Columbia University Pro-Palestine Protesters Take Over Campus Building

Pro-Palestine protesters who've been occupying Columbia University for weeks just took their cause to a whole new destructive level ... taking over a campus building in violent fashion.

A massive mob of student demonstrators -- which has been growing by the day -- swarmed Hamilton Hall at the NYC Ivy League college Monday night ... and they ended up breaking in and infiltrating the facility, taking the building by force.

There were multiple chants that could be heard as this was all happening ... most of which had to do with decrying the ongoing conflict in Gaza, with students calling it a genocide.

This protest has been going strong for 2 weeks now, and the unrest has become unsettling.

Students have been calling on Columbia's top brass to divest from Israel-related interests ... something the university's president says they will not do, despite ever-growing outcry.

Now, with this break-in, things have taken an even more sinister turn ... and it seems this thing isn't going to stop anytime soon. Columbia has threatened to suspend students who failed to leave encampments that have been set up all throughout the grounds.

It's a tense situation, and Jewish students have been trying to make a stand too -- which has, at times, led to clashes. It seems they plan on sticking around through graduation proceedings here in May ... and the same is happening at other colleges across the country.

Interestingly, the last time something like this happened at this scale was way back in the '60s ... when Columbia students flooded the campus to protest the Vietnam War and various issues in 1968.

Scary times, indeed.