Dov Waxman, a professor of Israel studies at UCLA, was sickened by the scenes on his campus last night – when a violent pro-Israeli group attacked a pro-Palestinian protest camp with no apparent police intervention.

“I couldn’t imagine that things would have gotten that bad, to extend to the kind of anarchy we saw, but I wasn’t entirely shocked by it,” he says.

Like others, Waxman does not believe the perpetrators were from the UCLA community. Outside agitators, he says, are making it even harder for college administrators to navigate their response to what’s happening on their campuses.

But as a long-time scholar of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he also worries that the current moment is further alienating people like him who seek to promote dialogue and understanding between the two sides.

Organisations involved in planning these protests have celebrated Hamas’ violence against Israel and their demands often go far beyond an anti-war protest, he warns, effectively “exploiting the sympathy that many students rightly feel for the suffering of Palestinians”.

“We need to be promoting dialogue and civil conversations, and educating students in a way that actually helps deepen their understanding of the history of the conflict and of Israel,” he said.

“Right now, on both sides of the issue, many students are in distress and feeling beleaguered. We need to be doing that now on our campus because this conflict is spilling over now all around the world.”