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Home Front: WoT

Pro-Palestinian protesters at UC Berkeley force police evacuation of Jewish event

2024-02-29

[IsraelTimes] University says criminal investigation probing suspected battery and use of antisemitic slurs, among other allegations, after demonstrators break through doors and breach venue

Leaders of the University of Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party,, Berkeley, have denounced a pro-Palestinian protest against an event organized by Jewish students that forced police to evacuate attendees and a speaker from Israel for their safety after demonstrators broke through doors.

A criminal investigation has begun, the university announced Wednesday.

The incident Monday night "violated not only our rules, but also some of our most fundamental values," Chancellor Carol Christ and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Benjamin Hermalin said in a statement to the university community.

So what are you going to do about it?

Minutes before the event was to start, a crowd of about 200 protesters began to surround the building, Zellerbach Playhouse, Christ and Hermalin said in their statement.

"Doors were broken open and the protesters gained unauthorized entry to the building," they said. "The event was canceled, and the building was evacuated to protect the speaker and members of the audience."

The only effective answer to that kind of thing is a whiff of grapeshot, immediately applied.

University campuses have been a hotbed of protest activity surrounding the Israel-Hamas
Hamas

...one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,...
war, which began following the deadly Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel, in which Paleostinian holy warriors killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 253 hostages back to Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
. In response, Israel launched a war on the terror group that the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says has killed over 29,000 Paleostinians, an unverified figure that doesn’t differentiate between fighters and noncombatants.

Berkeley’s student newspaper, The Daily Californian, reported that the event was a lecture by Ran Bar-Yoshafat, an Israeli attorney and former member of the Israeli Defense Force.

The newspaper reported that protesters chanted "Long live the intifada," "Hey hey, ho ho, the occupation has got to go" and "Killers on campus."

Gleefully cosplaying 1968 and imagining themselves meaningful instead of standard issue Brownshirts.

The campus group Bears for Paleostine had posted on social media about the event, urging students to "shut it down." Bears is a reference to Golden Bears, the name of the university’s sports teams. There was no immediate reply to an email seeking comment from the group on the criticism of the protest.

The event had been moved to Zellerbach because it was believed to be more secure than the original location and a team of university police had been sent there. But it wasn’t possible to ensure student safety and that the event could go forward "given the size of the crowd and the threat of violence," the statement said.

UC Berkeley spokesperson Dan Mogulof said Wednesday that the university has opened a formal criminal investigation and has initiated its student code-of-conduct process.

"We’ve had four formal reports made to our police department," Mogulof said. "We’ve opened that criminal investigation because we believe there should be consequences for the kind of behavior that we saw on Monday night."

An allegation of battery along with antisemitic slurs is being investigated as a hate crime, Mogulof said. A second report alleges a victim was spit at and kicked. A third alleges battery, and the fourth alleges the victim was injured in a scuffle while attempting to hold a door closed. The injuries were described as minor. "That’s what the investigation is about," he said. "All of the video will be reviewed. Social media posts will be reviewed. Unfortunately, most of the protesters were masked."

There were not sufficient police resources to make arrests at the scene, he said.

Christ and Hermalin said they respect the right to protest "as intrinsic to the values of democracy and an institution of higher education" but cannot ignore protests that interfere with the rights of others to hear and express their own perspectives.

AAUP becomes largest US faculty group to join call for ceasefire

[IsraelTimes] American Association of University Professors signs statement with hundreds of other labor unions calling for end to Israel-Hamas war; one member decries ‘obsessive’ focus on Israel.

With 44,000 members, including professors, graduate students, and researchers, the AAUP continues to oppose academic boycotts of Israel. But its recent call for a ceasefire deeply troubles some members, said University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor emeritus Cary Nelson, because while the union was founded in 1915 with a mission to protect and promote academic freedom, the link between academic freedom and the Gaza war is murky at best.

“The AAUP has been slowly transforming itself into an anti-Zionist organization since 2015,” said Nelson, who was the AAUP president between 2006 and 2012. “But its call for a ceasefire in Gaza represents a new phase in that process because it is the first time the AAUP has actually abandoned its commitment to political neutrality and adopted what amounts to a foreign policy.”

Laurie Essig, professor of gender, sexuality and feminist studies at Middlebury College, and president of the college’s AAUP chapter, disagreed.

“To be clear, the mission of the AAUP is political. Protecting academic freedom and tenure from fascistic political regimes is why the AAUP began. As for the connection… the Israel-Gaza conflict is being used in the US to attack academic freedom,” Essig said.

Some AAUP chapters not only support a ceasefire, they appear to justify Hamas’s onslaught.

For example, in a December 6 post on X, formerly Twitter, the AAUP Advocacy chapter at Texas A&M said it stands in “solidarity with Palestinian resistance to apartheid occupation” and calls on the university to take “concrete action to stop the genocidal war on the Palestinian people and to end Israeli settler colonialism.”

Posted by:trailing wife

#3 Pro-Palestine activists bring London's Liverpool Street station to a halt as they stage sit-in protest demanding a ceasefire in war with Israel

Posted by: Skidmark 2024-02-29 15:21

#2 a muslim is defined by the sharia law they adhere to. sharia values a female intrinsically less than a male. we dont need or want such people. deport them. refuse entry.

Posted by: irish rage boy 2024-02-29 08:59

#1 So what are you going to do about it?

Build a museum for Palestinian victims of Zionism.

Posted by: Grom the Reflective 2024-02-29 01:36

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