Anti-Israel Yale protesters joining Columbia students in 'tear down our society' Ivy League movement: Law prof

Anti-Israel activists at Yale University in Connecticut set up a "liberation zone" in solidarity with Columbia University in New York City on Saturday.

This comes after protesters at Columbia University were heard shouting pro-Hamas slogans, resulting in more than a hundred arrests as they set up an encampment on campus Thursday that continued into Friday.

Protesters at Yale were also seen setting up an encampment, laying down a banner that read, "Liberated Zone."

The video starts out with students holding the banner and placing it on the ground in front of several students. Surrounding the students are other banners that read "Stop Investing in Genocide," "Jews for Ceasefire Now," "Yale is Complicit," and "Stop the Genocide."

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Yale protesters set up a liberation zone encampment to show solidarity with Columbia University (FNTV)

The video also shows a woman and man banging on drums before the man stands up and begins playing a horn.

Another shot captured protesters marching across campus while holding signs and chanting their demands.

"Up, up with liberation. Down, down with occupation," they chanted. 

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Protesters  at Yale marched across campus, chanting, "Free, Free, Free Palestine," and other chants. (FNTV)

"Down, down with genocide. Free, free, free Palestine," the protesters continued, as they held signs reading "shame "and "Free Palestine."

Tents were put up in a communal area, and beyond the tents people could hear chants.

Then, a Jewish man was seen speaking with a man wearing a shirt that read, "F- -k Hamas."

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A man trying to record the protest at Yale University on April 20, 2024, was hounded by activists who used umbrellas and flags to prevent him from seeing the activity. (FNTV)

The man wearing the shirt attempted to record the protest while walking among the protesters, but they began to hound him by blocking his view and shoving flags and umbrellas in his face.

Cornell Law Professor William Jacobson, who has been studying the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for about 15 years, told Fox News Digital the protests at Ivy League universities like Columbia and Yale are reminiscent of the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011. During the movement, protesters raised issues with economic inequality, corporate greed and how money influenced politics, while setting up an encampment in Zuccotti Park in the financial district in New York City.

"It’s kind of a different topic here, but it’s really the same topic. I mean, it’s an anti-capitalist movement. It’s about the movement. It’s a ‘tear down our society’ movement," Jacobson said. "I think it’s essentially a similar phenomenon which has been directed toward Israel as the object of their hate, instead of Wall Street or instead of something else."

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Protesters at Yale University set up an encampment on campus on April 20, 2024. (FNTV)

While protesters at Yale established a "Liberated Zone" it really did not mean they were liberated from anything because they still rely on the system to provide water, food and other things, he said.

Jacobson also said he thinks the protests are the result of 20 plus years of "gross dehumanization" of Israeli Jews on campuses, through the BDS movement as well as through radical faculty members found on most campuses across the U.S., particularly at Columbia.

While covering the BDS movement, Jacobson found the boycott was just a tactic. He said he never understood how it was just a tactic at first, but then it clicked.

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Yale protesters setup an encampment to boycott the occupation of Gaza by Israel. (FNTV)

"They don't really care if you boycott Chablis in the dining hall. They don't really care about those things," Jacobson said. "What they care about is having the entire campus spend 3 or 4 months debating how evil Israel is, and if they lose the vote, they declare victory anyway."

Ultimately, he said the anti-capitalist movement focuses on Israel, which results in the dehumanization of Jews because Jews support Israel.

With that, though, there are other factors feeding into the protests, according to the Cornell law professor.

There could be a psychological aspect affecting students because they are told they have to go deeply into debt to attend elite colleges, only to find out their dreams were crushed by a system that lured them into taking on enormous debt.

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Pro-Palestine protesters demonstrate along NYPD police lines outside of Columbia University’s campus in New York City on Thursday, April 18, 2024. Multiple students were arrested as officers cleared an encampment on the campus’ lawn. (Peter Gerber for Fox News Digital)

Then there are those who did not take on debt but cannot find a solid career path.

"I think there’s a bunch of different things going on, and Israel and Jews are the convenient scapegoat, as historically has been the case," Jacobson said.

Nearly 500 students were seen protesting at Columbia University on Saturday night, just two days after tensions reached a breaking point when the New York City Police Department arrested 108 people who refused to leave an encampment created on the main lawn.

The daughter of U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., Isra Hirsi, was also arrested during the protest on Thursday. According to sources, Hirsi was taken into custody, put into flex cuffs or zip ties and will face trespassing charges. 

Earlier that day, Hirsi said she was suspended from Barnard College, located near Columbia, for "standing in solidarity with Palestinians facing a genocide."

The Columbia Spectator, a student newspaper, reported, "While suspended Columbia students may remain in their individual rooms in their residence halls, suspended Barnard students have been evicted from their college housing."

Social media posts also show several New York City council members arriving to check out the ongoing protest.

While protests continue at Columbia, Jacobson said a BDS referendum was sent to the Cornell University student body for a vote, though the results were not immediately known to the faculty.

Still, movements like those seen at Columbia, Yale and several other campuses across the U.S. are, as Jacobson said, "dead end movements."

"I don’t think there’s really a future for them because they’re built around tearing things down," he said. "They have no positive agenda. Their agenda is to tear things down, and I think what people need to understand is that these protesters, who ostensibly are anti-Israel, are also anti-American.

"It’s almost a complete overlap between the anti-Israel, anti-American and anti-capitalist protesters," he added. "That’s what this movement is about. It’s not just about the war in Gaza."

Fox News Digital's Brie Stimson, Louis Casiano, Alexis McAdams and CB Cotton contributed to this report.

Greg Wehner is a breaking news reporter for Fox News Digital.

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