American billionaires press New York City mayor to use police on student protests: Report

By Serdar Dincel

ISTANBUL (AA) - A group of business titans and billionaires in the US privately pressured New York City Mayor Eric Adams last month to dispatch police to disperse pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University.

Business executives including Kind snack company founder Daniel Lubetzky, hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, real estate investor Joseph Sitt and billionaire Len Blavatnik on April 26 held a Zoom video call with Adams, about a week after the mayor first dispatched the New York police to Columbia’s campus, The Washington Post reported on Friday, citing a WhatsApp chat.

The chat discloses that some members of the group offered to pay for private investigators to aid the New York Police Department (NYPD) in addressing the campus protests, as well as donations to the mayor's campaign.

However, a spokeswoman for City Hall said that The New York Police Department is not using and has not used private investigators to help manage protests, according to the report.

Pro-Palestine campus protests have been persistent in the US since April 17, when students at Columbia University in New York launched an encampment in solidarity with Gaza and demanded that their school divest from Israel.

More than 2,000 people have been arrested at US campuses since last month amid heavily polarized debates over the right to protest, the limits of free speech and accusations of antisemitism.

Israel has waged a brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip in retaliation for an Oct. 7 attack last year by the Palestinian group Hamas which killed around 1,200 people.

More than 35,230 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, mostly women and children, and over 79,140 others injured, according to Palestinian health authorities.