Were Pro-Israel Students Threatened at Calif. Rally?

Hostile Environment?: A Jewish professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, says anti-Israel events violated the civil rights of Jewish students. Now, similar claims are being made at the Davis campus. Image by milesgehm/via flickr

By JTA January 29, 2013

A pro-Israel group claims Jewish students at the University of California, Davis were abused and threatened at a pro-Palestinian protest on campus.

The AMCHA Initiative on Monday sent a letter to UC President Mark Yudof alleging demonstrators carrying “death to Zionism” placards occupied a public building on Nov. 19 and harassed pro-Israel students.

The organization released a video showing protesters comparing Zionism with Nazism and telling supporters of Israel to leave.

“We are deeply concerned about the virulent and hate-filled actions taking place on the UC Davis campus as a result of students’ religion and beliefs,” Leila Beckwith and Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, faculty members at the University of California, Los Angeles and University of California, Santa Cruz wrote to Yudof.

According to the two, several UC Davis faculty members were present at the event but did not intervene.

The university said on Monday it was investigating the claims.

In recent years several universities in the California system have become a battleground between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups.

Last year, ten pro-Palestinian students at the University of California, Irvine were found guilty of disrupting a lecture by Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren on campus and sentenced to community service.

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