Fights Break out Between Pro-Israel and Pro-Palestine Protesters as Star Spangled Banner Plays at UCLA

SCHAUB: “Well, Catalina, if tensions were high last night, when both sides were kind of going back and forth, from what I heard, about midnight till 4 o’clock in the morning, then right now this has evolved into utter chaos. I’m going to step out the shot, I’m going to kind of paint the picture of what today was supposed to look like and what it’s devolved into. So, we know that there has been a pro-Palestinian encampment on the campus of UCLA for about four days now. This is a group made up of students here last night, they kind of expanded their encampment, pushed out the barricades a little bit, ahead of what was supposed to be a pro-Israel counter protest put on by the American-Israeli federation. That was supposed to take place, a permanent event, from 11:00 A.M. until 1:00 P.M. today. Well, about 10:30 A.M. this morning, we had protesters walk through. These are pro-Palestinian protesters, walked through, kind of pushed their way into the pro-Israeli area here, pushing, shoving, fighting their way in, and now they have occupied the other half of that grass lawn that you see behind me. And both sides, you’re kind of just going back and forth right now, there’s a lot of shouting, there’s a lot of name-calling, there’s been some fighting. It is — we’ve definitely seen this environment kind of escalate as far as it can from what it was supposed to be, a rather peaceful protest. So, again, this is all going on here in the campus of UCLA and it’s just, right now, kind of a wait and see.”
VILLEGAS: “Taylor, we’re seeing a lot of folks. Do you have a sense of who is actually a student and who is not? I’m seeing a lot of older individuals.”
SCHAUB: “Yeah, you know, Catalina, that’s really interesting. So, on the pro-Israeli side, especially the organizers of this, they were not students at all. They were from different groups, supporters, some volunteers that came out here. They were setting up early this morning, they had trucks out. You probably saw the stage behind me. There was some real support behind this from community members, not necessarily students. And, of course, the encampment has been mostly students, the pro-Palestine encampment that’s been here for four days. You know, the pro-Palestine group that marched their over here, from what I told, those are not students. Those are different groups, different community members, activists, people that came out here to March, and those are the ones that came over to this side and kind of pushed their way through, and that’s who’s occupying this area right now, along with the pro-Israeli protesters.”
VILLEGAS: “Taylor Schaub from UCLA, we’ll be checking in with you all day. Long on this developing situation. Thank you so much.”