Jewish students at UC Berkeley have spoken out about a night of campus protests which saw them evacuated from a university venue after receiving antisemitic abuse from pro-Palestine demonstrators.
The protestors, who chanted derogatory terms like “dirty Jews”, “Nazi” and “pigs”, gathered outside an event hosted by pro-Israel groups at the university where former IDF soldier Ran Bar-Yoshafat was set to speak.
Crowds chanted “killers on campus”, “long live the intifada”, and “hey hey, ho ho, the occupation has got to go”, according to UCB student paper the Daily Californian.
Sharon Knafelman, a second-year student, said the “barrage” of demonstrators meant only a third of attendees made it into the venue, and two of her friends were assaulted after UCPD officers refused to escort them inside.
Protestors chanted derogatory terms like “dirty Jews”, “Nazi” and “pigs”
Sharon Knafelman
She said: “I enter the building, and I am full of anxiety… All of us feel panicked because we see the mob outside, and we understand there’s a threat to our safety.”
Knafelman told Fox News: “This was being used in Europe against Jews centuries ago. We were called dirty pigs, even swine, and it's being used at us again.”
“I think that experience in itself – that I had to be hidden, almost, as a Jewish student in a university that’s public, that I pay for, that I’m a part of, makes me feel like I’m not safe here and I’m not welcome here.”
First-year student Elijah Feldman said: “Within five minutes or so of them getting there, they started to get really aggressive, pushing toward the doors.”
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A UCB spokesperson said yesterday that the university had opened a formal criminal investigation into the event, adding: “We believe there should be consequences for the kind of behaviour that we saw on Monday night.”
Berkeley’s Chancellor Carol Christ and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Benjamin Hermalin released a statement on Tuesday decrying the protest as “an attack on the fundamental values” of the university.
The statement read: “We write to you today with great sadness, concern, and dismay in the wake of an incident on our campus last night, an incident that violated not only our rules, but also some of our most fundamental values.
“We want to express our deep remorse and sympathy to those students and members of the public who were in the building fearing for their safety.
“We deeply respect the right to protest as intrinsic to the values of a democracy and an institution of higher education – yet we cannot ignore protest activity that interferes with the rights of others to hear and/or express perspectives of their choosing.
“We cannot allow the use or threat of force to violate the First Amendment rights of a speaker, no matter how much we might disagree with their views.
“We cannot allow the use or threat of force to imperil members of our community and deny them the ability to feel safe and welcome on our campus.
“We cannot cede our values to those willing to engage in transgressive behaviour.”