‘Restoring Democracy’ event moved online after protesters began shouting
The presence of a conservative Israeli lawmaker at UC Berkeley drew an angry crowd of protesters whose rowdy interruptions prompted the event to shut down and move online.
The disruption took place last week during a law school forum that featured Simcha Rothman, a member of the Israeli parliament’s Religious Zionist Party.
Rothman was on campus for an event titled “Restoring Democracy: The Debate Over Judicial Reform in Israel” hosted by the Federalist Society chapter at UC Berkeley, SF Gate reported.
Pro-Palestinian student protesters repeatedly shouted “antifada revolution, there is only one solution” outside the venue, according to social media posts. Some members of UnXeptable also took part in the protest, the Gate reported:
Offir Gutelzon, a co-founder of UnXeptable … told SFGATE that the group wanted to press Rothman on his plan to reform Israel’s judiciary, and to ask why he’s not doing more to ensure the release of the nearly 100 Israeli hostages still being held by Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza.
“He needs to be home and work on saving the hostages, releasing the hostages, and not trying to promote the judicial overhaul,” Gutelzon said in an interview on Friday. …
Other videos from Rothman’s appearance show that the event quickly turned even more raucous after it officially began.
Pro-Palestinian protesters also attended Tuesday’s event, and in a video obtained by SFGATE, one of them can be heard shouting at Rothman just four minutes after he began answering questions from the event’s host. From there, protesters on either side began arguing with each other and Rothman was soon ushered out of the auditorium by security.
The Berkeley Federalist Society condemned the incident in an Instagram post.
“We are deeply disturbed and disappointed by the disruptions that took place at our event yesterday, which was stormed and shut down by anti-Israel rioters,” the group stated. “Our academic institutions cannot function as intended so long as the right to free speech is only selectively protected.”
UC Berkeley is no stranger to aggressive anti-Israel protests.
During the spring semester, pro-Palestinian activists there “breached” an event and broke glass afterwards as part of a disruption of an event with an Israel Defense Forces veteran, The College Fix reported at the time.
In January, a lawsuit filed against the public institution by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law alleged administrators have allowed “on-campus displays of hatred, harassment, and physical violence against Jews.”
Pro-Palestinian protesters in April also crashed the personal home of UC Berkeley’s law school dean, Erwin Chemerinsky, to interrupt a graduation celebration, take over the mic, and list off a litany of anti-Israel complaints.
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IMAGE: Berkeley Federalist Society/Instagram
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