In what one student group described as a "despicable act of terror," pro-Israel activists dressed in black and wearing masks stormed barricades and attacked a pro-Palestine encampment just before midnight at UCLA, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.
The attack came after UCLA had declared the encampment "unlawful" and warned participants — who are demanding the school divest from companies that do business in Israel — that they could face expulsion.
"UCLA supports peaceful protest, but not activism that harms our ability to carry out our academic mission and makes people in our community feel bullied, threatened and afraid," Chancellor Glen Block said Tuesday, prior to the attack. "These incidents have put many on our campus, especially our Jewish students, in a state of anxiety and fear."
That message was followed hours later by the pro-Israel faction's effort to violently dismantle the pro-Palestine encampment.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass described the scene early Wednesday as "absolutely abhorrent and inexcusable." The Los Angeles Police Department said it had responded to restore "order" on campus, although the student group, UC Divest at UCLA, accused officers of standing by amid "a horrifying, despicable act of terror" that it attributed to "Zionist aggressors," per NBC News.
But some defended the attack. In an appearance on Fox News, UCLA student Eli Tsives claimed "Jews in L.A. have had enough," faulting UCLA for not breaking up the encampment itself. Tsives noted that the counter-protesters were "not UCLA students" and "were all a lot older" than the demonstrating students.
Others suggested that UCLA's relative tolerance for the encampment, at least compared to schools in New York and Texas, had encouraged lawbreaking by others.
Dan Gold, executive director of UCLA's Hillel chapter, said Jews on campus had been subjected to acts of intimidation, claiming that at least 10 students had been denied passage on their own campus after protesters demanded to know whether they were "Zionists."
“This encampment violates a long list of university policies, and the result of not enforcing these rules that every other student and student group follows to a T is chaos and unrest — and worse, it allows for even more intense forms of hate to persist and grow," Gold told the Times.
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