Pro-Hamas mob as seen from inside,
just before they break the door. Click for
video.

They’re coming for you next: A lecture on international law by an Israeli attorney and former member of the Israeli Defense Force and organized by Jewish student groups at University of California-Berkeley (UC-Berkeley) was shut down on February 26, 2024 by a violent protest of about 200 pro-Hamas rioters, who broke down doors, attacked attendees, and forced the university to evacuate and cancel the event.

Jewish students at UC Berkeley evacuated from a campus theater Monday night after a mass of protesters, chanting “Intifada! Intifada!” and other slogans, shattered a glass door at the venue and shut down a scheduled lecture by an Israeli attorney who is also an IDF reservist.

Several students who were attending or working the event at Zellerbach Playhouse were injured, including two young women, one of whom sprained a thumb wrestling to keep a door shut as protesters tried to muscle it open. Another female student reportedly was handled around her neck, leaving marks. A third student said a protester spit on him.

Eventually the lecture did take place, at the home of a nearby rabbi, but was only seen by twenty.

If you want to get a feel for the storm-trooper nature of this violent mob, watch the videos here and here. The first shows the mob outside the building, pounding so hard at the doors they break one. These bullies than scatter like frightened sheep, suddenly realizing they have probably pushed the envelope of protest. Soon however they regather, and begin to creep back towards the broken door, screaming hateful invectives at the building and the people still guarding it.

The second video shows what it was like inside as the mob pounded at the door, just before it shattered. If you were a Jew inside you clearly were looking into the same evil that those in Nazi Germany faced in the 1930s.

The reaction of UC-Berkeley officials to this violence was amazingly different than previous very similar mob actions at the university. Previously the administration would repeatedly pooh-pooh the mobs as doing nothing more than expressing their freedom of speech, even though those earlier protests had included similar violence and had silenced other speakers. Essentially, university officials followed the left’s interpretation of free speech: “Our violence is speech! Your speech is violence!” Thus, the protesters’ could riot and destroy property and injure people, in the name of free speech, but conservatives must be silenced because their words were hurtful.

This time however Berkeley officials seemed downright horrified by the violence, with Chancellor Carol Christ and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Benjamin Hermalin issuing a strong statement that minced few words.

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. Today, like last night, our colleagues in Student Affairs are reaching out with offers of support and we are urging students to report what they witnessed and experienced to UCPD and/or our Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination. We share your anger and concern, and we understand that we must do all that we can to prevent anything like this from happening again.

It seems to me that the two videos above would be excellent evidence for identifying some of these rioters, and having them prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Such action is long overdue, and without it civil discourse will remain impossible at radical leftist universities like UC-Berkeley. The videos also suggest that the university should institute a “no masks policy” for protesters. You want to protest, go right ahead, but wearing a mask to hide your identity clearly suggests you plan something illegal and violent.

We shall see however how sincere Christ and Hermalin really are. If they follow past practice, they will continue to mouth meaningless “feel-good” platitudes, while punishing no one. That has been standard practice now for almost a full decade at all major universities nationwide. To these colleges, genocide can always be excused, “depending on the context.” And recently, the context is that Jews are the target, and that kind of genocide seems to always be acceptable.