UC Berkeley Jewish Leaders Urge Action After Being ‘Harassed and Threatened’ at Two Student Gov’t Meetings

Jewish student leaders at the University of California, Berkeley, are calling for action after allegedly being “harassed and threatened” twice in less than a year during student government meetings.

The letter, published Monday and addressed to UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ, accused the administration and the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC), an independent student association, of “continually” failing to protect Jewish students.

The signatories — who include the Hillel and Chabad student boards, two pro-Israel clubs, and Jewish ASUC senators Shelby Weiss and Milton Zerman — pointed to recent tensions surrounding a resolution condemning the anti-Zionist student group Bears for Palestine for displaying photos of Palestinians who were involved in hijackings and bombing attacks.

They include Fatima Bernawi, a Palestinian woman who planted an explosive in a Jerusalem cinema, as well as Rasmea Odeh and Leila Khaled, both members of the US-designated terrorist group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which has carried out multiple suicide bombings targeting civilians.

The resolution was ultimately rejected by a 4-1 vote at an ASUC committee this Monday, with Weiss — the only member who supported the measure — saying she heard “a lot of rhetoric and discourse steeped in historic antisemitic tropes” during the meeting, and encouraged Jewish students to stay away. “There were two [Jewish] students who showed up who were told, ‘You feel so safe behind your camera, wait until we catch you outside,'” she told The Algemeiner on Tuesday. “It was very reflective of the kind of sentiments we heard last week,” Weiss added.

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