Tensions escalate as protests at UW and in Bellevue continue

Tensions are continuing to escalate as the war between Israel and Hamas in the middle east rages on. The tensions are being felt across the United States and in Western Washington.

On Tuesday around 5 p.m. Sound Transit shut down the UW Light Rail Station due to a pro-Palestinian protest there. The station was reopened just before 7 p.m. Just blocks away, on the UW campus a protest encampment has been in place since April 29.

Over the weekend a normally peaceful protest in Bellevue turned violent. Hanah Swissa says she was shoved to the ground by a man holding an Israeli flag. Swissa said the man and others were heckling another person and she stepped in to try to stop it. She said she stood in front of the man and that’s when things escalated.

“I was saying stop pushing me stop pushing me and he kept pushing forward into me with his flag and pushing into my poster,” she said. Video captured the whole encounter; the man shoves Swissa to the ground and then walks over her.

“More than anything I was shocked, in disbelief,” she said. Swissa said her friend called police for help but when they got there, they didn’t arrest the man.

“I asked why he wasn’t being detained after they had seen the video, and they have the video I asked why isn’t he being detained if I’m pressing charges if I am a victim of a violent crime why is he not being detained?” she said.

KIRO 7 reached out to Bellevue PD about the incident and were told the 61-year-old man in the video was given a citation for assault in the fourth degree. BPD said it’s up to officers’ discretion if they choose to make an arrest and, in this case, the officer chose to give a citation.

Tuesday morning at the University of Washington, the W, was found covered in red paint with the words, “UW funded genocide,” underneath. Crews cleaned up the vandalism, but you can still see visible paint stains. Swissa is part of the ongoing protest on UW’s campus.

“I think that doing things out of the ordinary such as putting paint somewhere or like graffiti in any sense. right? That is something that brings attention to what is going on,” she said.

All of these things are signs that tensions are reaching a boiling point. Miri Cypers from the Anti-Defamation League said many Jewish students are reporting they don’t feel safe on campus.

“There was a swastika outside of a Jewish students dorm, we saw on campus that a big hub was defaced with anti-Israel and antisemitic vandalism in a very public place for students and we’ve heard in the last couple of days an Israeli flag was ripped up or maybe even burned,” Cypers said. “I think there’s just a real sense that they’re not being protected.”

Both women told KIRO 7 they support free speech and peaceful protest.

“That needs to be balanced with a sense of safety for all people,” Cypers said. In these instances, the lines have clearly been crossed.

“We are against antisemitism and we absolutely stand against that any type of hate crime or hate speech in that sense is not tolerated and not accepted,” Swissa said.

According to CAIR Washington, since October of 2023, there were 35 legal intakes regarding discrimination or hate against Muslims, which is an average of about 12 per month.

CAIR said legal intakes are not an accurate representation of how many incidents occurred because incidents are consistently underreported.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, since October 7 in Washington, they have logged 89 anti-Semitic incidences on college campuses, of which 76 have been related to Israel.

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