‘We Will Not Rest’: Jewish UC Berkeley Students March Through Campus Amid Rampant Antisemitism

Hundreds of University of California, Berkeley students, professors, and community members marched through the campus on Monday to “assert Jewish...

The post ‘We Will Not Rest’: Jewish UC Berkeley Students March Through Campus Amid Rampant Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Jewish students, professors, and community members posing for photographs during civil rights march across the University of California, Berkeley campus. Photo: Gil Leeds

Hundreds of University of California, Berkeley students, professors, and community members marched through the campus on Monday to “assert Jewish visibility and presence” following an attack last month on Jewish students attending a talk by an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier.

Starting at Zellerbach Hall on the south side of campus, the marchers, clad in white shirts symbolizing peace and transparency, heard a speech by UC Berkeley Center for Jewish Studies director Ethan Katz, who linked their fight against antisemitism to the US civil rights movement of the 1960s. Proceeding from there, they walked north, attempting to reach California Hall via a footbridge leading from Sather Gate. They were stopped, however, by a barricade erected there by anti-Zionist demonstrators that denied them passage.

Anti-Zionist demonstrators have been staked out at Sather Gate for several weeks in violation of school rules, Daniel Solomon, a UC Berkeley student who helped organize the march, told The Algemeiner on Tuesday. One goal of the demonstration, he said, was to draw attention to such activity, which, he added, has made Sather Gate a site of daily indignities — where Jewish students are bullied, heckled, and intimidated. Eventually, the marchers, forced to find an alternative way to California Hall, crossed Strawberry Creek, which cuts through campus.

“You have to go down about six feet to the stream bed through this steep terrain. I thought our having to do so was just proof for the media and everyone else of what we’ve been going through,” Solomon said during an interview, portions of which were conducted over iMessage. “Having to cross it was very symbolic.”

Explaining that finding their way across a body of water to reach their destination recalled the biblical story of the Exodus — in which the Jewish people, led by Moses and pursued by Pharaoh, crossed the Red Sea to escape slavery in Egypt — Solomon said it was also emblematic of “the obstacles Jews face on campus.” Despite the hindrance, Solomon said he felt the march was a success. The marchers ultimately reached California Hall, where Berkeley City Council member Sophie Hahn (D) told them to remain courageous and optimistic in their striving to overcome injustice.

“The march achieved the aims we set out, asserting the resilience of Jewish students in the face of antisemitism and underscoring the university’s failure to uphold the rights of all on campus,” Solomon said. “The demonstration, in a credit to the community, remained entirely peaceful despite the provocations from counter-protesters. We will not rest until UC Berkeley is once again a safe place for Jewish students.”

Monday’s demonstration took place two weeks after a mob of hundreds of pro-Palestinian students and non-students shut down an event at the UC Berkeley Zellerbach Library featuring Israeli reservist Ran Bar-Yoshafat, forcing Jewish students to flee to a secret safe room as the protesters overwhelmed campus police.

Footage of the incident showed a frenzied mass of anti-Zionist agitators banging on the doors of the Zellerbach. The mob then, according to witnesses, eventually stormed the building — breaking windows in the process, according to reports in The Daily Wire — and precipitated the decision to evacuate the area. During the infiltration of Zellerbach, one of the mob — assembled by Bears for Palestine, which had earlier proclaimed its intention to cancel the event — spit on a Jewish student and called him a “Jew,” pejoratively.

“You know what I was screamed at? ‘Jew, you Jew, you Jew,’ literally right to my face,” the student who was attacked said to a friend. “Some woman — then she spit at me.”

Shaya Keyvanfar, a student, later told The Algemeiner that her sister was spit on and that the incident was unlike any she had ever witnessed.

“Once the doors were closed, the protesters somehow found a side door and pushed it open, and a few of them managed to get in, and once they did, they tried to open the door for the rest of them,” Keyvanfar said. “It was really scary. They were pounding on the windows outside — they broke one — they spit at my sister and others. They called someone a dirty Jew. It was eerie.”

UC Berkeley assistant vice chancellor for communications and public affairs Dan Mogul told The Algemeiner the next day that the incident left a “black mark” on the university’s history and pledged that a full investigation into it will be launched.

“What happened last night was deeply concerning and a violation of some of our most important rules and values as a university, including freedom of speech, respect for diversity, and the ties that bind us together as a community,” Mogul said. “What we saw last night has no recent precedent.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post ‘We Will Not Rest’: Jewish UC Berkeley Students March Through Campus Amid Rampant Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.