Eilon Presman was about 100 toes from the UCLA Palestinian solidarity encampment when he heard the screams: “Zionist! Zionist!”
The 20-year-old junior, who’s Israeli, realized the activists had been pointing at him.
“Human chain!” they cried.
A line of protesters linked arms and marched towards him, Presman stated, blocking him from accessing the guts of UCLA’s campus. Different activists, he stated, unfurled kaffiyeh scarves to dam his view of the camp.
“Each step again that I took, they took a step ahead,” Presman stated. “I used to be simply pressured to stroll away.”
Professional-Palestinian activists exhibit in UCLA’s Bruin Plaza after arrests had been made on the Westwood campus Monday.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Instances)
It’s been per week since police swarmed the UCLA campus and tore down the pro-Palestinian camp, arresting greater than 200 individuals. However the legacy of the encampment stays a difficulty of a lot debate, notably amongst Jewish college students, who make up practically 8% of the college’s 32,000 undergraduates.
Within the days main as much as April 30 — when pro-Israel counterprotesters attacked the camp with fists, bats and chemical spray, and police took hours to cease the violence — frustration had swelled amongst many Jews: Viral movies confirmed activists proscribing the passage of scholars they focused as Zionists.
Some Jewish college students stated they felt intimidated as protesters scrawled graffiti — “Dying 2 Zionism” and “Child Killers” — on campus buildings and blocked entry with wood pallets, plywood, steel barricades and human partitions.
The professional-Palestinian scholar motion consists of varied strains of activism, together with requires a cease-fire in Gaza, assist for Hamas and calls for that universities divest from corporations doing enterprise with Israel. However on campuses throughout the nation, no phrase has develop into extra charged than “Zionist.”
A professional-Israel activist peels a pro-Palestinian sticker off an indication on Could 2 as a protest encampment was dispersed.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Instances)
In its most elementary definition, a Zionist is any individual who believes that the Jewish individuals have a proper to statehood of their ancestral homeland as a spot of refuge from centuries of persecution — in different phrases, that Israel, established as a Jewish state within the wake of the Holocaust, has a proper to exist.
Utilizing that definition, the Anti-Defamation League considers anti-Zionism a type of antisemitism. However protesters — together with many Jews — draw a pointy distinction, arguing that it’s Zionism that fuels Israel’s right-wing authorities and the assault on Gaza that they are saying quantities to genocide in opposition to Palestinians.
A few of the Jewish college students who took half within the encampment performed a task in excluding Zionists.
Members of Jewish Voice for Peace at UCLA, a small however quickly rising group on campus, argue that they had an ethical accountability to strain college officers to divest from Israel.
UCLA amenities staff clear up and dismantle the pro-Palestinian encampment on campus Could 2.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Instances)
The camp and its checkpoints, they stated, weren’t hostile to Jews. Limiting fellow college students from getting into was only a pragmatic transfer to guard protesters inside from bodily, verbal or emotional abuse.
“We’re dedicated to holding one another secure,” stated Agnes Lin, 22, a fourth-year artwork and artwork historical past scholar and member of Jewish Voice for Peace. Anybody who agreed to the UC Divest Coalition’s calls for and neighborhood pointers, she stated, was welcome.
“What shouldn’t be welcome is Zionism,” she added. “Or anybody who actively adheres to a really violent, genocidal political ideology that’s actively endangering individuals in Gaza proper now.”
In apply, college students who supported the existence of Israel had been saved out — even when they opposed Israel’s right-wing authorities and its bombardment of Gaza.
Senior Adam Thaw, 21, stated activists blocked him and others from accessing a public walkway to Powell Library.
After telling him they weren’t letting anybody by means of, a male activist eyed his Star of David necklace: “For those who’re right here to espouse that that is antisemitism, then you possibly can go away.”
Senior Adam Thaw is on UCLA’s scholar board of Hillel, the biggest Jewish campus group on the planet.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Instances)
“Who’re you to inform me the place I can and can’t go?” stated Thaw, who’s on UCLA’s scholar board of Hillel, the biggest Jewish campus group on the planet.
As complaints from Jewish college students mounted, UCLA declared the encampment “illegal.” In an April 30 assertion, Chancellor Gene Block stated most activists had been peaceable, however the techniques of some had been “surprising and shameful.”
“College students on their option to class,” he stated, “have been bodily blocked from accessing components of the campus.”
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The campus was darkish and hushed when Sabrina Ellis joined dozens of activists at 4 a.m. to arrange the encampment on the garden of Dickson Courtroom.
After pitching tents and erecting barricades of wood pallets and sheets of plywood, Ellis, a 21-year-old worldwide scholar from Brazil, took shifts guarding the doorway.
Ellis didn’t name it a checkpoint. The aim was to exclude and bodily block “agitators” — anybody who could be violent, document college students or disagree with the trigger.
“Our high precedence isn’t individuals’s freedom of motion,” Ellis stated. “It’s holding individuals in our encampments bodily and emotionally secure.”
The longtime member of Jewish Voice for Peace — who wore a big Star of David over her T-shirt and a kaffiyeh wrapped round her shoulders — stated the camp “was not profiling based mostly on faith.”
However as activists blocked Zionist college students from public campus area, they confronted fees that they engaged in viewpoint discrimination.
Sabrina Ellis, a junior and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace at UCLA, was a part of the pro-Palestinian encampment from the start.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Instances)
Earlier than permitting anybody in, Ellis stated, a protester learn the calls for of the encampment, which included calling for UC and UCLA to divest all funds from firms “complicit within the Israeli occupation,” boycott all connections with Israeli universities, sever ties with the Los Angeles Police Division and demand a everlasting cease-fire.
Then, activists ran by means of their security pointers: Ask earlier than taking a photograph or video; put on a masks to restrict the unfold of COVID; don’t put up figuring out info or pictures; and no engagement with counterprotesters.
If college students didn’t agree, “we might simply kindly inform them that they’re not allowed to return in,” Ellis stated.
Some Jewish college students had been shaken by the expertise, arriving at Hillel upset and even crying.
“They had been genuinely going about their day and couldn’t get entry as protesters requested them, ‘Are you a Zionist?’ or checked out their necklace,” stated Daniel Gold, govt director of Hillel at UCLA.
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For professional-Palestinian activists who’re Jewish, the camp was a peaceable area to advertise justice, a welcoming interfaith neighborhood with therapist-led processing circles and candlelit prayer providers.
Blue tarps and blankets had been put down in the course of the garden for Islamic prayers and a Passover Seder and a Shabbat service.
On the primary night, about 100 activists, many Jewish, sat in a circle to hope, sing, drink grape juice and eat matzo ball soup, matzo crackers and watermelon.
“It was actually stunning,” stated Lin, the artwork main. “We had been attempting to carry these areas to point out that Judaism goes past Zionism.”
An encampment of pro-Palestinian demonstrators at UCLA’s Dickson Plaza on April 29.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Instances)
Different Jewish college students had been extra cautious as they navigated the camp.
Presman, who moved to the U.S. when he was 12 and identifies as a Zionist, was alarmed when he scanned the quad on the primary day. He noticed indicators saying “Israelis are native 2 HELL,” he stated, and banners and graffiti exhibiting inverted crimson triangles, a logo utilized in Hamas propaganda movies to point a navy goal.
“Do individuals know what meaning?” he puzzled.
Tucking his Star of David underneath his T-shirt, Presman stated, he entered and approached activists, introducing himself as an Israeli citizen.
“Perhaps we will discover frequent floor,” he stated, asking, “one human being to the opposite?”
Some college students put their fingers up, he stated, blocking him as they walked away. Others handled the dialog as a joke. One protester, he stated, instructed him that every thing Hamas did was justified.
Presman stated he had one good dialog: An activist who recognized as anti-Zionist admitted not being 100% educated on what Zionism was, however agreed that Israel ought to exist. They got here to the conclusion the activist was a Zionist.
Professional-Palestinian encampment members reinforce the camp obstacles at UCLA on Could 1.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Instances)
However most of Presman’s exchanges, he stated, ended negatively when activists realized he was defending Zionism. He stated he was known as a “soiled Jew” and “white colonizer.”
Different college students — even those that didn’t totally assist the encampment — stated they didn’t expertise such slurs.
Rachel Burnett, a senior who described herself as a non-Zionist Jew, disagreed with the decision for divestment and tutorial boycotts, particularly of UCLA’s Nazarian Middle, an academic heart for the research of Israeli historical past, politics and tradition.
Coming into the camp after a classmate vouched for her, Burnett was disturbed by anti-Israeli indicators and graffiti that named Abu Ubaida, the spokesperson for the navy wing of Hamas. However she additionally bonded with protesters, together with a girl in a hijab.
“In fact, some protesters deny Oct. 7 or condone violence so long as it may be put underneath the guise of decolonial resistance, which is clearly horrific,” Burnett stated. “However that’s not the case of many college students contained in the encampment.”
Rachel Burnett, a senior who described herself as a non-Zionist Jew, disagreed with the decision for divestment and tutorial boycotts, particularly of UCLA’s Nazarian Middle, an academic heart for the research of Israeli historical past, politics and tradition.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Instances)
Burnett contrasted what she noticed as a peaceable, pleasant temper contained in the camp with the pro-Israel counterprotests the place individuals held up benign slogans, corresponding to “Carry the Hostages House,” however engaged in hostile habits.
As counterprotesters converged for a Sunday rally, she stated, a pro-Israel activist spat on her and instructed she ought to have been slaughtered within the kibbutzim on Oct. 7.
Simply as some pro-Palestinian activists demonized all Zionists as evil and pro-genocide — ignoring the big selection of viewpoints throughout the Zionist neighborhood — Burnett thought some pro-Israel counterprotesters had been dehumanizing scholar activists within the encampment and spreading a “mass hysteria narrative.”
Because the encampment expanded — and organizers arrange entrance factors close to Royce Corridor and Powell Library — some Jewish college students took movies that swiftly went viral.
“It’s time to go,” a protester sporting a yellow security vest and kaffiyeh instructed a scholar in a single video as he guarded an entrance close to Powell Library. “You don’t have a wristband.”
A standoff ensued.
“Are you a Zionist?” the protester requested.
“In fact I’m Zionist,” the scholar replied.
“Yeah, we don’t let Zionists inside.”
