The Incident at UC Berkeley on February 26

Hat tip Legal Insurrection

On February 26, there was yet another disruption of an Israel-related speaking event at UC Berkeley. I should be more precise in that the event was disrupted because it was sponsored by a pro-Israel campus group and featured an IDF veteran as speaker. Anti-Israel events are rarely if ever, disrupted.

Subsequently, the Daily Californian, the campus fishwrap, ran an op-ed in which the writer, a first-year student who was present, defended the protest, but in claiming that reports of violence were exaggerated, made a couple of contradictions. 

“On Monday, a coalition of pro-Palestinian student groups hosted a somewhat impromptu protest with the aim of shutting down the speech of Israeli blogger, soldier and self-proclaimed Israeli policy expert Ran Bar-Yoshafat.” 

“In lieu of popular support, I believe that pro-Israel groups and advocates at UC Berkeley campus and in America at large have employed the strategy of perpetuating the perception of pro-Palestinian advocates and groups as violent, unruly and illogical — through the removal of context. The protest at Zellerbach Hall and its surrounding discourse is a tangible example of this rhetoric in action. I attended this protest from start to finish, and the claims that I make about it come from first-hand observation.”

What is obvious in the above op-ed is that the “somewhat impromptu” protest was planned in advance and had as its goal to shut the event and its speaker down. 

The “perception that” pro-Palestinian advocates and groups are violent, unruly, and illogical”? That’s for sure. The anti-Israel mobs have proven that fact time and time again, as they did at UCB on February 26.

In addition, Campus Reform is featuring the account of the incident from a young student from Bears for Israel that is somewhat different from the above account in Daily Californian. In addition, to the broken windows and scuffling with campus police, Danielle Sobkin reports that a female student was choked by the rioters

Apparently, no arrests were made. Par for the course. I don’t know why they even have campus police at UCB. They are no more than potted plants.