Anti-Israel protesters at the University of California Los Angeles told a Chabad rabbi he was a “pedophile” and knocked the phone he was carrying out of his hands during clashes on school grounds Monday night.
The incident came as more than two dozen protestors were arrested by the UCL A Police Department on Monday for “willful disruption of university operations.”
While many US colleges and universities ended their spring semester in May, UCLA is on a quarter system and their classes are continuing.
In a video posted on Facebook by Chabad at UCLA, Rabbi Dovid Gurevich can be heard speaking and joking with students as in the background and some distance away people can be heard chanting “Free, free Palestine,” and “There is only one solution, intifada revolution.”
A few minutes later, as the protestors get closer to Gurevich who was recording the protest and standing with some Jewish students words are exchanged when a man whose face is covered in a kefiyyah and a mask knocks the phone from his hand.
“F—king pedophile,” the man yells at the rabbi. He’s soon joined by other protesters who crowd around the rabbi and Jewish students and begin to berate them.
“If you are a Zionist we hate you. We love the good Jews,” says one of the protestors, and “Go back to Poland, Ukraine or wherever you’re from. … Zionists are not Jewish.”
Speaking to the Jewish Chronicle on Tuesday morning, Gurevich said that while the administration is doing more than during previous incidents, it is “still not enough.”
“Until there are real repercussion, such as the expulsions of students, restraining orders against, and the arrest of, outside agitators … the situation will not change,” he said, adding that he would like to see “terrorism supporters here on student visas” be deported, something that could only happen through government action.
According to a release from the UCLA Police Department, more than 100 people affiliated with a “registered student organization” created “unauthorized and unlawful encampments with tents,” and then “restricted access to the general public” and “disrupted” final exams.
The protestors, whose numbers grew throughout the day, damaged a fountain on campus as well as “pray-painted brick walkways, tampered with fire safety equipment, damaged patio furniture, stripped wire from electrical fixtures, and vandalized vehicles.”
Richard Leib, chair of the UC Board of Regents, praised the swift action of the university in removing the new encampments and stopping the protestors, but said that more needs to be done.
“I think Chancellor [Gene] Block did a really good job at removing the encampments,” he said.
Lieb also said that there needs to be an investigation into who was involved in the altercation with Gurevich. If they are students or non-tenured faculty, including graduate students, they need to face a disciplinary hearing and possible suspension, expulsion or termination based on their actions.
“I’m all in favor of peaceful protest, but that means you are not taking away First Amendment rights of others. This is what a small swarm of students, faculty and/or outside agitators are trying to do,” said Leib. “These are not organic protests that are happening all over the nation.These are highly organized, national movements and we need to take swift action because their intent is to provoke people leading to potentially violent situations.”
