Berkeley group refuses to apologize for violent protests, proclaims 'glory' to 'martyrs' and those who fight Israel 'physically'
The University of California, Berkeley, pro-Palestine student organization is refusing to apologize for organizing a violent protest.
The pro-Palestine group instead praised those fighting against the 'Zionist occupation.'
The University of California, Berkeley, pro-Palestine student organization that organized the violent protest on Monday that forced the cancellation of a pro-Israel speaker is refusing to apologize, and instead praised those fighting against the “Zionist occupation.”
The Monday night event featured Ran Bar Yoshafat, a former member of the IDF and lawyer, titled “Israel at War: Combat the Lies,” and was set to address the country’s “international legal challenges,” according to the Daily Californian. It was sponsored by Bears for Israel, Tikvah, Club Z, and the Israeli Consulate to the Pacific Northwest.
UC Berkeley pro-Palestine group Bears for Palestine announced in a social media post before the event that it would be “SHUTTING IT DOWN.”
”In October of 2023, Ran Bar-Yoshafat was serving in the IOF, partaking in the obliteration of Gaza and extermination of Palestinians,” a Sunday post by the group states. “He has now been invited to speak on our campus to spread settler colonial Zionist propaganda about the very genocide he has participated in. This individual is dangerous. Ran Bar-Yoshafat has Palestinian blood on his hands. He has committed crimes against humanity, is a genocide denier, and we will not allow for this event to go on. GENOCIDAL MURDERERS OUT OF BERKELEY.”
The group went on to encourage others to help “shut it down” at 6 p.m. and gave protesters the location of the event, as Campus Reform reported.
Yoshafat was prevented from speaking, as around 200 people mobbed the building and prevented community members from entering the event, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, which reported that doors were broken and the building was evacuated.
Danielle Sobkin, an organizer for the event and co-president of Bears for Israel, told The Chronicle that one of the people in the mob grabbed a sophomore attempting to enter the event and called him a “dirty Jew,” also spitting on him.
Sobkin said that a senior was also shoved into an auditorium door by the protesters and a freshman was grabbed by her neck.
“This isn’t an isolated incident. This is a continuous trend that’s persisted my entire time on campus. Jewish hate. The targeting of Jewish students,” Sobkin said. “For a lot of us, this was the tipping point. The last straw.”
In a lengthy statement made Wednesday night, Bears for Palestine refused to apologize and blasted the university for how it handled the protest.
”Yoshafat, as a dangerous war criminal, was not only welcomed on our campus by various Zionist student groups, but was further protected by UC Berkeley and UCPD at the cost of student safety; an exemplary act of UC Berkeley upholding their values of deeply systemic anti-Palestinian racism that permeates within this institution,” the group wrote. “It is imperative to recognize despite organizers intent on prioritizing community safety and explicit instructions of non-violent protest; there was the unfortunate isolated breaking of a glass window at the event location, in which no individuals were harmed.”
The statement made no mention of accounts from students who were at the event, who claimed protesters were violent towards them.
”We call to attention the institutionalized anti-Palestinian bias that this university consistently perpetuates, as demonstrated by a campus-wide email following the protest, framing it as an ‘attack’ against university values, while lacking any sort of acknowledgement for the Palestinian community members who were physically assaulted by Zionist individuals and UCPD during the protest,” the group wrote. “Glory to Palestine, glory to the resistance, and the utmost glory to our martyrs—whose blood stains the hands of the Zionist occupation & all colonial forces that endorse it.”
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A Bears for Palestine spokesperson told Campus Reform that their usage of the term “The resistance does not refer to Hamas, or any specific militant group,” but rather “any person, globally (including pro-Palestinian allies), that is fighting against Israeli oppression and expansion, whether that is politically, financially, or physically.”
