Police stormed Yale University Plaza, where hundreds of defiant pro-Palestinian students have been camping for the past few nights.
Connecticut police arrived at Beinecke Plaza on Monday morning to try to remove students from their tents after the protest turned into violence over the weekend.
It comes as a Jewish Yale student accused a pro-Gaza protester who allegedly stabbed her in the eye with a Palestinian flag of wearing a keffiyeh to hide his identity.
Sahar Tartak, a sophomore and editor of the Yale Free Press, said the attacker hid his face with the monochrome scarf, a symbol of Palestinian patriotism.
“I had anonymity thanks to the keffiyeh, and the organizers encourage anonymity at these events because it creates immunity so that students can physically attack people like me and then get away with it,” he said. Fox News.
Police stormed Yale University Plaza, where hundreds of defiant pro-Palestinian students have been camping out for the past few nights.
Sahar Tartak, a sophomore and editor-in-chief of the Yale Free Press, recalled the disturbing events leading up to the alleged assault in Beinecke Plaza on campus Saturday night.
Tartak said around 500 students were at the rally in what they called “Gaza Square” on Saturday night, calling for the “complete liberation” of Palestine.
Around 100 remained in tents overnight and around 30 have so far been detained by police.
Officers were seen walking between tents Monday morning warning students they had “a few minutes to clear the area” or face arrest.
But officials were greeted with chants of “we will not be moved” as students formed a circle and appeared to block surrounding roads.
Footage from the scene showed about 30 protesters being taken away in a police van as the remaining protesters cheered and applauded. The police vehicle bounced as it moved away from the force of the students jumping inside.
Tartak said she was attacked on Saturday night when students made a “human blockade” around her while chanting “anti-Jewish” slogans as she entered their rally.
The Ivy League student, who wears conservative clothing and a Star of David necklace, said she entered the fight with another “visibly Jewish” student in Hasidic clothing, making them targets.
“When they saw me, they realized I was videotaping and that their co-ideologists were blocking me,” Tartak told Fox News.
Tartak provided a photograph of his accused assailant and added that his keffiyeh – a monochrome patterned scarf that is a symbol of Palestinian identity – had concealed his identity.
Sahar Tartak, a sophomore at Yale University, accused another student of poking her in the eye with a Palestinian flag during protests Saturday night.
The sophomore claimed in subsequent posts that other students formed a “human blockade” around her.
‘So, in addition to the really aggressive human blocking, they also started harassing, taunting and taunting me. They waved their hands and middle fingers at my camera and my face and yelled at me.
‘And finally one of the students whose face was covered with a keffiyeh took a Palestinian flag he was holding and waved it in my face and then hit me in the left eye.
‘I immediately screamed ‘he stabbed me in the eye’ and ran after him. And then this human blockade kept blocking me from letting me find the man who attacked me because they wanted to protect him.
“I had anonymity thanks to the keffiyeh, and the organizers encourage anonymity at these events because it creates immunity so that students can physically attack people like me and then get away with it.”
Tartak said protest organizers called an ambulance after she explained what had happened, and a paramedic at the scene advised her to go to the hospital. He said he didn’t get home until 2:30 in the morning.
He said around 500 students participated in the protest and around 100 of them camped overnight in the university’s main square.
She alleged that she was singled out for wearing clothing associated with the Hasidic Jewish sect.
Tartak further claimed that protesters stood in front of her to prevent her from confronting her attacker.
Tartak also detailed the alleged attack on X, formerly Twitter, along with a Photograph of the alleged aggressor with the keffiyeh.
The second-year student previously told the New York Post that she “tried to report the assault to campus police, but they told her there was nothing they could do.” She was discharged from the hospital without reporting the incident to police.
A series of social media posts documented Tartak’s clashes with pro-Palestinian protesters. He included several videos of fellow students linking arms and walking in a circle around him, singing.
Tartak described them as a “human blockade” and accused them of pinning her against a wall.
“One of many videos of a human blockade that didn’t allow me to move during last night’s violent protest,” he captioned one clip.
‘This is me, standing between the protesters and the wall. Organizers told protesters to move closer to the wall. “Come closer,” they beckoned, beckoning the crowd in my direction.
In the video, another student urges protesters to come in and tells Tartak that they are trying to create a path for her to leave.
However, she accuses the organizers of ordering the other students to “beat her.”
Tartak further claimed that protesters blocked her to prevent her from “running after my attacker.”
“Instead of helping me find it quickly, an organizer told me, ‘I want you to think about what you really want to get out of this,'” he wrote.
Students have been protesting in Yale’s Beinecke Plaza since Friday. The protests occurred in response to an attempt to remove an encampment from the grounds of Columbia University.
In another video, the sophomore filmed her confrontation with said organizer.
“I would like to remove the person who hit me in the eye with the flag from the demonstration,” she says frantically while filming the other student, who is wearing a red keffiyeh around her neck.
“We all want this demonstration to be peaceful and we don’t want anyone to get hurt,” the student responds. “I just need to ask you a few more questions.”
Tartak then accuses the woman of “stagnating,” stating that she feels “uncomfortable.”
Yale students have been setting up tents at Beinecke Plaza since Friday. The protests came in direct response to attempts to remove a similar encampment at Columbia University.
No arrests have been made so far, unlike in Columbia, where a police spokesperson confirmed that more than 100 protesters had been detained.
Most of those detained were charged with resisting arrest and obstructing government administration.
The Yale student body has been protesting for months to pressure the university to divest its donation from weapons manufacturers amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas.
These efforts have only intensified in recent weeks amid the war in Gaza that has left more than 30,000 Palestinian civilians dead.
The Yale student body has been protesting for months to pressure the university to divest its endowment of arms manufacturers in the Middle East.
Talking with him Jerusalem PostTartak said he urged police to dismantle the camp, but was told they needed permission to do so.
‘These students are violating every policy in the books; “They should have disbanded immediately,” he told the publication.
“These students have taken over the campus and it is an intimidation tactic.”
On Sunday, White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates issued a statement.
“While every American has the right to peaceful protection, calls for violence and physical intimidation against Jewish students and the Jewish community are blatantly anti-Semitic, unconscionable, and dangerous; they have absolutely no place on any college campus or anywhere of the United States of America,” he said.
‘And echoing the rhetoric of terrorist organizations, especially in the wake of the worst massacre committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, is despicable. “We condemn these statements in the strongest terms.”
DailyMail.com has contacted Connecticut State Police and New Haven Police for comment.