The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) complained Wednesday evening after the University of Southern California (USC) cleared an encampment that anti-Israel protesters had set up at the private Los Angeles campus.
As the Daily Trojan reported, Los Angeles Police Department officers moved in on Wednesday after several dozen protesters set up an unauthorized encampment. They used sponge batons and zip ties to make dozens of arrests.
CAIR issued a statement in which it condemned USC’s “violent crackdown and alleged use of excessive force.”
CAIR-LA Legal Director Amr Shabaik said:
It is deeply concerning that USC’s response to students demonstrating peacefully in solidarity with Palestine is forcible suppression of free speech and assembly. This mirrors a nationwide trend of colleges and universities attempting to censor pro-Palestine advocacy on campuses. All students should feel safe while expressing their views and engaging in their right to assemble peacefully. We demand USC immediately cease any further acts of repression against the protesters and take action to respect and protect the speech of its students.
Free speech rights are restricted on private property, and “time, place, and manner” restrictions apply even on public property, which can include preventing overnight encampment.
Protesters at USC also used anti-police rhetoric, with one (seen in the photo below) holding a hat that read “ACAB” (All Cops Are Bastards), a familiar slogan from the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – APRIL 24: Pro-Palestine demonstrators yell towards USC public safety officers after officers attempted to take down an encampment in support of Gaza at the University of Southern California on April 24, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. Pro-Palestinian encampments have sprung up at college campuses around the country recently. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
CAIR’s radicalism is a matter of record. CAIR director Nihad Awad declared that he was “happy” with the Hamas terror attack against Israel on October 7.
CAIR-LA has a particular history of supporting the radical Islamic cause, helping the family of the terrorists who murdered over a dozen people in San Bernardino in 2015, and blaming U.S. foreign policy for inspiring the attack.
As Breitbart news has noted:
In 2007-8, CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the terror financing trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. That case, in turn, led the FBI to discontinue its work with the organization. In 2009, a federal judge ruled that the government “produced ample evidence to establish” the ties of CAIR with Hamas, the Palestinian terror organization. The United Arab Emirates labeled CAIR a terrorist organization in 2014 (a decision that the Obama administration opposed).
The USC encampment was one of many that had erupted across the nation in recent days, often spouting extremist rhetoric calling for the destruction of Israel. Jewish students and faculty have been threatened by the protests.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.