This protest that became the start of an encampment was on Nakba Day, the day set aside in Palestine to remember the loss of their land and destruction of their homes to make way for Israel. “Nakba” means “Catastrophe” and the Nakba can be thought of as 1492 in 1948.

Knowing their in-house police department would be overmatched by such a large crowd as Nakba day was sure to summon forth, they summoned the IOF-trained brutes of the Tampa Police Department to arrest anyone seen trying to set up a tent, maybe anyone in possession of a tent. Arrests began before any tents could be set up.

Note that to arrest someone for setting up a tent prior to any tent being set up and staked is probably unlawful.

There were two arrests relatively quickly, covered on this video. There was a later report of 9 violent arrests, unknown if the other 7 were again in response to tents or came from a later attempt to disperse the rest of the encampment. There were a number of pro-IOF/pro-Israel counterprotesters, one in an IOF T-shirt got quite close to the protest while fiddling with his phone, police of course didn’t bother any of them no matter what their presence had the potential to incite.

The encampment did continue without tents, the university and the cops told student protesters they were going to be “roughed up” if they stayed on past 5PM. Unknown to this author if the other violent arrests were after 5PM or a continuation of the tent arrests. Shortly after the first two, someone spotted police vans of the type used for mass arrests near the university, but this was either a bluff or just transportation for the huge number of cops that surrounded the encampment later. or if the encampment survived a second attack.

Maybe the USF football team should change their name from “Bulls” to something else? Comparing these cops to bulls is insulting to actual bulls.