Hateful antisemitic mob descends on UC Berkeley; Admin feigns powerlessness

Last month, Jewish students trying to enter UC Berkeley's auditorium for an Israeli attorney's guest talk were met and harassed by a vitriolic pro-Palestinian throng. The speech got shut down for safety concerns. Cal admin shared an apologetic pro-free speech statement, but many—like the WSJ editorial board and Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)—are demanding Berkeley properly discipline offenders.

From the Wall Street Journal's editorial board:

Antisemitism took a frightening turn Monday at the University of California, Berkeley, where a pro-Palestinian mob surrounded a campus auditorium, broke a window, and harassed Jewish students trying to enter the building.

Israeli lawyer Ran Bar-Yoshafat was invited by a Jewish student group to address the subject of Israel and international law. This included “the rules of wartime conduct and how the [Israel Defense Forces] can better protect civilians,” according to an Instagram post by Students Supporting Israel at Berkeley.

But the speech never happened, as besieged Jewish students gathered inside a nearly empty auditorium in Zellerbach Playhouse while some 200 protesters chanted “intifada” and “free Palestine” and banged on windows, surrounding and shouting at those trying to enter. Students and the speaker were evacuated for their personal safety.

Shouting down unpopular speakers is common on campus, but the vitriol directed at students sets this incident apart. One student captured on a video clip said the protesters shouted “Jew Jew Jew” in his face and spat at him. Other students reported heckling and harassment as they tried to get past the mob. There’s no way to know how many other students stayed away out of fear of the mob or social ostracism merely for showing up.

Silencing and intimidation are the intended outcome, and anti-Jewish groups script their messages in the campus vernacular of white imperialism. In a “campus wide call to action,” Bears for Palestine said Mr. Bar-Yoshafat, who served in the Israel Defense Forces, had been invited to speak “to spread settler colonial Zionist propaganda about the very genocide he has participated in.” The group declared it would “not allow for this event to go on.” In their moral confusion, the same students wearing “Ceasefire Now” shirts were shouting “intifada, intifada,” endorsing violent protests.

In a statement after the event, Berkeley chancellor Carol Christ and executive vice chancellor Benjamin Hermalin wrote that the incident “violated not only our rules, but also some of our most fundamental values.” The letter notes that the university took precautions to add security, including campus police. They said the goal was to keep students safe and let the event go forward, but “it was not possible to do both given the size of the crowd and the threat of violence.”

That’s some admission. When the hate directed at Jewish students on campus is so extreme that the university can’t protect them, the failure rests with school officials as much as with the harassers. All the more so if the offenders aren’t punished with suspensions or expulsions. Progressives claim that being anti-Israel or anti-Zionist isn’t the same as being antisemitic. Tuesday at Berkeley shows how dishonest that claim is.

Read the whole thing here.

From the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression's (FIRE) Greg Lukianoff and Angel Eduardo, published in the Free Press:

Earlier this week, a student group called Bears for Palestine published on Instagram its intention of “combatting lies” by shutting down an event featuring Israeli Defense Forces reservist and lawyer Ran Bar-Yoshafat.

“This individual is dangerous,” the post continued. “He has committed crimes against humanity, is a genocide denier, and we will not allow for this event to go on. . . . SHUT IT DOWN.”

Before the event was scheduled to begin Monday evening, hundreds of student protesters descended on the building where it was supposed to take place—banging on doors and windows, preventing students from entering, forcing their way in, and shouting “intifada, intifada.”

Protesters broke glass doors. One male student alleges being spit on by a protester. Another student—a woman—was injured. Yet another student claims that “Jew” was screamed as an epithet.

The mob got their way. The event was canceled. Bar-Yoshafat, along with the students who had attended the event, were escorted out the back of the theater.

This has to stop.

UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Benjamin Hermalin posted a note the next day on the university website expressing their “deep remorse and sympathy to those students and members of the public who were in the building, fearing for their safety.”

They went on to say that, in the days ahead, they would “decide on the best possible path to fully understand what happened and why; to determine how we will address what occurred; and to do everything possible to preclude a repeat of what happened.”

Please. We know exactly how this eruption should be addressed.

Any students who took part in the violence should be expelled—assault is a crime and most certainly violates the school’s code of conduct. As for the students who organized the shutdown but did not participate in the violence, they should be punished.

Everyone has a right to due process. But violent rioters have no place at any institution devoted to the fearless pursuit of truth. Certainly not at Berkeley, home of the Free Speech Movement.

Violence is not extreme speech, but the antithesis of speech—and the antithesis of what higher education is supposed to be all about.

Read the whole thing here.

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Jax OliverComment