4 Arrested At Pro-Palestine Protest When Rep. Gottheimer Spoke At Rutgers

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ — Three Rutgers students and one man from Cranford who is not affiliated with the school were arrested during an anti-Israel protest Tuesday night on the Rutgers main campus in New Brunswick.

The four, all in their early 20s, were charged with rioting and other offenses.

The protest took place just before 8 p.m. Tuesday outside the Rutgers Hillel, a Jewish campus organization located on College Avenue. Inside, the Hillel was hosting a discussion with North Jersey Congressman Josh Gottheimer (NJ-5), currently running in a crowded field of Democrats in the June primary for NJ governor.

"The Rutgers Police Department had a designated protest area established to allow for a peaceful demonstration while maintaining public safety and access to the facility (the Hillel building)," said a statement from Middlesex County Prosecutor Yolanda Ciccone.

"Four of the protesters refused repeated requests from Rutgers University Police to clear the public sidewalk. An attempt was made to de-escalate the situation, but the group did not comply and continued to block access. Rutgers Police officers formed a protective line to ensure safety."

According to the prosecutor, protesters tried to breach the line formed by Rutgers Police, causing officers to then declare that the protest had become illegal and had to disperse. As the officers were giving orders to disperse, four people breached the protest line and were subsequently arrested.

The four arrested were: Thomas Whitehead, 25, of Cranford (not a Rutgers student), Rutgers student Lexi Tassone, 21, of Cresskill, Rutgers student Hanah Hassan, 23, of Budd Lake and Rutgers student Jasmine Rodriguez, 24, of Atlantic City.

Whitehead was charged with aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer, riot and resisting arrest. Tassone was charged with riot and resisting arrest. Hassan and Rodriguez were charged with riot.

Police said Whitehead in particular kept going over the police barricade and trying to walk up the front steps of the Hillel building. He "knocked over barricades, pushed others and struck a Rutgers Police officer over the top of the head with a metal flagpole, injuring him," according to the criminal complaint against him.

Whitehead is currently being held at the Middlesex County jail pending a detention hearing, scheduled for Tuesday. The other three were released on a summons to appear in court.

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) called the arrest of the three students "violent and arbitrary." They say the students led a protest on a public sidewalk outside the Hillel, and that Rutgers Police physically assaulted the protesters.

The students were exercising their First Amendment rights, said SJP on their Instagram page. Also, the three students were suspended by Rutgers after they were arrested, said SJP, which they said is unfair and something Rutgers has never done before.

SJP is technically no longer allowed to operate on the Rutgers campus, after Rutgers banned them for the second time last August for breaking campus protest rules. They now call themselves Students for Justice in Palestine at New Brunswick and have this disclaimer on their Instagram page: "This organization is no longer affiliated with Rutgers University—New Brunswick." Their suspension will not be lifted until July 2025.

"The Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office along with the Rutgers University Police Department, value free speech and support peaceful protests," said the Middlesex County Prosecutor in a statement. "However, the pursuit of these Constitutional rights cannot interfere with Rutgers operations or deleteriously impact public safety."

Gottheimer has asked Rutgers, Princeton to cancel pro-Palestine speakers, books

Gottheimer, who is Jewish, is a passionate defender of Israel, particularly in the past two years of its war with Hamas. Gottheimer has also tried to shut down events where people spoke critically of Israel: In 2023, Gottheimer asked Rutgers to cancel this lecture where Marc Lamont Hill and Nick Estes, both Israel critics, spoke.

At the time, Gottheimer said Hill and Estes "promote hate speech." He said in this letter asking Rutgers to cancel their talk that their "anti-Israel views will exacerbate the potential for violence and attacks toward Rutgers’ Jewish students."

Rutgers did not agree to his request, responding that the university is a place for free speech.

Also in 2023, Gottheimer asked the University of Pennsylvania, from which he graduated, to cancel a talk where Hill spoke at a Palestinian cultural festival alongside Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters. Penn did not agree to his request.

Also, Gottheimer asked Princeton University to remove what he called "antisemitic, anti-Israel and hate-filled classroom curriculum."

The curriculum he is referring to is a book called "The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability" by Jasbir Puar, among reading materials for a humanities course called “The Healing Humanities: Decolonizing Trauma Studies from the Global South" offered at Princeton in the fall of 2023. In this letter he sent Princeton, Gottheimer said "the book veers into offensive, antisemitic blood libel and argues that the Israel Defense Forces ... deliberately create injury, keeping Palestinian populations debilitated. This claim is egregiously false. Puar is also known to traffic in vile antisemitic tropes and has egregiously and incorrectly claimed that bodies of Palestinian children 'were mined for organs for scientific research' by the Israeli military, and said that recent conflicts in Gaza were driven by organ harvesting."

"Gottheimer is a staunch Zionist and supporter of Israel's genocide in Gaza who regularly pushes to criminalize student activism," said SJP on their Instagram page.

Congressman Asks Rutgers To Cancel Two Pro-Palestine Speakers (2023)

Rutgers Suspends Students For Justice In Palestine For A Second Time (2024)