UCLA police make first arrest in mob attack on pro-Palestinian
encampment
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[May 25, 2024]
By Steve Gorman and Andrew Hay
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -Three weeks after a mob attacked pro-Palestinian
activists encamped at the University of California, Los Angeles, police
have made their first arrest in the violence, a man they say was seen in
video footage beating victims with a wooden pole.
The suspect, identified as Edan On, 18, was taken into custody on
Thursday in the city of Beverly Hills and booked on suspicion of assault
with a deadly weapon, the UCLA Police Department said in a statement on
Friday.
The man, who police said had no affiliation with UCLA, was reported by
local media to be a Beverly Hills High School student.
His arrest was the first by police in their investigation of violence
that flared on campus between pro-Palestinian activists occupying a tent
camp to protest Israel's war in Gaza, and a group who attacked them late
on the night of April 30.
The masked assailants, described by university officials and police as
"instigators," stormed the protest site with clubs and poles, sparking a
pitched skirmish in which both sides traded blows and doused each other
with pepper spray. The encampment occupants said fireworks were also
hurled at them.
The confrontation dragged on for at least three hours into the early
morning of May 1 before order was restored. Police forcibly dismantled
the encampment the next night, arresting 210 people.
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The two days of disturbances thrust UCLA to the center of mounting
tensions on dozens of U.S. college campuses between pro-Palestinian and
pro-Israel activists, with the two sides trading accusations of
antisemitism and Islamophobia.
The police response to the UCLA unrest was widely criticized as slow and
feeble when the pro-Palestinian encampment was attacked and denounced by
some as comparatively heavy-handed when the tents were torn down 24
hours later.
Earlier this week, UCLA's police chief, John Thomas, was removed from
his post pending an outside review of campus security and public safety
protocols, university officials said.
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![](../images/052524PIX/news_j20.jpg)
Police officers stand guard, on the day pro-Palestinian activists'
set up an encampment, at the University of California, Los Angeles
(UCLA), amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestinian
Islamist group Hamas, in Los Angeles, California, U.S., May 23,
2024. REUTERS/Carlin Stiehl/ File Photo
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No group took responsibility for the April 30 attack. But the UCLA
chapter of the Jewish campus organization Hillel said in a statement
that the mob was comprised of "fringe members of the off-campus
Jewish community."
UCLA Chancellor Gene Block, testifying Thursday before a U.S.
congressional hearing into the protests, said his school should have
been prepared to immediately remove the protest encampment "if and
when the safety of our community was put at risk."
The violence took place two days after a pro-Israel group, the
Israeli American Council, held a rally next to the UCLA encampment,
with the council's leader, Elan Carr, urging his supporters to “take
back our campuses" from pro-Palestinian protesters. Scuffles broke
out between the two sides.
“It really significantly escalated tensions on the campus and around
the encampment,” said Dov Waxman, professor of Israeli Studies at
UCLA, who tried to keep the opposing sides separate on April 28.
In an interview, Carr denied trying to incite violence at UCLA but
defended his denunciations of the pro-Palestinian protesters for
what he said was their support of Hamas.
“These campus groups have made themselves aiders and abettors of
some of the worst human rights violators in the world,” said Carr, a
former U.S. Army officer who was former President Donald Trump’s
special envoy to combat antisemitism.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles and Andrew Hay in Taos,
New Mexico; Editing by Chris Reese and Deepa Babington)
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