Inside UCLA’s pro-Palestinian encampment on a long night of violence

The noise — unsettling and dissonant — has been a constant inside the barricaded pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA.

Soon after protesters, most of them students at the Westwood campus, pitched tents on Dickson Court on April 25, pro-Israel counterdemonstrators showed up with megaphones. Some shouted racist, homophobic and anti-Islamic slurs, according to campers interviewed.

They set up a giant video screen near the camp that played and replayed videos of Hamas militants. They broadcast a running torrent of loud, disturbing sounds over a stereo — an eagle screeching, a child crying — and blasted a Hebrew rendition of the song “Baby Shark” on repeat, late at night, so that campers could not sleep.

They returned night after night.

A woman kneels in prayer before a line of CHP officers at a pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles)

Inside the encampment, pro-Palestinian…