Angry mob forces Jewish students to evacuate UC-Berkeley theater where IDF soldier was scheduled to speak
Jewish students at the University of California, Berkeley were forced to evacuate an auditorium as anti-Israel protesters banged on and eventually broke through the glass doors of a campus theater, where an Israeli Defense Forces soldier was scheduled to speak.
Disturbing footage posted online by the Daily Wire shows an angry mob chanting “intifada, intifada” and banging violently on the glass doors outside Zellerbach Playhouse Monday night as a small group of students gathered inside Monday night for a talk about the war in Gaza.
In one clip, a student could be heard telling his friends inside the auditorium that a woman outside spat on him and called him “Jew, Jew, Jew — literally right to my face.”
Other students also claimed the protesters shoved a senior into the auditorium door as he tried to check in attendees and grabbed a freshman by the neck, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Eventually, some of the glass could be heard shattering in the videos posted online, after which one person could be heard shouting, “You got what you deserve.”
At that time, university police reported, “They’ve breached the door,” according to dispatch audio posted online.
“Do you want us to go get our hats and bats?” one officer could be heard asking as the protest grew even more violent.
“We’re going to have to fight our way up the stairs to push them back to close the door,” he explains.
“Negative,” the respondent says. “We’re going to be shutting down the event.”
Meanwhile, another officer could be heard calling for cover as dispatchers sent more officers inside the building.
There, footage showed UC Berkeley Chief of Police Yogananda Pittman taking the microphone in the auditorium and advising those inside to leave.
As a result, the scheduled “Israel at War: Combat the Lies” event, featuring IDF soldier Ran Bar-Yoshafat — who served in Gaza — was canceled, after already being rescheduled several times over security concerns, according to the Daily Wire.
Afterward, one student said she heard the protesters chant, “We won, we won, we won,” she told the Jewish Journal.
Bar-Yoshafat had been invited by Jewish student groups to discuss Israel’s “international legal challenges” and whether the nation is violating international law in the war in Gaza, a joint Instagram post by Students Supporting Israel at Berkeley and Berkeley Tikvah said.
He would also speak about how the IDF could better protect civilians, as well as issues of “perception and ideology” that Israel is facing.
But the anti-Israel student group, Bears for Palestine, announced on its own social media Sunday that it would seek to shut down the event.
“Shut it down: Genocidal murderers out of Berkeley,” the group posted, with a photoshopped image of Bar-Yoshafat with red eyes.
“In October of 2023, Ran Bar-Yoshafat was serving in the IOF partaking in the obliteration of Gaza and extermination of Palestinians,” Bears for Palestine captioned their image, referring to the IDF as the Israeli Occupied Forces.
It said he had been invited to campus to “spread settler colonial Zionist propaganda about the very genocide he has participated in.
“This individual is dangerous,” the group continued. “Ran Bar-Yoshafat has Palestinian blood on his hands.
“He has committed crimes against humanity, is a genocide denier and we will not allow for this event to go on.”
In response to the threat, university officials moved the event to Zellerbach Playhouse and said only those who had RSVP’d to the lecture would be allowed to find out the new location, according to the Los Angeles Times.
When Bar-Yoshafat arrived on campus, he was also instructed to wear a hat to mask his identity, the soldier told the Daily Wire.
But the protesters somehow found out about the venue change, and were seen in videos marching towards the playhouse chanting “Yoshafat, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.”
Bar-Yoshafat said he felt “really bad for the students… because they were scared.
“Girls were crying from being attacked and I think the kid that was spat on was just so shaken,” he told the Daily Wire.
“I don’t think the students anticipated so many people being violent, they thought they would just chant outside.”
University officials estimate some 200 students took part in the violent protest Monday night, and called the incident “appalling.”
In a message sent to students and staff Tuesday afternoon, UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ and Provost Benjamin E. Hermalin said the incident was “an attack on the fundamental values of the university.”
They confirmed the auditorium had to be evacuated “to protect the speaker and the members of the audience,” according to the LA Times.
“We want to express our deep remorse and sympathy to those students and members of the public who were in the building, fearing for their safety,” the officials said in the statement.
“We deeply respect the right to protest as intrinsic to the value of a democracy at an institution of higher education. Yet, we cannot ignore protest activity that interferes with the rights of others to hear and/or express perspectives of their choosing.
“We cannot allow the use of threat of force to violate the First Amendment rights of a speaker, no matter how much we might disagree with their views.”
University spokesman Dan Mogulof has since pledged that the school will launch an investigation into the violent protest, he told Algemeiner.
He said the university has received multiple messages from staff, students and community members expressing their concerns about the violence Monday night and “we’re taking those messages to heart,” he told the LA Times.
Mogulof also explained that school officials believed they had deployed enough police officers to the scene ahead of the event, based on previous anti-Israel protests on campus.
But he stressed that the university “understands now that we are in new territory” and called the incident a “black mark” on its reputation.
Danielle Sobkin, one of the organizers of the event, though said Monday’s violence “isn’t an isolated incident.
“This is a continuous trend that’s persisted my entire time on campus: Jewish hate. The targeting of Jewish students,” she told the Chronicle.
She described the events of Monday as a “witch-hunt of Jewish students,” and said it was a “breaking point for all of us.
“If there is truly no change after last night, there’s no place for Jewish students at UC Berkeley,” she told the Jewish Journal.
The Post has reached out to Berkeley and the Bears for Palestine student group for comment.
