari cease-fire proposal but Israel said the deal did not meet its "core demands." That same day, the Jewish country said it would be pushing ahead with an assault on the southern Gaza town of Rafah.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.