Seeing the extensive graffiti on Royce Hall and the amount of garbage left on the UCLA campus was sickening. The cost to clean the buildings and the campus has been estimated in the millions of dollars.
Many students/activists were arrested, but said they were simply exercising the First Amendment Right of Free Speech.
First Amendment
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
And in Everson v. Bd. Of Education the state must “be a neutral in its relations with groups of religious believers and non-believers.”
To deny a Jewish student entrance to class is definitely not part of the First Amendment. (Eli Tsives, a UCLA freshman was blocked from accessing his classroom on May 6.)
Nothing in the first amendment about destruction or vandalism.
UCLA Chancellor Gene D. Block wrote to parents, “We approached the encampment with the goal of maximizing our community members’ ability to make their voices heard on an urgent global issue.”
He misses the point. Camping is not free speech nor is defacing public buildings.
This was the trash left after protestors were escorted off the campus.
This editor does not think these protests are student-led. Having had three children attend college on three different campuses, my kids had to be prepped that opening a dorm room involved bringing in sheets and pillows.
At UCLA large amounts of plywood, ropes and the tools needed to build an encampment were brought. Protestors had coolers, hard hats, goggles and respirator masks.
By contrast, this editor had to remind her college kids, to sign up for a meal plan.
New York City’s Mayor Adams said about the Columbia protest that “I have been saying for days, if not weeks now, that what should have been a peaceful protest, it has basically been coopted by professional, outside agitators.”
New York’s Police Commissioner Edward Caban added, “We are seeing professional, external actors getting involved in these protests, including in the occupation of a university building. These people are not Columbia students. They are not affiliated with the university, and they are working to escalate the situation.”
But, Chancellor Block excuses the destruction at UCLA with his statement “I also want to recognize the significance of the issues behind the demonstrators’ advocacy. The loss of life in Gaza has been truly devastating, and my administration has and will continue to connect with student and faculty leaders advocating for Palestinian rights to engage in discussions that are grounded in listening, learning and mutual respect. Similarly, we will continue to support our Jewish students and employees who are reeling from the trauma of the brutal Oct. 7 attacks and a painful spike in antisemitism worldwide.”
Block does not mention Hamas, a brutal terrorist group that has governed the Gaza Strip – or the 1988 Hamas Covenant.click here.
Under Article Seven, “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).
Why does Chancellor Block not mention the five Americans that are still being held hostage by Hamas? Block does not mention that Hamas receives its money from Iran, according to the U.S. Treasury.
Most disappointing are the young women in the United States protesting for Palestinian rights. One would hope they understand how girls/women are treated outside of this country.
In Gaza, it was estimated that about 29 percent of women were married before the age of 18 and 13.4 percent before the age of 15. In Iran, the legal age for marrying is 13.
If this were the Middle East rather than UCLA, more than a quarter of women protesting would be married and not allowed to leave the house.
Hamas enforces sharia law click here.
That means the UCLA students running around in skimpy outfits would be thrown in jail because of dress codes.
Many may remember the Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, 22, who would not wear the hijab head scarf and was taken by the Irania morality police “to receive guidance” and then died.
The Iranian parliament has now passed a bill mandating prison terms of up to 10 years for anybody organizing against the wearing of hijab.
“Any person who appears naked or semi-naked in public, in public places or on roads, or appears in a way that is traditionally considered naked will be immediately arrested,” reads article 50 of the new law.
Those who collude with foreign media and governments to promote nudity, improper hijab, or improper dress, face up to 10 years in prison, the new bill adds. Those who are found guilty of ridiculing or insulting the hijab face a fine, in addition to a possible travel ban up to two years, the bill says.
Instead of the morality police, Hamas has the “modesty police” who enforce the dress code by intimidation. The modesty code also includes a prohibition on riding motorcycles, smoking in public, learning to drive without the presence of a man, using a male hairdresser, and even submitting complaints of incest.
Sexual assault is not criminalized as a distinct crime—which is maybe why so many Israeli women were assaulted by Hamas. A March 7 UN report, noted that “reasonable grounds to believe” that militants from Gaza did perpetrate sexual violence during their attack on Israel that day, including rape or gang rape in at least three locations.”
The report also found “convincing information” that some of the approximately 100 hostages still in Gaza have been subjected to sexual violence or sexualized torture by their captors.”
A Palestinian woman’s role is clearly defined in Article 18 of the Hamas Covenant as raising children and “to teach them to perform the religious duties in preparation for the role of fighting awaiting them.”
The question this editor has not seen answered is why more college women are not fighting against the policies against women in Gaza and Iran?
Why is no one fighting for the release of the five American hostages from Hamas?
The UCLA Cleanup was a massive undertaking.
Photo: JAMIE PAIGE
The pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA was illegal and should not have been allowed. In my opinion, graffiti and trashing public property do not equate to “peaceful protest.” To charge these students with misdemeanor failure to disperse is ludicrous.
The true irony is that the type of left wing extremism that engenders support for Hamas goes exactly against two very important pillars of liberalism: equal rights for women and secularism.
Nothing could be a greater departure from feminism than the subjugation of women by religious fundamentalist terrorists. This horror is even further intensified by the intentional deployment of rape as a weapon of war.
All of the modern freedoms that have taken women millennia to achieve are nullified in any territory over which Hamas has control. For American university women to support such a regime is to support the destruction in other parts of the world of the most precious liberties that these women take for granted here in the United States.
Any American woman who de-emphasizes the atrocities of October 7th is dishonoring all the courageous women in history, who risked everything in trying to bring about a world in which all women are treated equally and in which all women have control over their bodies. If liberals are consistent, they will not support any regime that subjects women to the most backward forms of oppression, regardless of any ideological consideration.
Hamas must be universally recognized as a terrorist organization that, in addition to harboring genocidal plans for the residents of a neighboring country, wants to oppress women in a way that will be a throwback to the most barbaric times in our past.
Great article.
Thank you Sue for your article. You took my thoughts exactly and strained out the curses and foul language to compose a coherent argument!
Thank you Sue Pascoe for getting the correct information out there. And the funding has been reported to be provided by organizations associated with George Soros.