Department of Education investigating UC Berkeley after violent mob shut down Jewish event
The University of California, Berkeley is under a federal investigation after pro-Palestine protesters shut down an event that featured a former Israel Defence Forces member on Feb. 26.
The University of California, Berkeley is under a federal investigation after pro-Palestine protesters shut down an event that featured a former Israel Defence Forces member on Feb. 26.
The event featured Ran Bar Yoshafat, a former member of the IDF and lawyer, was titled “Israel at War: Combat the Lies,” and would 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.
According to the Times of Israel, the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights announced a “shared ancestry” investigation on Tuesday, just over a week after the event took place.
While the Education Department typically doesn’t comment on such complaint, a spokesperson told the Jewish Telegraph Agency that the investigation “has to do with the events of February 26th.”
As Campus Reform previously wrote, at the protest, which was organized in part by Bears for Palestine, a Pro-Palestine group at the University of California, Berkeley, Jewish students reported several violent incidents.
In a Monday statement, UC Berkeley administrators announced the opening of a criminal hate crime investigation, stating it had received reports of physical battery.
”After we sent last week’s message, UCPD and OPHD received reports that two of the Jewish students who organized the event, as well as some of the attendees, were subjected to overtly antisemitic expression. UCPD is investigating these two alleged incidents, which also included allegations of physical battery, as hate crimes. They are also investigating other reports of illegal conduct, including one additional allegation of physical battery upon a student. One criminal suspect has been identified to date, for trespassing,” administrators said.
The administrators also wrote that the protests were “unacceptable” and weren’t in alignment with the First Amendment:
”In the wake of protesters’ efforts to shut down the event, a criminal investigation has been launched. We intend to gain a complete picture of what happened and hold accountable individuals or groups responsible for violations of the law and/or our policies,” they wrote. “This university has a long history of commitment to and support for nonviolent political protest that respects the First Amendment rights of others. That is not what occurred on Feb. 26. It was not peaceful civil disobedience. We condemn it in the strongest possible terms.”
Danielle Sobkin, an organizer for the event and co-president of Bears for Israel, told the San Francisco 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.”
The protesters successfully prevented Yoshafat from speaking, as windows were smashed and around 200 protesters mobbed the building, preventing others from entering, as Campus Reform previously reported.
