Jewish “students were, on three separate instances, subjected to protesters yelling (expletives and anti-Semitic insults)”
The Afrikan Black Student Alliance took over a building at UC Santa Cruz this week and issued a specific set of demands, including mandatory diversity training for other students, repainting of Rosa Parks house and housing guarantees for “ALL African Black Caribbean identified students.”
The demanded (and got) separate housing for black students. That sounds pretty illegal to me. Can you imagine if white students demanded housing that only allowed whites in?
Along the way, some of those students shouted anti-Israel and anti-Semitic slurs.
The university has agreed to all of the student demands.
UC Santa Cruz agrees to demands of students who occupied Kerr Hall
SANTA CRUZ >> UC Santa Cruz has agreed to the demands of the Afrikan Black Student Alliance after a three-day occupation of Kerr Hall, the primary administration building on campus. To loud cheers of victory, UCSC director of News and Media Relations Scott Hernandez-Jason stood before hundreds of students at Kerr Hall about 5:30 p.m.
KSBW News provides this video report. Apparently the meeting between officials and the students was moved to a separate location on campus because administrators “feared for their safety.”
Buried at the bottom of the Santa Cruz Sentinel report is this curious tidbit (emphasis added):
In addition, during the rally that preceded the occupation of Kerr Hall on Tuesday at Quarry Plaza, members of the Afrikan Black Student Alliance verbally attacked Jewish students, according to Santa Cruz Hillel Director Sarah Cohen Domont.
“Our students were, on three separate instances, subjected to protesters yelling, (expletives and anti-Semitic insults) and one of our Israeli flags was torn down,” wrote Cohen Domont in a public statement. “The ABSA called for protesters to stand in solidarity with their Palestinian brothers and sisters.”
Tuesday was Israel Independence Day. Santa Cruz Hillel and its “pro-Israel partners” had gathered in Quarry Plaza to celebrate.
UC Santa Cruz has had a problem for years with such attacks on Jewish students arising out of the anti-Israel activism:
Another form of intimidation is the disruption of events sponsored by Jewish organizations, now routine on some campuses. “If it’s something that has to do with Jewish students or Israel, it will just get shut down routinely.” explains UC Santa Cruz Hebrew lecturer Tammi Rossman-Benjamin to Aish.com….
At the University of California, Santa Cruz, members of the student government sent a message to member Daniel Bernstein, who was also president of the campus Jewish society, when the student government was debating boycotting and divesting from Israel.
“The implication that I, as a Jewish student and leader in the Jewish community, should not be allowed to vote on an issue that so deeply impacts the Jewish community, and that I should abstain because I cannot be trusted due to an alleged, ‘Jewish agenda,’ echoes the racism Jews have faced all over the world throughout our history,” Bernstein posted on Facebook. “I am calling on the leadership at UC Santa Cruz, from the student level on up to start taking concrete action to get the anti-Semitism at this campus under control.”
Cross-posted from LI