UC Berkeley police and anti-discrimination officials are investigating possible hate crimes after audience members at a canceled talk by a conservative Israeli attorney and think tank leader reported instances of battery and “overtly antisemitic expression” from protesters, according to the university chancellor and provost.
Roughly 200 protesters disrupted a talk by Ran Bar-Yoshafat, deputy director of the politically influential Kohelet Policy Forum, that was scheduled for the evening of Feb. 26 at the Zellerbach Playhouse, breaking down a door and smashing a window, university officials said last week.
Before the event, the student group Bears for Palestine posted on social media asking for protesters to join them in helping to “Shut it Down,” denouncing Bar-Yoshafat as a propagandist.
The university’s Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination and UC Police Department are investigating two reported instances of battery as possible hate crimes, as well as an additional report of battery against a student, Chancellor Carol Christ and Provost Ben Hermalin said in a prepared statement Monday.
Bar-Yoshafat said he was “profoundly shocked by the violent and hateful actions that led to the cancellation of a critical dialogue on the Israel-Hamas conflict,” characterizing the protest as “intimidation and Jew hate” in response to an email inquiry from Berkeleyside.
Bears for Palestine said it had been the university generally, and UCPD specifically, who had endangered students by allowing Bar-Yoshafat to visit campus and protecting him with armed UCPD officers, according to a statement following the protest.
“In the name of free speech, this institution seeks to legitimize a settler colonial ideology that is reliant on Palestinian death and necessitates the denial of their own Palestinian students’ humanity,” the group wrote.
In a joint statement Feb. 27, three student groups — Bears for Israel, Students Supporting Israel and Berkeley Tikvah, which refers to itself as “the Zionist voice at Berkeley” — called the demonstration “an appalling display of antisemitism, violence and intolerance resulting in violations of our First Amendment.”
