Protests 2024 - Stop Hey What's That Sound...

[Apollo]

Antisemitism is not something you run into much here in the South despite what you may have heard, but it is definitely coming out of the woodwork now. While the majority of folks are pro-Israel here, the anti-Israel people are more outspoken about this than they normally are about the controversy of the moment. Almost all of the rhetoric I have personally been subjected to was clearly anti-Semitic and its all coming from left wingers. Please don't try to tell me that this movement has nothing to do with antisemitism!

[ImLawBoy]

A couple things. First, I think the targeting of Israelis as Israelis absolutely has an impact on Jews who are not themselves Israeli. One because Judaism as a religion has significant ties to the land of Israel (next year in Jerusalem, and all that), so even Jews that are relatively hostile to Netanyahu and his allies still often have part of their identities tied to Israel. Also a lot of Jews are not going to feel super safe and comfortable around a group of people who are targeting Israel, even if they're not (currently) overtly targeting Jews. Like when those UCLA schmucks were excluding "Zionists" from campus common spaces like the library. Was that targeting Jews as Jews? No...but I can't imagine any Jew feeling safe when people are going after "Zionists".

Not that there aren't distinctions here between impacts on Israelis and impacts on Jews...but they're pretty thin.

There certainly may be distinctions between how I as a non-Jew interpret things and how you as a Jew interpret things, and I don't want to come off telling you how you can feel about it. As a non-Jew, I see a credible, secular based argument for these protests that do not make them necessarily antisemitic. I appreciate how you could feel differently about it, though.

Second, you seem to be drawing a distinction where someone who is acting because of the actions of a group (e.g., someone targeting Israelis because of the war in Gaza) cannot be acting with bigoted intent (or at least is unlikely to be doing so). But I don't think that's as robust a distinction as you think. Bigots are almost always acting upon members of a minority group based upon (real or perceived) actions of the group at large.

That's not what I'm saying at all. I tried to point out that I'm almost certain that there are bigots and true antisemites in these protests. I'm saying that their mere presence does not make the protests antisemitic. It's a fair question to ask at what point do the bad apples taint the barrel such that you have to toss the whole thing (maybe that's breaking up the encampments in this strained analogy). I suspect you and I might have different thresholds on that tipping point.

[ImLawBoy]

Please don't try to tell me that this movement has nothing to do with antisemitism!

Good thing I haven't tried to tell anyone that!

[Pyperkub]

I work at the CSU, and I think the Sacramento State agreement is a pretty good start.

The protest ended Wednesday, as the university shared a new policy in which it "directs its auxiliaries...to investigate socially responsible investment strategies which include not having direct investments in corporations and funds that profit from genocide, ethnic cleansing, and activities that violate fundamental human rights."

Wood reiterated to CBS News that "we're not investing in students' future by engaging in relationships with companies that profit from war."

While he is concerned about the possibility of losing support from some donors and state lawmakers, Wood is confident in his decision to support the new policy.

"I very much care what our donors think," Wood said. "I very much care what our legislators think. But ultimately, my responsibility is for the health, the safety, and the learning and development of this campus."

[Holman]

FWIW, "next year in Jerusalem" for most Jews does not refer to modern Jerusalem. (After all, it's easy to buy airline tickets if the goal is to be there specifically.)

Instead, it means freedom from an exile much more spiritual than geographical or political. I've attended Passover Seders where the disconnect between "Israel"/"Jerusalem" and modern Israel/Jerusalem was the most interesting point of discussion.

[Victoria Raverna]

Call us when they forbid Israelis but allow Jewish people. Until then, I'm pretty sure El Guapo meant people of Jewish persuasion rather than Israeli nationals.

US/Canadian campuses are directing their anger at Jewish people in general, not Israelis specifically (or more accurately, lumping them all in with Israel nationals). It's anti-Semitic because it's discrimination based on race and/or religion, not because of their nationality.

I don't think this is true. For example at Columbia, some of the pro-Palestinian protestors are Jewish. They're in general anti Israel's action in Gaza, not anti Jewish people. There are probably some racist anti Jewish people among them but in general, they're not anti Jewish. There were a lot of misinformation in the media that tried to show the protestors as racist and anti Jewish people.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/23/us/v ... -ny-digvid

https://time.com/6976426/columbia-prote ... ism-essay/

“Please do let the world know,” a Jewish student, speaking on conditions of anonymity, said to me following a Shabbat service in the encampment. “Show them how much love exists here.” Minutes later Muslim students held their evening prayer service. On day eight, I listened as a Palestinian storyteller shared his poetry which concluded with the words: “I have never felt harmony the way I have this past week, here in this camp, united by a shared love for a group of people that many are so desperately trying to erase.”

...

Ray (their last name has been kept private for anonymity), for instance, an artist and undergraduate student at Barnard whom I encountered a week into the encampment, dedicated her afternoons to painting portraits of Palestinians in Gaza. Her canvases pulsated with brown hues, chromes, and crimson applied through watercolor ink to stroke the urgency of the situation in Gaza. Ray had just celebrated Passover in the encampment a few days earlier and mentioned the bizarre moment she woke up to find a camera in her face, snapping pictures inside her unzipped tent: “The least they can do is ask, or try to get to know me first.”

Jewish protestor's statement:

[Zarathud]

The defense of “It’s not racist because [minority] is here” does not wear well. It’s an old tactic to deflect racist behavior.

It’s a complicated issue, and no doubt there are elements of racism involved in the quick move to punish Israel as committing war crimes. The question is who and how much. Protest leaders are frequently at the mercy of the mob they inspire.

[Victoria Raverna]

And here is a video from anti war Jewish protestors:



Are they racist against Jews?

[Victoria Raverna]

And here are nice things that a few Israel protestors do:



Bad people are on both side of the protests but majority are just people who cares.

[El Guapo]

FWIW, "next year in Jerusalem" for most Jews does not refer to modern Jerusalem. (After all, it's easy to buy airline tickets if the goal is to be there specifically.)

Instead, it means freedom from an exile much more spiritual than geographical or political. I've attended Passover Seders where the disconnect between "Israel"/"Jerusalem" and modern Israel/Jerusalem was the most interesting point of discussion.

I would just say that (as with so much stuff in religion) there is both a literal and a metaphorical dimension to this. And in my experience the more reform you go the more metaphorical things get.

[El Guapo]

Second, you seem to be drawing a distinction where someone who is acting because of the actions of a group (e.g., someone targeting Israelis because of the war in Gaza) cannot be acting with bigoted intent (or at least is unlikely to be doing so). But I don't think that's as robust a distinction as you think. Bigots are almost always acting upon members of a minority group based upon (real or perceived) actions of the group at large.

That's not what I'm saying at all. I tried to point out that I'm almost certain that there are bigots and true antisemites in these protests. I'm saying that their mere presence does not make the protests antisemitic. It's a fair question to ask at what point do the bad apples taint the barrel such that you have to toss the whole thing (maybe that's breaking up the encampments in this strained analogy). I suspect you and I might have different thresholds on that tipping point.

I understood you to be saying that someone acting because they are angry about the war in Gaza is (at least as a general matter) not acting with antisemitic intent. Did I misunderstand that?

Part of why I'm talking about the Eurovision stuff (in addition to it generally bothering me) is that it's the best example I can think of where people (the other singers / delegations at Eurovision) acted because they were angry about the war in Gaza but where their collective conduct was (in my mind) antisemitic.

[LawBeefaroni]

The thing is is that a lot of antisemitic actors are using the protests and "anti-Israel" groundswell to rachet up anti-Jewish rhetoric and attacks. If protestors don't recognize this and act appropriately they become complicit.


Example. In one of our neighborhoods someone took an Israeli flag, smeared it with dogshit, and left it on the fence of a Jewish resident.

Completely unrelated, but at the same time, students at a nearby university were occupying a quad. They were kicked out by police this morning, mostly peacefully but with high tensions and some scuffles. Now to the family with the dogshit covered flag, especially the kids, seeing the protests and shouting, and clashing with police give a whole lot of weight to the hate crime they personally experienced. It is frightening.

Like I said, the two events almost certainly unrelated but they work together synergistically and the true racists and antisemites know this very well. Most of the protests do not acknowledge this fact nor do they go far enough to distance themselves from the bad actors. It's mostly out of naïveté, and not ill intent, but it has the same result.

[GreenGoo]

Are they racist against Jews?

Are they chanting "death to Israel"?

[ImLawBoy]

Second, you seem to be drawing a distinction where someone who is acting because of the actions of a group (e.g., someone targeting Israelis because of the war in Gaza) cannot be acting with bigoted intent (or at least is unlikely to be doing so). But I don't think that's as robust a distinction as you think. Bigots are almost always acting upon members of a minority group based upon (real or perceived) actions of the group at large.

That's not what I'm saying at all. I tried to point out that I'm almost certain that there are bigots and true antisemites in these protests. I'm saying that their mere presence does not make the protests antisemitic. It's a fair question to ask at what point do the bad apples taint the barrel such that you have to toss the whole thing (maybe that's breaking up the encampments in this strained analogy). I suspect you and I might have different thresholds on that tipping point.

I understood you to be saying that someone acting because they are angry about the war in Gaza is (at least as a general matter) not acting with antisemitic intent. Did I misunderstand that?

I don't think it's black and white. I think that some people are acting because they are angry about Gaza without antisemitic intent. I think that some people are using Gaza as a pretense but are acting from antisemitic intent. I think there are some people who are genuinely upset about Gaza, but they also have some antisemitic intent (and the range there can be very wide).

[Victoria Raverna]

Are they racist against Jews?

Are they chanting "death to Israel"?

No. But also majority of the student protestors also don't chant that but still they got painted as racist against Jews.

[GreenGoo]

Well, here's the thing. If you're standing beside some asshat screaming death to Jews and you let it continue, you're part of the problem. Yes, even if you're Jewish.

[Victoria Raverna]

Well, here's the thing. If you're standing beside some asshat screaming death to Jews and you let it continue, you're part of the problem. Yes, even if you're Jewish.

So do you have an example of student protestors that standing beside some asshat screaming death to Jews and let it continue? If so they're part of the problem. But majority of the protestors are not like that.

[GreenGoo]

Great. I never said otherwise.
<removed snark>

[El Guapo]

Second, you seem to be drawing a distinction where someone who is acting because of the actions of a group (e.g., someone targeting Israelis because of the war in Gaza) cannot be acting with bigoted intent (or at least is unlikely to be doing so). But I don't think that's as robust a distinction as you think. Bigots are almost always acting upon members of a minority group based upon (real or perceived) actions of the group at large.

That's not what I'm saying at all. I tried to point out that I'm almost certain that there are bigots and true antisemites in these protests. I'm saying that their mere presence does not make the protests antisemitic. It's a fair question to ask at what point do the bad apples taint the barrel such that you have to toss the whole thing (maybe that's breaking up the encampments in this strained analogy). I suspect you and I might have different thresholds on that tipping point.

I understood you to be saying that someone acting because they are angry about the war in Gaza is (at least as a general matter) not acting with antisemitic intent. Did I misunderstand that?

I don't think it's black and white. I think that some people are acting because they are angry about Gaza without antisemitic intent. I think that some people are using Gaza as a pretense but are acting from antisemitic intent. I think there are some people who are genuinely upset about Gaza, but they also have some antisemitic intent (and the range there can be very wide).

Yeah, that's all true. Mainly I think that there are a lot of good and well meaning people who think that they can't possibly be deemed antisemitic who aren't totally thinking through the impact of their actions or how they may be received. I also think that divestment demands that are limited to anything Israeli and nothing else are at least deeply problematic in a way that a lot of people haven't really thought through.

[Victoria Raverna]

Yeah, that's all true. Mainly I think that there are a lot of good and well meaning people who think that they can't possibly be deemed antisemitic who aren't totally thinking through the impact of their actions or how they may be received. I also think that divestment demands that are limited to anything Israeli and nothing else are at least deeply problematic in a way that a lot of people haven't really thought through.

Then how can they protest Israel's action in Gaza? How they protest Israel's action without being deemed antisemitic or deeply problematic to you?

[El Guapo]

Yeah, that's all true. Mainly I think that there are a lot of good and well meaning people who think that they can't possibly be deemed antisemitic who aren't totally thinking through the impact of their actions or how they may be received. I also think that divestment demands that are limited to anything Israeli and nothing else are at least deeply problematic in a way that a lot of people haven't really thought through.

Then how can they protest Israel's action in Gaza? How they protest Israel's action without being deemed antisemitic or deeply problematic to you?

Well, mainly I'd say don't discriminate against someone or harass someone solely because they're Israeli. Protest all you want, demand divestment from the IDF relationships...really talking about a pretty narrow category of conduct here.

[hepcat]

Just as we wouldn't want someone harassing random Palestinians for the actions of Hamas, I don't think we should be harassing random Israelis for the actions of their government.

[Pyperkub]

Assume photos from the encampment on our campus

Pretty small and casual. There were more students going in and out of the library (finals start next week). Fun story, I heard in a meeting that the students were getting some of the tents from CampusRec

[Pyperkub]

We do have security for the administration building and have been restricting access to non student facing areas. A good precaution, as when CA was in budget hell and raising tuition, we had hundreds of students try to storm the administration building, but this seems like far less than that so far.

[Victoria Raverna]

Result of an analyst of 553 protests:

Nearly all Gaza campus protests in the US have been peaceful, study finds.

Spoiler:

An independent non-profit that tracks political violence and political protests around the world found that 97% of campus demonstrations over the war in Gaza that have taken place in the US since mid-April have been peaceful.

An analysis of 553 US campus demonstrations nationwide between 18 April and 3 May found that fewer than 20 resulted in any serious interpersonal violence or property damage, according to statistics from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (Acled).

Over the same period, Acled documented at least 70 instances of forceful police intervention against US campus protests, which includes the arrest of demonstrators and the use of physical dispersal tactics, including the deployment of chemical agents, batons and other kinds of physical force.

Nearly half of the campus protests that Acled categorized as violent involved protesters fighting with law enforcement during police interventions, according to the group’s data.

Protest encampments in solidarity with Gaza have popped up on college campuses across the US since April, with students voicing a variety of demands, including calls for universities to publicly support a ceasefire in Gaza, divest from Israeli companies and companies that supply Israel’s military, and cut ties with Israeli universities. The protests have inspired similar actions across the UK and Europe, as well as in India and Lebanon.

Since 18 April, when 108 students were arrested at Columbia University, the administrators of many schools have called in law enforcement to forcibly remove the encampments, resulting in more than 2,600 arrests across more than 50 US campuses, according to an ongoing tally by the Associated Press.

University leaders have said that student protesters are disrupting campus life, jeopardising student safety, creating “a harassing and intimidating environment”, and, in the words of the University of Southern California president Carol Folt, “spiraling in a dangerous direction”.

Joe Biden has also criticized the campus protests, warning that “dissent must never lead to disorder” and that “violent protest is not protected”.

“Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations – none of this is a peaceful protest,” the US president said on 2 May. “Threatening people, intimidating people, instilling fear in people is not a peaceful protest.”

Acled’s analysis of more than 550 campus protests through 3 May found two instances of property damage serious enough to disqualify the demonstration as peaceful: protesters at Portland State University who shattered glass and damaged furniture and computers during their occupation of a campus library, and protesters at Columbia University who broke windows during their occupation at a campus building, both on 30 April.

“We don’t consider graffiti or spray paint to be enough property destruction to be indicative of a violent demonstration,” said Kieran Doyle, Acled’s North America research manager.

Acled defines peaceful protests as ones without serious physical violence or property damage, Doyle said. Its bar for categorising a demonstration as violent includes “physical violence that rises above pushing or shoving” or property destruction that involves “breaking a window or worse”, he said.

By that definition, the vast majority of recent US campus protests have remained peaceful.

Among the 3% of US campus protests through 3 May that Acled did categorize as violent, only a handful involved physical violence between pro-Palestinian protesters and counter-protesters or other bystanders, rather than property damage or confrontations with police.

In the most prominent incident of violence at campus protests so far, a Gaza solidarity encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) was attacked by a group of masked counter-demonstrators who tried to tear down the encampment and assaulted students with projectiles, fireworks and chemical agents. Both groups clashed for hours, while law enforcement officials retreated or failed to intervene. The late-night attack at UCLA followed two previous instances of less serious violence at UCLA, according to Acled’s data, including reports of demonstrators on different sides “trading punches” on 28 April.

Other violent incidents at campus protests included a 1 May “skirmish” between protesters and pro-Israel counter-protesters at UC Berkeley over someone grabbing an Israeli flag, which resulted in minor injuries, and two early May incidents, one in Portland and one in St Louis, that involved violent confrontations between motorists and demonstrators.

Behind the 3%:

Much of the public criticism of pro-Palestinian student protests in the US has focused not on physical violence, but on the rhetoric used by protesters, including fierce debates over when criticism of the Israeli government or Israel crosses the line into antisemitism and hate speech, and how much the protests have affected Jewish students’ feelings of safety on campus.

The chaotic week ending 3 May, which involved law enforcement crackdowns at universities across the country, sparked new debates over whether violent police interventions were an appropriate response to campus student protests.

Nearly half of the 3% of campus protests that Acled categorized as violent became so because of demonstrators fighting with the police sent in to clear protest encampments. That included incidents at the University of Texas, Austin, on 24 April; at Emerson College in Boston on 25 April; at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, on 26 April; at Washington University in St Louis on 27 April, when campus officials said that three police officers were injured, including one who had a “severe concussion” and another who broke a finger; and at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, on 1 May, when a state trooper was reportedly injured after being hit on the head with a skateboard.

Acled’s US protest statistics are based on its research team’s analysis of hundreds of local news outlets, independent news journalists and verified social media accounts, said Acled’s Doyle. The data sets are updated with new information as it emerges, and the numbers are reviewed for consistency by a separate methodology team. Analysis for whether a few recent campus incidents should be classified violent is still ongoing, Doyle said.

A previous Acled report, published on 2 May and based on protest data through 26 April, found that 99% of student-involved protests had been peaceful.

Looking across all Israel-Gaza war protests in the US since 7 October, Acled found that police have intervened forcefully against unopposed pro-Palestinian demonstrations involving students roughly five times as often as they have intervened against unopposed pro-Israel demonstrations involving students, according to updated data through 3 May. (This statistic is based on the percentage of protests of each kind at which police forcefully intervened, not the total number of protests.)

Since 18 April, police have not intervened against any unopposed pro-Israel demonstrations on university campuses, according to Acled’s data.

[Victoria Raverna]

[Victoria Raverna]

CNN investigated the incident at UCLA:

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/16/us/u ... index.html

Spoiler:

A young man in a white plastic mask beats a pro-Palestinian protester. Another in a maroon hoodie strikes a protester with a pole. A local instigator pushes down barricades.

Law enforcement stood by for hours as counterprotesters attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA on April 30, which erupted into the worst violence stemming from the ongoing college protests around the country over Israel’s war in Gaza.

While a criminal investigation is underway into the assaults that occurred at UCLA, the identities of the most aggressive counterprotesters have gone largely unknown. A CNN review of footage, social media posts, and interviews found that some of the most dramatic attacks caught on camera that night were committed by people outside UCLA – not the university students and faculty who were eventually arrested.

Many at the scene appeared dedicated to the pro-Israel cause, according to social media and their own words that night. The violent counterprotesters identified by CNN, which included an aspiring screenwriter and film producer and a local high school student – were joined by unlikely allies, several of whom are known throughout southern California for frequenting and disrupting a variety of protests and public gatherings.

The young man sporting the white mask and a white hoodie in widely shared video clips is Edan On, a local 18-year-old high school senior, his mother confirmed to CNN, though she later said he denies being at UCLA. Video shows On joining the counterprotesters while waving a long white pole. At one point, he strikes a pro-Palestinian protester with the pole, and appears to continue to strike him even when he was down, as fellow counterprotesters piled on.

“Edan went to bully the Palestinian students in the tents at UCLA and played the song that they played to the Nukhba terrorists in prison!” his mother boasted in Hebrew on Facebook, referencing Hamas. She circled an image of him that had been broadcast on the local news.

“He is all over the news channels,” his mother wrote in a now-deleted post.

Some counterprotesters had been spotted on campus days earlier, drawn by a high-profile pro-Israel rally as inflammatory videos and claims rapidly spread across social media.

Many at the scene Tuesday hid their faces behind masks and scarves. Some attackers sprayed protesters with chemical irritants, hit them with wooden boards, punched and kicked them and shot fireworks into the crowd of students and supporters huddled behind umbrellas and wooden planks, attempting to stay safe. For hours, they sought to pull away pieces of the barrier, scooping up fallen wooden planks and poles to use as makeshift weapons, lunging toward pro-Palestinian protesters who emerged from the camp to protect it from being breached.

As protesters chanted, “We’re not leaving” from the encampment, some counterprotesters shouted back, “You are terrorists, you are terrorists!”

Video footage shows that some counterprotesters instigated the fighting, while others did little to intervene. Then police did little as a large group of counterprotesters calmy walked away, leaving behind bloody, bruised students and other protesters.

The Los Angeles Police Department and California Highway Patrol referred all questions about the incident to the UCLA Police Department, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Law enforcement did not track injuries from the attack. But according to the encampment’s organizers, more than 150 students “were assaulted with pepper spray and bear mace,” and at least 25 protesters ended up being transported to local emergency rooms to receive treatment for injuries including fractures, severe lacerations and chemical-induced injuries.

“I actually thought someone would get killed,” said Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, UCLA Hillel’s Director Emeritus, who called 911 around midnight as he watched the violence on live TV. “They came to beat people up.”

The next day, Hillel at UCLA posted an open letter from student leaders denouncing what it called “fringe members of the off-campus Jewish community” who did not represent “the estimated 3,000 Jewish Bruins at UCLA.”

“We cannot have a clearer ask for the off-campus Jewish community: stay off our campus,” it stated. “Your actions are harming Jewish students.”

In one of the more dramatic videos of the night, a protester wearing the colors of the Palestinian flag underneath an LA Kings jersey was knocked to the ground and beaten by multiple counterprotesters as he guarded the encampment.

One of those assailants was On, who rushed into the middle of the fray with his pole. When CNN showed On’s mother a video of him attacking the protester, she said Edan, who she confirmed is a senior at Beverly Hills High School, was only defending himself. His mother – who previously described a smaller group of UCLA students protesting the war last year as “human animals” on social media – said dozens of his schoolmates had also gone to campus on the 30th and that her son intends to join the Israel Defense Forces.

The school district said federal law prohibits sharing information about students, including confirming their identities. On could not be reached for comment directly. When CNN contacted On’s mother for an interview with him, she replied that her son was in Israel and that he claimed he wasn’t at UCLA despite her earlier confirmation.

The man in the LA Kings jersey was ultimately dragged into a group of counterprotesters and kicked by an aspiring Los Angeles screenwriter and producer who CNN identified as Malachi Marlan-Librett, according to a review of social media photos, footage from the protest and interviews with multiple people who knew him. According to his LinkedIn, he graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 2019 and attended a UCLA professional film and television program the following year.

A man in a maroon hoodie joined Marlan-Librett in dragging the protester into the mob.

The protester was later seen in a video receiving treatment for a bloody head injury at the encampment. Marlan-Librett and the man in the maroon hoodie, along with other counterprotesters, such as an unmasked man wearing a red bandana around his neck, were seen committing multiple acts of violence throughout the night.

They became prime targets for online researchers who told CNN they had created internal nicknames such as #UCLARedBandana, #UCLANeffHat and #UCLAMaroonHoodie as they attempted to identify them.

In one violent episode captured on video, Marlan-Librett is seen carrying the end of a broom in his hand, using it to strike a protester in the head before kicking him. Even after the protester retreats, Marlan-Librett sneaks up on him from behind and strikes him in the head once again. Marlan-Librett didn’t respond to calls and texts from CNN.

In another video, the man in the maroon hoodie runs toward the encampment yelling, “You guys are about to get f**ked up.” In the over 3-hour-long livestream, the young man is in the thick of the scrum and can be seen hitting another man with a pole before arming counterprotesters with wood planks. The man could be heard yelling at protesters, “F**k you, f**king terrorists,” then, “The score is 30,000” – a reference to the number of Palestinians killed by Israel’s bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza.

Just minutes earlier, the man pepper-sprayed a journalist in the face, while she was filming the crowd. “I had to walk off because I literally could not see anything,” the local journalist, Dolores Quintana, told CNN. “And it was getting in my mouth. And so, I was starting to choke.”

She said a volunteer came out of the encampment to wash out her eyes with water and saline. Quintana took a selfie when she could open her eyes again. In the photo, her face was drenched and pale, with red blotches on her forehead.

“This was the worst situation I ever found myself in as a journalist,” she said. “I was afraid they were going to kill somebody.”

According to multiple acquaintances of the man in the maroon hoodie, he attended Los Angeles Valley College with his brother. Both brothers were enrolled at USC in the fall 2023 semester for a couple weeks before disenrolling, according to the school.

CNN could not reach the man in the maroon hoodie, and he did not have any apparent connection to UCLA.

Neither did Tom Bibiyan, a 42-year-old who was once a local Green Party official. Bibiyan was stabbed at a KKK rally where he was a counter-protester in 2016 and has since become an ardent Trump supporter. His colorful Instagram page is a mix of right-wing memes, numerous posts defending famous men against sexual assault allegations and pro-Israel content.

Video footage shows Bibiyan among those at the front line of people rushing the encampment in an attempt to remove protective metal barriers, as campus security guards watched the violence unfold.

“The moment we rushed the terrorist encampment last night at ucla to take it apart,” he captioned a video he posted to Instagram. “F**k them kids,” he said in a separate post, which has since been deleted.

A CNN journalist reached Bibiyan outside his home, wearing the same jacket he had worn at UCLA, but he refused to say why he had taken part in the violence. “You’re being a little rude, and I’m going to call the police if you don’t leave,” he said.

Other older men spotted among the mob looked familiar to local public school mom Angie Givant as she followed what happened that Tuesday night on social media: a group of right-wing provocateurs who she’d seen protesting LGBTQ rights in public schools at school board and city council meetings around Los Angeles.

“As soon as there were rumors that, you know, things were going to go down at UCLA, there was a mobilization of very familiar reactionary extremists,” she told CNN.

One of the older men, Narek Palyan, joined the group of counterprotesters despite having posted anti-Jewish tropes on his social media accounts. Palyan, who didn’t appear to engage in the violence, claimed to CNN he has a child at UCLA, though a student was not seen accompanying him that night. “I was definitely keeping the peace, at least trying to,” he said.

UCLA junior and student journalist Catherine Hamilton said that when a firework landed a few feet away from where she was standing and she saw the men approaching in masks, it was clear to her that they were about to do something they didn’t want to be recognized for.

“In that moment when that firework went off and started ringing in my ears, I was like, something very bad is going to happen on this campus,” she said.

When the police finally arrived hours later to break up the chaos, Hamilton and her colleagues regrouped to head back to their newsroom. As they walked past a line of cops and along a well-lit street in the center of campus, just before 3:30 am, she says they were encircled by a small group of counterprotesters mainly dressed in black. She told CNN the man leading the group was someone whom she immediately recognized. He was a counterprotester who had previously verbally harassed her and taken a photo of her press badge, she said.

Within seconds, they sprayed the student journalists with a type of mace or pepper spray and flashed lights in their faces. As she tried to get away, Hamilton said, she was repeatedly struck in the chest and abdomen.

One of the journalists confronted the attackers and shoved one before he was pummeled to the ground and beaten, according to video footage of the incident.

The day after the attack, UCLA’s chancellor called the events “a dark chapter” in the school’s history that “has shaken our campus to its core.”

A parent who was at the encampment with their child, a UCLA student, also described the night as feeling like “a civil war movie” with embers raining down and the wounded being treated all around. The parent said they were frantic to find help, calling UCLA campus police six times in a row.

One fourth-year UCLA student – who requested anonymity due to safety concerns – told CNN he was hit in the corner of his forehead with a traffic cone. Minutes later, video captured a counterprotester smashing a wooden plank into the back of his head.

With two deep cuts on his head, he said he rushed to the hospital and ultimately received 14 staples and three stitches for the injuries.

The violence directed at the protesters and his access to medical treatment reminded him of why they had set up the encampment in the first place, trying to raise awareness about the mass deaths and destruction from Israel’s war in Gaza, and calling for the university to divest from any financial ties with Israel. “I had the privilege of going to a hospital,” he said. “In Gaza, there are zero fully functioning hospitals.”

Thistle Boosinger, a 23-year-old member of the encampment who is not a UCLA student, had her hand smashed the night of the violence. She described how her assailant took a piece of wood above his head before slamming it down on her hand. “At first, I just screamed,” she said. “And then after like five minutes where my adrenaline wore off, it was so extremely painful.”

In a video call, Boosinger held up her hand wrapped in gauze and described her injury. “My bone is broken totally in half below my knuckle … [which is] shattered into a bunch of pieces and jumbled up.”

Dylan Kupsh, a UCLA graduate student, said he linked arms with other protesters in an attempt to defend the encampment and keep people safe. “We were … trying to keep the barricade wall up because that was literally protecting our lives,” Kupsh said. It wasn’t long before he was pepper sprayed, forcing him to seek medical treatment as the attacks continued.

Kupsh and others still wonder what would have happened had the encampment been breached that night.

“I hate to say it,” said Catherine Hamilton, the student journalist, “but I was expecting us to start working on an obituary the next day because I thought something that serious would happen to the students in the encampment.”

[GreenGoo]

Result of an analyst of 553 protests:

Nearly all Gaza campus protests in the US have been peaceful, study finds.

Great. You can see my support for their right to protest and not be beaten by police earlier in the thread.

[Pyperkub]

CNN investigated the incident at UCLA:

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/16/us/u ... index.html

Spoiler:

A young man in a white plastic mask beats a pro-Palestinian protester. Another in a maroon hoodie strikes a protester with a pole. A local instigator pushes down barricades.

Law enforcement stood by for hours as counterprotesters attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA on April 30, which erupted into the worst violence stemming from the ongoing college protests around the country over Israel’s war in Gaza.

While a criminal investigation is underway into the assaults that occurred at UCLA, the identities of the most aggressive counterprotesters have gone largely unknown. A CNN review of footage, social media posts, and interviews found that some of the most dramatic attacks caught on camera that night were committed by people outside UCLA – not the university students and faculty who were eventually arrested.

Many at the scene appeared dedicated to the pro-Israel cause, according to social media and their own words that night. The violent counterprotesters identified by CNN, which included an aspiring screenwriter and film producer and a local high school student – were joined by unlikely allies, several of whom are known throughout southern California for frequenting and disrupting a variety of protests and public gatherings.

The young man sporting the white mask and a white hoodie in widely shared video clips is Edan On, a local 18-year-old high school senior, his mother confirmed to CNN, though she later said he denies being at UCLA. Video shows On joining the counterprotesters while waving a long white pole. At one point, he strikes a pro-Palestinian protester with the pole, and appears to continue to strike him even when he was down, as fellow counterprotesters piled on.

“Edan went to bully the Palestinian students in the tents at UCLA and played the song that they played to the Nukhba terrorists in prison!” his mother boasted in Hebrew on Facebook, referencing Hamas. She circled an image of him that had been broadcast on the local news.

“He is all over the news channels,” his mother wrote in a now-deleted post.

Some counterprotesters had been spotted on campus days earlier, drawn by a high-profile pro-Israel rally as inflammatory videos and claims rapidly spread across social media.

Many at the scene Tuesday hid their faces behind masks and scarves. Some attackers sprayed protesters with chemical irritants, hit them with wooden boards, punched and kicked them and shot fireworks into the crowd of students and supporters huddled behind umbrellas and wooden planks, attempting to stay safe. For hours, they sought to pull away pieces of the barrier, scooping up fallen wooden planks and poles to use as makeshift weapons, lunging toward pro-Palestinian protesters who emerged from the camp to protect it from being breached.

As protesters chanted, “We’re not leaving” from the encampment, some counterprotesters shouted back, “You are terrorists, you are terrorists!”

Video footage shows that some counterprotesters instigated the fighting, while others did little to intervene. Then police did little as a large group of counterprotesters calmy walked away, leaving behind bloody, bruised students and other protesters.

The Los Angeles Police Department and California Highway Patrol referred all questions about the incident to the UCLA Police Department, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Law enforcement did not track injuries from the attack. But according to the encampment’s organizers, more than 150 students “were assaulted with pepper spray and bear mace,” and at least 25 protesters ended up being transported to local emergency rooms to receive treatment for injuries including fractures, severe lacerations and chemical-induced injuries.

“I actually thought someone would get killed,” said Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, UCLA Hillel’s Director Emeritus, who called 911 around midnight as he watched the violence on live TV. “They came to beat people up.”

The next day, Hillel at UCLA posted an open letter from student leaders denouncing what it called “fringe members of the off-campus Jewish community” who did not represent “the estimated 3,000 Jewish Bruins at UCLA.”

“We cannot have a clearer ask for the off-campus Jewish community: stay off our campus,” it stated. “Your actions are harming Jewish students.”

In one of the more dramatic videos of the night, a protester wearing the colors of the Palestinian flag underneath an LA Kings jersey was knocked to the ground and beaten by multiple counterprotesters as he guarded the encampment.

One of those assailants was On, who rushed into the middle of the fray with his pole. When CNN showed On’s mother a video of him attacking the protester, she said Edan, who she confirmed is a senior at Beverly Hills High School, was only defending himself. His mother – who previously described a smaller group of UCLA students protesting the war last year as “human animals” on social media – said dozens of his schoolmates had also gone to campus on the 30th and that her son intends to join the Israel Defense Forces.

The school district said federal law prohibits sharing information about students, including confirming their identities. On could not be reached for comment directly. When CNN contacted On’s mother for an interview with him, she replied that her son was in Israel and that he claimed he wasn’t at UCLA despite her earlier confirmation.

The man in the LA Kings jersey was ultimately dragged into a group of counterprotesters and kicked by an aspiring Los Angeles screenwriter and producer who CNN identified as Malachi Marlan-Librett, according to a review of social media photos, footage from the protest and interviews with multiple people who knew him. According to his LinkedIn, he graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 2019 and attended a UCLA professional film and television program the following year.

A man in a maroon hoodie joined Marlan-Librett in dragging the protester into the mob.

The protester was later seen in a video receiving treatment for a bloody head injury at the encampment. Marlan-Librett and the man in the maroon hoodie, along with other counterprotesters, such as an unmasked man wearing a red bandana around his neck, were seen committing multiple acts of violence throughout the night.

They became prime targets for online researchers who told CNN they had created internal nicknames such as #UCLARedBandana, #UCLANeffHat and #UCLAMaroonHoodie as they attempted to identify them.

In one violent episode captured on video, Marlan-Librett is seen carrying the end of a broom in his hand, using it to strike a protester in the head before kicking him. Even after the protester retreats, Marlan-Librett sneaks up on him from behind and strikes him in the head once again. Marlan-Librett didn’t respond to calls and texts from CNN.

In another video, the man in the maroon hoodie runs toward the encampment yelling, “You guys are about to get f**ked up.” In the over 3-hour-long livestream, the young man is in the thick of the scrum and can be seen hitting another man with a pole before arming counterprotesters with wood planks. The man could be heard yelling at protesters, “F**k you, f**king terrorists,” then, “The score is 30,000” – a reference to the number of Palestinians killed by Israel’s bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza.

Just minutes earlier, the man pepper-sprayed a journalist in the face, while she was filming the crowd. “I had to walk off because I literally could not see anything,” the local journalist, Dolores Quintana, told CNN. “And it was getting in my mouth. And so, I was starting to choke.”

She said a volunteer came out of the encampment to wash out her eyes with water and saline. Quintana took a selfie when she could open her eyes again. In the photo, her face was drenched and pale, with red blotches on her forehead.

“This was the worst situation I ever found myself in as a journalist,” she said. “I was afraid they were going to kill somebody.”

According to multiple acquaintances of the man in the maroon hoodie, he attended Los Angeles Valley College with his brother. Both brothers were enrolled at USC in the fall 2023 semester for a couple weeks before disenrolling, according to the school.

CNN could not reach the man in the maroon hoodie, and he did not have any apparent connection to UCLA.

Neither did Tom Bibiyan, a 42-year-old who was once a local Green Party official. Bibiyan was stabbed at a KKK rally where he was a counter-protester in 2016 and has since become an ardent Trump supporter. His colorful Instagram page is a mix of right-wing memes, numerous posts defending famous men against sexual assault allegations and pro-Israel content.

Video footage shows Bibiyan among those at the front line of people rushing the encampment in an attempt to remove protective metal barriers, as campus security guards watched the violence unfold.

“The moment we rushed the terrorist encampment last night at ucla to take it apart,” he captioned a video he posted to Instagram. “F**k them kids,” he said in a separate post, which has since been deleted.

A CNN journalist reached Bibiyan outside his home, wearing the same jacket he had worn at UCLA, but he refused to say why he had taken part in the violence. “You’re being a little rude, and I’m going to call the police if you don’t leave,” he said.

Other older men spotted among the mob looked familiar to local public school mom Angie Givant as she followed what happened that Tuesday night on social media: a group of right-wing provocateurs who she’d seen protesting LGBTQ rights in public schools at school board and city council meetings around Los Angeles.

“As soon as there were rumors that, you know, things were going to go down at UCLA, there was a mobilization of very familiar reactionary extremists,” she told CNN.

One of the older men, Narek Palyan, joined the group of counterprotesters despite having posted anti-Jewish tropes on his social media accounts. Palyan, who didn’t appear to engage in the violence, claimed to CNN he has a child at UCLA, though a student was not seen accompanying him that night. “I was definitely keeping the peace, at least trying to,” he said.

UCLA junior and student journalist Catherine Hamilton said that when a firework landed a few feet away from where she was standing and she saw the men approaching in masks, it was clear to her that they were about to do something they didn’t want to be recognized for.

“In that moment when that firework went off and started ringing in my ears, I was like, something very bad is going to happen on this campus,” she said.

When the police finally arrived hours later to break up the chaos, Hamilton and her colleagues regrouped to head back to their newsroom. As they walked past a line of cops and along a well-lit street in the center of campus, just before 3:30 am, she says they were encircled by a small group of counterprotesters mainly dressed in black. She told CNN the man leading the group was someone whom she immediately recognized. He was a counterprotester who had previously verbally harassed her and taken a photo of her press badge, she said.

Within seconds, they sprayed the student journalists with a type of mace or pepper spray and flashed lights in their faces. As she tried to get away, Hamilton said, she was repeatedly struck in the chest and abdomen.

One of the journalists confronted the attackers and shoved one before he was pummeled to the ground and beaten, according to video footage of the incident.

The day after the attack, UCLA’s chancellor called the events “a dark chapter” in the school’s history that “has shaken our campus to its core.”

A parent who was at the encampment with their child, a UCLA student, also described the night as feeling like “a civil war movie” with embers raining down and the wounded being treated all around. The parent said they were frantic to find help, calling UCLA campus police six times in a row.

One fourth-year UCLA student – who requested anonymity due to safety concerns – told CNN he was hit in the corner of his forehead with a traffic cone. Minutes later, video captured a counterprotester smashing a wooden plank into the back of his head.

With two deep cuts on his head, he said he rushed to the hospital and ultimately received 14 staples and three stitches for the injuries.

The violence directed at the protesters and his access to medical treatment reminded him of why they had set up the encampment in the first place, trying to raise awareness about the mass deaths and destruction from Israel’s war in Gaza, and calling for the university to divest from any financial ties with Israel. “I had the privilege of going to a hospital,” he said. “In Gaza, there are zero fully functioning hospitals.”

Thistle Boosinger, a 23-year-old member of the encampment who is not a UCLA student, had her hand smashed the night of the violence. She described how her assailant took a piece of wood above his head before slamming it down on her hand. “At first, I just screamed,” she said. “And then after like five minutes where my adrenaline wore off, it was so extremely painful.”

In a video call, Boosinger held up her hand wrapped in gauze and described her injury. “My bone is broken totally in half below my knuckle … [which is] shattered into a bunch of pieces and jumbled up.”

Dylan Kupsh, a UCLA graduate student, said he linked arms with other protesters in an attempt to defend the encampment and keep people safe. “We were … trying to keep the barricade wall up because that was literally protecting our lives,” Kupsh said. It wasn’t long before he was pepper sprayed, forcing him to seek medical treatment as the attacks continued.

Kupsh and others still wonder what would have happened had the encampment been breached that night.

“I hate to say it,” said Catherine Hamilton, the student journalist, “but I was expecting us to start working on an obituary the next day because I thought something that serious would happen to the students in the encampment.”

Cops still doing nothing tho.

[Pyperkub]

One thing I realized the other day. These students are so young they have only known Netanyahu's dickhead Israel going full Authoritarian, undermining Obama and BIden, and undermining the 2-state solution with the Settlements, creating NSO spyware for Governments to assassinate dissidents/journos/other, and have only known Hamas in charge of Palestine, with NO elections.

Obviously, that's not all there is to the conflicts in the area, but when your lens is less than 20 years, Israel looks a lot like Iran.

[Kurth]

Obviously, that's not all there is to the conflicts in the area, but when your lens is less than 20 years, Israel looks a lot like Iran.

The first part of that sentence cannot possibly do the work you want it to to sufficiently prevent the second half from being inescapably stupid.

[hepcat]

I think you misunderstood what Pyperkub was trying to say. You have to agree that Netanyahu and his coalition have been the dominant power for quite some time now, and that they have often undermined the work of more reasonable leaders in Israel. Even you yourself have admitted that Netanyahu is a problematic leader. Calling Kub "inescapably stupid" seems unfair in light of that.

[Kurth]

I think you misunderstood what Pyperkub was trying to say. You have to agree that Netanyahu and his coalition have been the dominant power for quite some time now, and that they have often undermined the work of more reasonable leaders in Israel. Even you yourself have admitted that Netanyahu is a problematic leader. Calling Kub "inescapably stupid" seems unfair in light of that.

Absolutely, but to compare Israel to Iran . . .? In what rational, informed world would that make any sense?

And to be clear, I wasn’t trying to say that Pyperkub was “inescapably stupid” (although I get that’s how it came out; sorry!). What I meant was that the generation he was talking about who would look at the history of Israel under Netanyahu and equate it to the Islamic Republic of Iran would be inescapably stupid to make that comparison. It’s ridiculous.

[hepcat]

I think you misunderstood what Pyperkub was trying to say. You have to agree that Netanyahu and his coalition have been the dominant power for quite some time now, and that they have often undermined the work of more reasonable leaders in Israel. Even you yourself have admitted that Netanyahu is a problematic leader. Calling Kub "inescapably stupid" seems unfair in light of that.

Absolutely, but to compare Israel to Iran . . .? In what rational, informed world would that make any sense.

It doesn't make sense. I think that's Kub's point. Some of the younger generation are seeing nothing but Netanyahu being a jerk the last 20 years or so and they're equating that (unfairly) with Iran's behavior. They're not as aware of the history of that region and the politics involved as they're getting just awful news, not the hopeful stuff that would sometimes arise under a different set of leaders.

[Kurth]

I think you misunderstood what Pyperkub was trying to say. You have to agree that Netanyahu and his coalition have been the dominant power for quite some time now, and that they have often undermined the work of more reasonable leaders in Israel. Even you yourself have admitted that Netanyahu is a problematic leader. Calling Kub "inescapably stupid" seems unfair in light of that.

Absolutely, but to compare Israel to Iran . . .? In what rational, informed world would that make any sense.

It doesn't make sense. I think that's Kub's point. Some of the younger generation are seeing nothing but Netanyahu being a jerk the last 20 years or so and they're equating that (unfairly) with Iran's behavior.

Well, that would make them terribly misinformed morons. See my post in the “Too Early to be Drinking about 2024” thread (it will always be that to me now).

[Blackhawk]

If you look into the history, sure. There are more young people who just read/watch the news than there are who actively research the stories. If you just go by the news they've heard over the past couple of decades, Iran seems more tame than history tells us, while Israel seems more monstrous. When it comes right down to it, they'd have heard about significantly more Israeli atrocities and crimes than they have Iranian.

At least that's how I read Pyperkub's statement.

[Victoria Raverna]

I think to claim that the young people lack knowledge and only know the last 20 years of history is probably wrong and looking down on them. I think the young people (the one that know the reason to protest instead of just joining friends) probably know more than average people in US about the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

In the past, people mostly only got news from mainstream news media which in US are mostly biased against Palestinian and more pro Israel. Same with the US government's official statement which are more pro Israel and against Palestinians. The same is true for news in country like Indonesia where the media are more biased against Israel and pro Palestinians.

Now with the internet and easy access to independence news source. There are more fake news but there are also more news source. Which means now people can get news from more sources and don't just getting them from mainstream media. It is harder to control the news that people consume.

[El Guapo]

I think to claim that the young people lack knowledge and only know the last 20 years of history is probably wrong and looking down on them. I think the young people (the one that know the reason to protest instead of just joining friends) probably know more than average people in US about the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

In the past, people mostly only got news from mainstream news media which in US are mostly biased against Palestinian and more pro Israel. Same with the US government's official statement which are more pro Israel and against Palestinians. The same is true for news in country like Indonesia where the media are more biased against Israel and pro Palestinians.

Now with the internet and easy access to independence news source. There are more fake news but there are also more news source. Which means now people can get news from more sources and don't just getting them from mainstream media. It is harder to control the news that people consume.

I don't think it's saying that young people are less informed or are dumber than prior generations. I think the argument is more that the broad lens through which you learn the history and current events is different for this generation than prior generations. For people coming of age in the 1940s through 1960s, for example, their formative memories of Israel is likely to be the Holocaust, and the Arab invasions of Israel in 1948 and 1967. The general lens that's likely to come out of that is an underdog Israel fighting for peace against warlike neighbors.

If you're coming of age in the 2000s+, your lens is more likely to be Israel as a powerful state making violence on subject peoples and neighbors.

It doesn't mean that young people know less or are misinformed, but you figure that's going to color their interpretations of history and current events at least somewhat.

[Holman]

If you're a college student in America today, you almost certainly have had Jewish friends and Jewish teachers/professors.

Condemning what Netanyahu is doing in Gaza seems a lot less antisemitic when those very same Jewish friends and teachers/professors *also* condemn it, which most of them almost certainly do.

[Blackhawk]

I think to claim that the young people lack knowledge and only know the last 20 years of history is probably wrong and looking down on them. I think the young people (the one that know the reason to protest instead of just joining friends) probably know more than average people in US about the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

In the past, people mostly only got news from mainstream news media which in US are mostly biased against Palestinian and more pro Israel. Same with the US government's official statement which are more pro Israel and against Palestinians. The same is true for news in country like Indonesia where the media are more biased against Israel and pro Palestinians.

Now with the internet and easy access to independence news source. There are more fake news but there are also more news source. Which means now people can get news from more sources and don't just getting them from mainstream media. It is harder to control the news that people consume.

I'm not insulting young people, I'm insulting all of us. Something like 70% of Americans don't watch or read any news of any sort whatsoever. Many of those that do only follow current headlines, and don't dig into it - they follow for the drama. That means that, depending on when a particular individual forms their view on something, their knowledge is likely to be completely different.