[News] UCLA’s Unholy Alliance

[Anti-Imperialist News]

bostonreview.net 
<https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/uclas-unholy-alliance/>


  UCLA’s Unholy Alliance

Robin D. G. Kelley
May 18, 2024
------------------------------------------------------------------------

In December the House Committee on Education and the Workforce held a 
hearing on anti-Semitism on college campuses that forced University of 
Pennsylvania president Liz McGill and Harvard University president 
Claudine Gay to resign in its wake. In April the committee held another 
hearing, reducing Columbia University President Minouche Shafik, keen to 
avoid the fate of her counterparts, to a groveling mess. On May 23 it 
will hold yet another, under the title “Calling for Accountability: 
Stopping Antisemitic College Chaos.”

This time the committee has summoned Michael Schill, president of 
Northwestern University; Jonathan Holloway, president of Rutgers 
University; and Gene Block, Chancellor of the University of California, 
Los Angeles. We expect another show trial, where committee chair 
Virginia Foxx (Republican of North Carolina), Elise Stefanik (Republican 
of New York), and their friends pressure “liberal” university leaders 
into confessing that anti-Semitism has run amok on college campuses, 
that Jewish students are the real victims of a Hamas-backed genocide 
being plotted in Gaza solidarity encampments and the classrooms of 
tenured radicals, and that the source of Jew hatred is critical race 
theory. The committee has promised that it will not sit idly by. In a 
press release, Foxx warned 
<https://edworkforce.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=410503> 
“mealy-mouthed, spineless college leaders” that “College is not a park 
for playacting juveniles or a battleground for radical activists. 
Everyone affiliated with these universities will receive a healthy dose 
of reality: actions have consequences.”

The House Committee hearings chose only to summon college presidents for 
a public tongue-lashing and dressing-down. This is because House 
Republicans are less interested in anti-Semitism than racking up 
“gotcha” soundbites for their fundraising campaigns, advancing the 
right-wing assault on DEI and what they define as “critical race 
theory,” and attacking the university as a whole. According to /Inside 
Higher Ed/, Foxx confirmed 
<https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/2024/04/16/higher-ed-braces-another-round-congressional-grilling> 
that “the inquiries could broaden to include the universities’ 
diversity, equity and inclusion politics.” If Foxx, Stefanik, and fellow 
House Republicans were genuinely concerned about anti-Semitism, they 
would investigate the white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and QAnon 
conspiracy theorists who make up part of their base and participated in 
the January 6 insurrection. Parroting Donald Trump, Stefanik referred to 
the men and women convicted on charges ranging from obstruction to 
assaulting a law enforcement officer as “hostages.” Foxx not only voted 
against certifying the 2020 election but, like Stefanik and fellow House 
Republicans, vehemently opposed the commission to investigate the 
capitol riot.

The charges Chancellor Block will face exonerate those responsible for 
the worst incident of anti-Semitic violence in UCLA’s history.

Unlike the January 6 hearings, Foxx’s committee has produced very little 
evidence of anti-Semitism outside of words and slogans either taken out 
of context or misinterpreted. Stefanik, for example, managed to turn 
“intifada,” which literally means “shaking off” or “uprising,” into 
“genocide of Jews.” But Chancellor Block’s testimony will be different. 
It will give the committee an opportunity to investigate not only a 
verifiable and egregious incident of anti-Semitism, but one involving 
white nationalists and neo-Nazis.

Between April 25 and May 2, UCLA experienced the worst episode of /both/ 
anti-Semitic and anti-Palestinian/Islamophobic/racist violence in the 
university’s century-long history. Proud Boys, white nationalists, and 
neo-Nazis joined forces with Zionists (including some self-declared 
Israelis) to attack UCLA’s Palestine Solidarity Encampment, whose 
residents included a large number of Jewish students. The assailants 
were not affiliated with the university. One neo-Nazi, identified later 
as a member of the Proud Boys, was heard shouting, “we’re here to finish 
what Hitler started,” without any apparent protest from the 
self-identified Zionists. Using metal pipes, wooden planks, fists, 
knives, bricks, noise, chemical weapons, and incendiary fireworks, the 
mob sent at least twenty-five students to the hospital for broken bones, 
head trauma, and severe lacerations, while police stood by and watched 
for hours, electing to neither detain nor interrogate the perpetrators. 
No arrests took place that night. The following day, only students and 
faculty defending the encampment were arrested.

Although Block has promised to launch a full investigation, reporting 
<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/03/us/ucla-protests-encampment-violence.html> 
from various media outlets (including outstanding coverage 
<https://dailybruin.com/2024/05/07/i-thought-i-was-going-to-die-ucla-encampment-protesters-recall-april-30-attack> 
by our student paper, /The Daily Bruin/), along with hundreds of hours 
of video captured by students, faculty and observers, prove beyond a 
shadow of a doubt that the Palestine Solidarity Encampment—a nonviolent 
occupation erected to protest U.S. support for the genocide in Gaza and 
to demand that UCLA divest from companies that fuel Israel’s war and 
occupation, exercise financial transparency, break ties with Israeli 
universities, and acknowledge the loss of Palestinian life—came under 
brutal attack from its very inception and the administration did nothing 
to protect our students.

Given Block’s fervent opposition to anti-Semitism and his unwavering 
defense of Israel and Zionism, why are House Republicans going after 
him? Are they really concerned about the assault on the encampment and 
the health and safety of our students? To the contrary, Foxx has crafted 
an indictment designed to shield white nationalists from accountability 
and prosecution for their rabid anti-Semitism by magically recasting 
neo-Nazis as encampment /defenders/ rather than assailants, and by 
twisting information, repeating misinformation, and conveying outright 
falsehoods fed to the committee by Israel advocacy organizations such as 
the AMCHA Initiative, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), American Israel 
Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and Stand With Us; right-wing media 
outlets such as /Campus Reform/, /Legal Insurrection/, and Fox News; and 
isolated tweets and Instagram posts. Foxx’s letter 
<https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/ucla_final.pdf> notifying 
Block of the charges against him makes the wildly specious claim that “a 
van displaying the Star of David inside a Nazi swastika, as well as 
antisemitic writing referring to Jews as ‘puppet masters,’ was parked on 
UCLA’s campus in support of the encampment.” It repeats false claims 
that journalists who tried to enter the encampment were “assaulted,” but 
never mentions the documented fact that in the wee hours of May 1, four 
student journalists with the /Daily Bruin/ were tracked down, maced, and 
severely beaten by members of the mob —sending one 
<https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-01/four-student-journalists-attacked-by-counterprotesters-at-ucla>, 
Catherine Hamilton, to the hospital. The letter also repeats the 
thoroughly debunked rumor that “anti-Israel activists shoved a Jewish 
student counter-protestor . . . kicked her in the head, and stepped on 
her. The assault left her bleeding and caused her to lose consciousness 
and to be rushed to the hospital.” Immediately after the story began 
circulating on social media, the /Los Angeles Times/ interviewed 
<https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-10/how-social-media-rumors-sparked-a-night-of-mayhem-at-ucla> 
the woman in question who explained that she had been accidentally 
shoved by a fellow counterprotester “while attempting to retrieve her 
fallen [Israeli] flag.”

The letter never mentions that self-proclaimed Zionists took part in the 
attacks, nor does it acknowledge that the encampment had actually been 
attacked. Instead, Foxx labels the victims of mob and police violence 
“antisemitic rioters.” She finds evidence of rampant anti-Semitism in 
the Undergraduate Student Association Council’s (USAC) resolution 
calling for amnesty for those arrested, the elimination of police on 
campus, and, in her words, “a “permanent ceasefire” and an end to what 
they allege is a “genocide in Palestine.” Finally, she makes the absurd 
claim that the resolution asks professors to hold Muslim and Palestinian 
students “to lower academic standards.” In actuality 
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/19g5EXnKlBeZt3oCtgEqLHCfjg4fN7Gi4EqtPz_nlESs/edit>, 
it asks for temporary academic leniency “and to take into account the 
needs of all students during this time, but especially those of 
Palestinian and Muslim identities who are the most unsafe and targeted 
individuals on campus right now.”

There are many more examples of misinformation that I will address 
below. My point is that the list of charges Chancellor Block will face 
on May 23 performs double duty in that it defends Israel’s genocidal war 
and exonerates white supremacists and Zionists responsible for the worst 
incident of anti-Semitic violence in UCLA’s history. Foxx and Stefanik 
will undoubtedly demand Block’s resignation. A large proportion of the 
faculty and students at UCLA is also calling for Block’s resignation, 
but for very different reasons.

UCLA’s Task Force on Anti-Palestinian, Anti-Muslim, and Anti-Arab 
Racism, of which I am a member, conducted its own investigation, and 
released a report with its findings earlier this week. The report 
<https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/45989> holds Block and his 
administration, along with various branches of law enforcement, 
responsible for failing to protect our students. UCLA’s administration, 
it finds, not only failed to direct law enforcement to arrest and remove 
the armed mob but indirectly incited the violence by inviting “counter 
protesters” to come on to our campus, hold inflammatory rallies a few 
feet from the encampment, and allow them to remain in the name of 
protecting “free speech” and upholding their responsibility as a “public 
university” to grant the “community” access to campus. It seems clear in 
hindsight that permitting hostile groups to harass and attack the 
encampment is one strategy to avoid the optics of sending in the police 
to attack students. If that was the strategy, it didn’t work. The 
administration probably did not anticipate an unholy alliance of 
neo-Nazis and Zionists working together, but those of us who spent more 
than a decade criticizing Chancellor Block’s unremitting hostility 
toward critics of Israel and his fervent defense of Zionism could have 
predicted this outcome—especially after October 7.

The following account draws on findings from our report and provides a 
broader context but does not purport to speak for the entire task force.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

*Intolerance and its Discontents*

As I write, UAW Local 4811, representing some forty-eight thousand 
postdocs, teaching assistants, academic and student researchers, tutors, 
and readers across the University of California system, is preparing to 
strike over the administration’s conduct with respect to the encampment. 
The union is demanding, among other things, amnesty for all academic 
employees, students, faculty, and staff facing criminal or disciplinary 
charges for protesting; the right to free speech; divestment from UC’s 
known investments in weapons manufacturers, military contractors, and 
companies profiting from Israel’s war on Palestine; and disclosure of 
all funding sources and investments. UCLA faculty are pushing 
<https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-11/ucla-chancellor-faces-faculty-criticism> 
for a vote of no confidence, or at minimum, “censure” of Chancellor 
Block for failing to keep our students safe. Some argue that the vote is 
merely symbolic, both because the faculty do not have the power to 
remove the Chancellor and because Block is just two months from retirement.

The administration probably did not anticipate an unholy alliance of 
neo-Nazis and Zionists working together.

By most standards, his seventeen-year tenure has been a success. Under 
his leadership, UCLA rose in the /U.S. News and World Report/ rankings 
from the twenty-sixth best public university in the country to the 
first, and its endowment swelled 
<https://dailybruin.com/2023/09/21/gene-block-and-faculty-reflect-on-blocks-time-as-chancellor-of-ucla> 
from $2.2 billion to $7.7 billion. The grandson of working-class Eastern 
European Jews, Block proudly identifies as a liberal who believes in 
diversity and racial equity. He often speaks of his experiences as an 
undergraduate at Stanford (1966–70) when he opposed the war in Vietnam. 
He is way too liberal for House Republicans, who are poised to make him 
their latest punching bag. But his liberalism ends when it comes to 
Palestine.

Since I joined the UCLA faculty in 2011, I’ve seen colleagues targeted 
for teaching critical perspectives on Israel, and Muslim and Arab 
students profiled by campus police and subject to racist epithets and 
graffiti. In 2012 a UC “President’s Advisory Council” issued a report on 
the campus climate asserting that Students for Justice in Palestine 
(SJP) and “anti-Zionism and Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) 
movements and other manifestations of anti-Israel sentiment” created a 
hostile environment for Jewish students. It warned faculty that 
criticizing Israel or Israeli policies in the classroom was tantamount 
to using “the academic platforms to denounce the Jewish state and Jewish 
nationalist aspirations.” The report recommended, among other things, 
suspending support for Palestine Awareness Week from any university 
sponsorship and adopting a hate speech policy that would not only mute 
criticisms of Israel but prohibit outside speakers deemed advocates of 
hate.  The report was so extreme and biased that over two thousand 
faculty signed a petition asking the UC Regents to reject its findings. 
Ultimately, UC President Mark Yudof rejected the report, since its 
recommendations violated the First Amendment. But while we succeeded in 
pressing the UC Regents, students and faculty at UCLA could not persuade 
Chancellor Block to openly denounce it.

In 2014 students seeking to divest student council funds from companies 
doing business in the Palestinian occupied territories learned that some 
members of student government had accepted paid-for trips to Israel 
sponsored by the ADL, AIPAC, Hasbara Fellowships, and other 
organizations that not only lobbied on behalf of Israel but promoted 
“discriminatory and Islamophobic positions.” SJP argued before the 
student judicial council that the members who accepted these trips had a 
conflict of interest in any government resolutions regarding divestment, 
since the organizations furnishing them were firmly opposed to campus 
divestment movements. They also asked candidates running for student 
government to take an ethics pledge committing to decline free trips to 
Israel paid for by those organizations—provoking a vicious backlash from 
the AMCHA Initiative, who accused the students raising these issues of 
“intimidation,” “harassment,” and making Jewish students feel unsafe.

In reality, pro-Zionist retaliation made pro-divestment students 
/actually/ unsafe. Zionist organizations not affiliated with the 
university came on campus, filmed students without their consent, 
engaged in online harassment, and arranged visits by Israeli soldiers in 
full military uniform. Rather than condemn these intimidation tactics, 
Block chastised the students for proposing divestment in the first 
place. He stated 
<https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/ucla-chancellor-gene-block-statement-on-student-vote-on-israel-divestment> 
flatly that the UC Regents “does not support divestment in companies 
that engage in business with Israel” and that “divestment decisions 
should not hold any one organization or country to a different standard 
than any other.” He refused to meet with SJP, but he did meet with 
representatives of the AMCHA Initiative to hear their demands to 
investigate SJP. The divestment campaign also triggered a resolution 
from the Los Angeles City Council condemning SJP’s actions as “bullying” 
and “harassment” and requesting that UC administrators “refer cases of 
‘intimidation or harassment’ to ‘the proper law enforcement agencies.’” 
And while Block’s administration was busy painting 
<https://newsroom.ucla.edu/a-message-from-chancellor-block-on-the-importance-of-civil-discourse> 
campus divestment advocates as closed-minded and intolerant, it was the 
other side who was moving to shut down  opposing speech. That same year, 
UCLA Hillel worked with a public relations firm to “‘isolate’ SJP on 
campus and to paint the group as ‘unrepresentative,’” in the words of a 
leaked email.

Despite these tactics, in November 2014 a coalition of more than thirty 
student groups passed a resolution calling on student government “to 
divest from companies engaged in violence against Palestinians.” In 
response, the David Horowitz Freedom Center (DHFC)—which has been 
designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center—plastered 
posters all over campus and in the surrounding neighborhood accusing SJP 
and individual faculty members of terrorism and anti-Semitism. The names 
of individual students and faculty were printed on posters under the 
slogan “Combat Jew Hatred on College Campuses.” At the time, only the 
Vice Chancellor of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Jerry Kang, issued 
a strong campuswide statement condemning the posters as racist 
fear-mongering. Chancellor Block was silent.

Student council remained a contested terrain over Israel and divestment. 
In 2015 three students unaffiliated with SJP questioned Rachel Beyda, a 
nominee for USAC’s Judicial Board, about her ability to remain objective 
on the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” because of her Jewish identity. 
Foxx resurrects this incident as evidence of USAC’s “deeply concerning 
history of retribution against students who speak against anti-Jewish 
bigotry on campus.” What she omits from the story is that the students 
who opened the line of questioning were swiftly censured and offered 
<https://dailybruin.com/2015/02/20/submission-usac-members-apologize-to-jewish-community> 
apologies, and that Beyda was unanimously appointed to the committee. 
SJP also condemned “the questioning of Beyda or anyone else based on 
their identity,” adding that its members “believe in the inherent 
equality and right to freedom for all people, a stance that inspires us 
to both support the Palestinian call for BDS as well as to oppose 
incidents like that which befell Beyda.”

We can point to many more examples, such as Block’s November 2018 /Los 
Angeles Times/ op-ed explaining why he “allowed” SJP to hold its 
National Conference at UCLA. After claiming that “some” feared the 
conference “will be infused with anti-Semitic rhetoric” expressed by 
people who embrace “a double standard that demonizes the world’s only 
Jewish state while other countries receive less condemnation for 
dreadful behavior,” Block invoked 
<https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-block-ucla-students-for-justice-in-palestine-conference-20181112-story.html> 
the principle of free speech to justify his decision to let it proceed. 
But the damage had been done.

Block was silent when a hate group plastered posters all over campus 
accusing SJP and individual faculty members of anti-Semitism.

This decade-long trail of evidence indicates that Block has maintained a 
consistent anti-Palestinian bias, giving Zionist and pro-Israeli groups 
such as AMCHA Initiative outsized influence over university policy and 
carte blanche to come onto campus and intimidate students and faculty 
without consequence. The mere fact that DHFC could access our campus 
under the cynical guise of protecting Jewish students presaged the 
crisis we now face.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

*The Winds of October*

Our students were deeply affected by the events of October 7. The nearly 
350 students enrolled in my lecture course on the history of 
neoliberalism were genuinely shell-shocked, saddened by the immediate 
loss of life. When a couple of Jewish students told me they felt unsafe 
on campus, I encouraged them to stay home and listen to the recorded 
lectures. We mourned the loss of life—not just the 695 Israeli 
civilians, but the 26 Arab-Israeli citizens (mostly Bedouin), the 71 
Thai and Nepalese migrant workers, and even the 373 police and soldiers 
who were official combatants.

But before the official death toll and hostage count were complete, 
Israel had begun its breathtaking war of extermination. As the death 
toll in Gaza rose exponentially, students and colleagues told of losing 
dozens of family members, including cousins they had never gotten the 
chance to meet. They felt betrayed when Block and UC President Michael 
Drake spoke on behalf of the university, affirming that “we” stand with 
Israel but saying nothing about the slaughter of Palestinians, the 
leveling of universities, schools, hospitals, and homes, and the 
displacement of more than 75 percent of Gaza’s population. When students 
and faculty began to criticize the war and deploy the word “genocide,” 
many were threatened, doxxed, and subjected to investigation by 
colleagues who weaponized Title VI complaints and the university 
grievance process to attack anyone critical of Israel or Zionism. 
Statements decrying the loss of Palestinian life, Israeli war crimes, 
and U.S. complicity were deemed anti-Semitic and “pro-Hamas.”

Unfazed by these patently false accusations, SJP and the UC Divest 
Coalition organized a mass march and rally on campus on October 25, 
calling for an immediate ceasefire and divestment. Unsurprisingly, Block 
found the speakers’ rhetoric “hateful” and “antisemitic,” cherry-picking 
a few ill-informed and unsanctioned actions unrepresentative of the 
spirit or intent of the march. More significant is the fact that the 
administration ignored the Undergraduate Students Association Council’s 
Cultural Affairs Commission (CAC) warning that

    Zionists who do not attend this school are being allowed entry into
    UCLA to freely harass students. It speaks volumes of the level of
    unsafety that our students are facing. . . . Various attacks like
    these have been happening on campus for weeks and UCLA has not done
    a sufficient job to intervene or even condemn harm against students
    who support Palestine.

They made a direct appeal 
<https://www.instagram.com/p/CzXnL2ELkpd/?img_index=1> to UC leaders to

    protect students from the violence that is waged by both students
    and non-students on your own campuses. We call on campus resources
    to be more accessible to students facing imminent and indirect
    danger from islamophobic, zionist, and anti-Palestinian violence. It
    is unacceptable that agitators, especially non-students, are able to
    access student-led spaces like Kerckhoff [Hall] to harass and
    threaten students.

The attacks on faculty and students ramped up when a group 
<https://dailybruin.com/2023/12/05/op-ed-ucla-must-condemn-hamas-attacks-fight-antisemitism-on-campus> 
calling itself “UCLA Faculty Against Terror,” led by Professor Judea 
Pearl, branded the student antiwar movement as anti-Semitic and 
“incitement.” Pearl himself labeled these students “pro-Hamas,” 
endangering antiwar students, faculty, and staff and putting a chilling 
effect on speech as well as on the urgent effort to secure a ceasefire. 
In response, well over 250 of our colleagues signed a letter 
<https://dailybruin.com/2023/12/05/op-ed-ucla-must-protect-free-speech-academic-freedom-of-those-advocating-for-palestine> 
expressing our concerns over the attack on academic freedom, the safety 
of our students, and the administration’s indifference to Palestinian 
suffering. A meeting with Chancellor Block and Executive Vice Chancellor 
and Provost Darnell Hunt in November ultimately led to the creation of 
our group, the Task Force on Anti-Palestinian, Anti-Muslim, and 
Anti-Arab Racism, along with a Task Force on Antisemitism and 
Anti-Israeli Hostility. Our taskforce’s goals were to inform campus 
leadership of the hostile climate faced by Arab and Muslim students as 
well as student groups protesting Israel’s assault on Gaza; to urge 
Block to affirm the value of Palestinian life publicly and 
unequivocally, to make a clear statement rejecting the conflation of 
anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism; and to back up any statement with 
action. To date, none of our objectives have been met.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

*A Beautiful Experiment Under Siege*

Five months later, the UCLA Palestine Solidarity Encampment was up. 
Erected on Royce Quad on Thursday morning, April 25, it was one of the 
greatest examples of principled protest, nonviolent civil disobedience, 
collective education, and political resistance I have ever seen. The 
encampment was a multiracial, multinational, and gender-diverse 
assembly, composed of undergraduate and graduate students from across 
campus. Residents were required to sign a community agreement outlining 
shared principles and behavior, and those who were willing to risk 
arrest or assume security duties underwent training in de-escalation 
tactics. All faiths were welcome, and so were families with children. 
The encampment fed everyone, thanks to donations, volunteers, and the 
labor of Strike Kitchen—an autonomous student-run outfit formed during 
last year’s historic UC-wide graduate student workers’ strike.

Protesters took special care to ensure everyone’s safety. One member of 
the community had a banana allergy, so signs were posted prohibiting 
bananas in the encampment. They made art, created a People’s Library, 
watched and discussed films, organized reading groups and teach-ins on a 
range of topics: Kashmir, Frantz Fanon’s /The Wretched of the Earth/, 
local tenants’ rights struggles, and of course, Palestine. They never 
lost sight of why they were: to stop the genocide in Gaza, divest, and 
fight for a free Palestine. The encampment offered a more enriching and 
interdisciplinary learning space than what many students found in their 
classrooms. As one fourth-year student explained to me, “My time in the 
encampment was actually a very positive experience. Yes, the shit was 
scary. I’m not going to lie. . . . I loved the community, and I felt 
safer in the encampment than I felt on any other part of the campus.” 
Another young woman, a first-year student of mine, was awestruck by 
people’s eagerness to share with and care for one another, and the fact 
that she could eat without having to pull out her meal card or wallet. 
“Is this communism?” she asked.

As with any experiment, the encampment was hardly perfect. Managing 
security, food, hygiene, health, space, negotiations, personalities, and 
political disagreements while establishing a certain level of discipline 
among hundreds of young people is hard enough. I don’t doubt that there 
have been tensions, divisions, and missteps within the ranks, but 
encampment leaders created a system of accountability to address and 
redirect these disruptions critically and empathetically.

One agitator shouted at students, “We’re not American Jews! We’re 
Israelis! You stand up against us, we’ll fucking slit your throat.”

They soon had to operate under a state of siege. Counterprotesters who 
identified as Zionists began trickling into the camp around noon on the 
first day. They heckled people with racial and homophobic slurs and 
comments: “You’re cool with rape?”, “You’re a jihadist,” “You’re a 
terrorist,” “Hamas would kill you fags.” Some entered the encampment 
without authorization and physically attacked the students. On April 25 
a man walked through the encampment carrying a sign that read “Israel is 
not apartheid. Come talk,” and proceeded to steal a student’s keffiyeh, 
pour water over chalk art, and assault 
<https://drive.google.com/file/d/14V3ZnLoYtbTNx5S8QseoRGfX_g6fkpAI/view> 
a Black woman who tried to take his sign. Even as the harassment 
intensified, lead security organizers urged students to stand down. “By 
engaging with them we’re only opening the risk for the community to get 
hurt,” one organizer texted me. “I understand they make really heinous 
comments, but we need to keep in mind that these people should not be 
the focus, we should be the focus, our community should be the focus, 
and sustaining this encampment until we reach FULL DIVESTMENT is our focus.”

The agitators showed up around 4:00 a.m. the next morning, shouting 
“Death to Hamas,” “Wake up commies, it’s time to work,” and “Fuck Allah” 
and spraying students with bear spray and other chemical agents. As 
their numbers grew over the next couple of days, the mob became more 
aggressive. They sexually harassed women in the encampment, blasted loud 
music, screamed throughout Muslim prayer times, and brought bunches of 
bananas to throw into the encampment—which terrified and drove out the 
student with the allergy. Instead of barring the agitators from campus 
and providing more security, the UCLA administration granted 
counterprotesters a permit to assemble 
<https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/may/under-the-jumbotron> a Jumbotron 
adjacent to the encampment for a pro-Israel rally on Sunday, April 28. 
The massive concert-grade flat-screen TV equipped with powerful speakers 
was paid for by a GoFundMe account that had raised over $70,000, and was 
protected by private security guards employed by the Apex Security 
Group. Supporters of the encampment regarded the university’s decision 
to permit outside groups to rally against a peaceful student-run 
assembly, which the administration refused to recognize or authorize, as 
a hostile act of incitement.

The rally, sponsored by the Israeli American Council, attracted between 
eight hundred and one thousand people. Speakers included State Assembly 
member Rick Chavez Zbur, Hillel at UCLA executive director Dan Gold, 
student council candidate Eli Tsives (who had been photographed shaking 
hands with a UCLA Police Department (UCPD) officer), regional Consul 
General of Israel Israel Bachar, and ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. In 
between speeches denouncing the encampment as anti-Semitic and defending 
Israel’s aggression, the Jumbotron blasted the U.S. national anthem and 
clips about the October 7 attacks, and counterprotesters carrying 
Israeli flags verbally and physically attacked 
<https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6XK09SP6aQ/> our students. They were 
pushed, punched, spat upon, called “dogs,” “whores” (/sharmuta/ in 
Hebrew), “bitch-ass n—,” and told to “listen to your master” and that 
“Hamas would rape and murder you for what you’re wearing, sweetheart.” 
One agitator shouted, “We’re not American Jews! We’re Israelis! You 
stand up against us, we’ll fucking slit your throat.” The attacks 
continued well into the night. At around 1:30 a.m. someone emptied 
<https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6WwbyQy8fe/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3D> 
a backpack full of mice injected with an unknown substance into the 
encampment.

The permit for the Jumbotron expired Sunday afternoon, but the 
university allowed it to remain, where it continued to be weaponized 
against the encampment. All students passing by the quad, whether or not 
they had anything to do with the encampment, endured near-continuous 
video loops of the October 7 attacks, audio clips with graphic 
descriptions of rape and sexual violence, sounds of gunshots and 
screaming babies, clips of President Biden pledging unconditional 
support for Israel, and loud music, including the children’s song 
“Mamtera Im Matara,” which Israeli soldiers and West Bank settlers have 
been documented playing on hours-long loops for captive Palestinians. 
The taunts and harassment continued throughout the day. One inebriated 
agitator harassed several Black women and femmes working security, 
calling them “slaves” and threatening rape. Later that night, several 
agitators broke through the encampment barriers and attacked students 
and pepper sprayed one of the security guards hired by UCLA.

Students complained about the attacks to UCPD, administrators, and 
trusted faculty. Several filed reports to our office of Equity, 
Diversity, and Inclusion. Campus security’s failure to protect our 
students prompted a faculty walkout on Monday, April 29. The next day 
Block issued a statement 
<https://chancellor.ucla.edu/messages/affirming-our-values-in-a-challenging-time/> 
calling the encampment “unauthorized” and condemning tactics he found 
“shocking and shameful.” He did not mention the violence committed by 
the Zionists, the slurs and epithets, the Jumbotron, or the mice attack. 
Instead, he only identifies reports that “students on their way to class 
have been physically blocked from accessing parts of the campus. . . . 
These incidents have put many on our campus, especially our Jewish 
students, in a state of anxiety and fear.”

The problem is, it wasn’t true. All buildings and classrooms remained 
accessible. Campus security closed off particular entrances to buildings 
facing the quad, but that decision was authorized by the administration. 
Student-appointed security leads asked passers-by to go around the 
encampment in order to limit congestion and the risk of Covid infection 
(masks were required). Nevertheless, a video taken by a Jewish student 
demanding to pass through the encampment rather than walk around went 
viral. The student’s mother circulated 
<https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-10/how-social-media-rumors-sparked-a-night-of-mayhem-at-ucla> 
the video as evidence that Jews were being denied access to classrooms. 
This was Block’s smoking gun. Soon it would become Virginia Foxx’s as 
well, evidence that Jewish students were subject to “pervasive civil 
rights violations and harassment.”

If Block’s statement was intended to quell potential violence, it had 
the opposite effect. The video and the message paved the way for the 
April 30 assault. That night Zionist agitators, alongside Proud Boys and 
other neo-Nazis, came armed with bear mace and other chemical irritants, 
hammers, knives, stink bombs, high-grade fireworks, metal and wooden 
rods, and, according to some reports, a gun. The attack began with loud 
recordings of screaming babies, followed by a fusillade of fireworks 
shot directly into the encampment. Men in full-faced white masks broke 
down the barriers and began attacking students with metal rods, chunks 
of wood, stink bombs, bear mace and tear gas. One student recalled 
seeing “planks of wood come sailing into the camp and strike some girl 
in the back of the head and she just fell to the ground.” Another 
student was struck in the back of the head by fireworks and had to be 
hospitalized. The medics were simply overwhelmed, forcing students with 
little experience to attend to wounds. “People were crying and being 
like, ‘Can you call my mom, I need to call my mom, please help me’. . . 
. We were trying to do the best that we could but we ran out of saline 
needed to flush the chemicals out of people’s eyes,” one told me.

As of this writing, not a single assailant has been arrested or questioned.

As objects rained down on them, the leads shouted “Don’t throw back! 
Don’t engage!” and implored campus security to intervene. They refused, 
choosing instead to retreat inside of Royce Hall. UCLA alumnus Ismael 
Sindha, who was later treated for chemical burns, heard attackers shout, 
“I’ll kill you,” “I’ll rape your sister,” and “What Israel does to Gaza, 
we’ll do to you.” Students under siege and their family and friends 
inundated UCPD with calls for help, only to be told that the situation 
was “under control” and for the operators to hang up on them. The 
California Highway Patrol and LAPD showed up just before midnight but 
sat idle for three hours watching the violence unfold. People inside the 
encampment were left on their own to care for the wounded and protect 
the barricades.

One student was rushed to the hospital by his classmates after being 
struck twice in the head. His injuries were serious enough to require 
stitches and staples. “I thought I was going to die. I thought I’d never 
see my family again,” the student recalled 
<https://dailybruin.com/2024/05/07/i-thought-i-was-going-to-die-ucla-encampment-protesters-recall-april-30-attack>. 
“The only thing that kept me moving forward was my . . . classmates who 
were brave enough to protect the encampment from these terrorists.” What 
also kept him going was remembering why they were there in the first 
place: “I had the luxury of getting sedated as they stapled my head back 
together. Currently, in Gaza, there are zero fully functioning hospitals.”

It was nearly 3:00 a.m. when CHP officers began moving in to quell the 
violence. They permitted the mob to leave without questioning or 
arresting a single assailant. The next day, Block issued a statement 
bemoaning the violent attack on the encampment by “a group of 
instigators.” While acknowledging that the students and faculty 
protecting the encampment were the victims of violence, he refused to 
link the pro-Israel rally that the university authorized to the attack 
or to recognize that the attacks had been ongoing since April 25. 
“Physical violence ensued,” he declared 
<https://chancellor.ucla.edu/messages/condemning-violence-in-our-community/#:~:text=Physical%20violence%20ensued%2C%20and%20our,community%20members%20was%20utterly%20unacceptable>, 
“and our campus requested support from external law enforcement agencies 
to help end this appalling assault, quell the fighting and protect our 
community.” The administration issued all sorts of excuses for the 
failure of campus security and the UCPD to act. But we were especially 
outraged by the inaction of our Chancellor, who, along with the 
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Darnell Hunt, watched the violence 
unfold in real time via a security camera. Members of our Task Force 
texted back and forth with Hunt into the early morning hours. He was 
responsive and seemed genuinely concerned, but explained that once the 
police are called in there is nothing they can do. The claim strained 
credulity; if it is indeed true, then it exposes a dangerous imbalance 
in university-police relations.

In yet another statement, issued on May 1, Block condemned the attacks, 
acknowledged the trauma our students experienced, and expressed 
“sympathy” for those injured. He called for an investigation, urging 
“those who have experienced violence to report what they encountered to 
UCPD, and those who have faced discrimination to contact the Civil 
Rights Office.” Students and faculty not only found Block’s concern to 
be disingenuous but suspected that by declaring the encampment 
“unauthorized” he actually emboldened the mob. Our suspicions were 
confirmed when, shortly after issuing his statement, he announced plans 
to clear the encampment by 6:00 p.m. that day. The timing is important: 
UC Divest and SJP were scheduled to begin negotiations with Hunt at 4:00 
p.m. The meeting was doomed to fail, in part because the administration 
did not try to negotiate in good faith and gave students no time to 
recover from the horrific violence they had suffered just hours before. 
Angry and disenchanted, organizers refused to give up.

With the encampment slated for destruction, the mob grew, as did the 
number of police officers. The encampment population also grew, as 
faculty showed up in significant numbers in an effort to protect 
students. One colleague was shocked to see assailants viciously 
attacking students in front of the police. “Not one of the attackers was 
detained or arrested. Some of the attackers were older—definitely not 
students. Some of them looked like they had militia training.” When 
police finally intervened, LAPD snipers on the roof of Royce Hall 
trained their guns on the people defending the encampment, and 
California Highway Patrol officers in riot gear moved within close range 
and allowed the mob, once again, to pass by unmolested. Once in 
formation, they fired stun grenades and rubber bullets at students and 
faculty, hitting them in the face, head, legs, and chest. The police 
command blocked EMS from entering the encampment to aid the injured. The 
medics were already overwhelmed, leaving the remaining students and 
faculty to administer first aid.

Police arrested over two hundred people, the vast majority of them 
students. As of this writing, not a single assailant has been arrested 
or questioned.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

*Aftermath*

If Chancellor Block believed clearing the camp would restore order and 
balance, allowing him to enjoy a hero’s retirement, he was mistaken. UC 
Divest, SJP, and Faculty for Justice in Palestine continue to push for 
divestment and focus on ending the genocide in Gaza.

Our students did not pitch tents and risk arrest to save the university; 
they’re trying to save lives.

On May 6 students attempted what has long been an effective strategy of 
university-based civil disobedience by occupying Moore Hall, a large 
building at the center of campus that houses the School of Education and 
Information Studies—but with an expanded police presence on campus, the 
administration has ramped up repression. The LA County Sheriff and the 
LAPD arrested some forty-three students as well as legal observers, 
confiscated their cell phones, and plan to charge them with conspiracy 
to commit burglary. Block also announced plans to expand and reorganize 
UCPD under a newly created Office of Campus Safety. The proposal is 
wildly unpopular, as is the expanded police presence on UCLA’s campus 
right now. As we state in our report:

    With such a heavy police presence, students and faculty reported
    feeling unsafe and on high alert. As visibly armed police patrol
    near classrooms and student centers, immigrant, undocumented, and
    formerly incarcerated students have reported feeling afraid to be on
    campus. Staff have also expressed reluctance to report to work. UCLA
    has become a militarized space, where peaceful protest and the right
    to free speech have become pervasively criminalized. They have
    alienated and isolated students from their right to learn and from
    each other.

Chancellor Block represents the status quo in U.S. higher education, 
which not only has a record of stifling criticism of Israel and 
initiatives in support of Palestinian freedom but is also heavily 
invested in firms with ties to Israel and weapons manufacturers fueling 
the ongoing war in Gaza. The rise of the Palestine solidarity 
encampments, a UC-wide graduate workers strike, and the proliferation of 
acts of civil disobedience led by organizations such as Jewish Voice for 
Peace and If Not Now are proof that the status quo is no longer tenable. 
But rather than reinvent higher education—modeled for us by the 
encampments as a free space of deep learning, dissent, and 
experimentation, divested of all ties to militarism and state violence 
and genocide—our universities are becoming police states. Policing is 
not just armed uniformed officers. Policing entails monitoring our 
communications and classrooms, doxxing, intimidation, curtailing 
academic freedom, maintaining the Palestine exception, and refusing to 
grant amnesty for those arrested for trying to stop a genocide. 
Chancellor Block’s right-wing inquisitors encourage the repressive turn; 
they want to lock up our students, crush dissent, and replace the 
university with fortresses of “patriotic” Christian education.

But our students did not pitch tents and risk arrest to save the 
university; they’re trying to save lives. Their eyes are trained of the 
people of Palestine, on the rubble where universities and schools and 
libraries and homes once stood, on the young people who continue to 
believe liberation is possible. Our students refuse to be complicit with 
their own universities in the unimaginable death and destruction 
occurring in Gaza right now. They have challenged all of us in the 
academy to ask the question Noam Chomsky posed in 1967 in the face of 
America’s war on Vietnam: “As for those of us who stood by in silence 
and apathy as this catastrophe slowly took shape over the past dozen 
years—on what page of history do we find our proper place?”

/Independent and nonprofit, /Boston Review/relies on reader funding. To 
support work like this, please donate 
<https://www.bostonreview.net/donations/> here./
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