“Israel Liberation Week” Ends Violently at Berkeley

This is a follow up to this story in which members of the Jewish student group the Zionist Freedom Alliance claimed that they were attacked by several members of the Students for Justice in Palestine group. This altercation took place during the Israel Liberation Week event.

‘Israel Liberation Week’ Ends Violently at Berkeleyby David Shamma

(IsraelNN.com)

Israel Liberation Week, which was organized last week by the Zionist Freedom Alliance (ZFA) at the University of California at Berkeley, ended violently Thursday night in an altercation between ZFA activists and anti-Israel students. The incident took place during a concert featuring Black, Jewish and Mexican hip hop artists promoting, according to the organizers, “freedom for the nation of Israel from Western pressure and influence.”

As Zionist rapper Kosha Dillz was performing before a crowd of Berkeley students, members of the SJP (Students for Justice in Palestine) draped PLO flags from a balcony directly over the stage. When ZFA activist Gabe Weiner attempted to remove the flags, he was punched in the head, he says, by SJP member Husam Zakharia who was then beaten to the ground by Weiner and Yehuda De Sa.Local ZFA member Yehuda told Israel National News: “Several other members of SJP, including female students, attempted to attack Weiner and De Sa but when three more ZFA activists entered the scene, the male members of SJP – who regularly use physical intimidation to silence Zionist students – hid behind female members of their group and refused to step forward and fight.”

The local student press published the SJP version of events on Friday but would not quote any of the ZFA activists interviewed following the incident. UC Berkeley Dean of Students Jonathan Poullard has asked for student leaders from both groups to attend a meeting with one another but ZFA students have told Israel National News that they will make their attendance conditional on the University dropping its double standard when disciplining pro-Israel and anti-Israel student groups.

Meanwhile, the anti-Israel group is planning to file a petition to remove pro-Israel Student Senator John Moghtader from office, who tried to break up the fight.

Israel National News spoke with ZFA director Yehuda HaKohen, who said that although he had initially discouraged his activists from responding to the flags and would have preferred to have avoided the conflict altogether, he believed that ZFA’s in the physical altercation will show the anti-Israel activists that some Jews cannot be intimidated.

“In many ways it felt very similar to how things go down in Israel. Arabs attack Jews and then hide behind women. When Jews take defensive action, a biased media paints us as aggressors. The fact that our students at Berkeley had to experience this gives them a better appreciation for some of the challenges confronting us in our own country. Even though I wanted to avoid the altercation, I recognize the value in anti-Israel activists getting put in their place by the very students they so often try to bully into silence.

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