Pro-Israel Group Slams UC-Berkeley Law Over Student Groups Excluding Jews

Pro-Israel Group Slams UC-Berkeley Law Over Student Groups Excluding Jews

The pro-Israel group ‘StandWithUs’ is blasting UC-Berkeley Law over the stunning recent report that student groups were forming ‘Jewish-free’ zones.

They released this statement:

StandWithUs Condemns Berkeley Law School Student Groups’ New Anti-Zionist Bylaw

In August 2022, at UC Berkeley Law School, student groups, led by Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine (LSJP) adopted a bylaw prohibiting invitations to “speakers that have expressed and continued to hold views … in support of Zionism.” This bylaw is part of the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, which seeks the destruction of Israel and in the U.S. seeks to ostracize Jewish students from campus discourse and political life.

StandWithUs is working with allied organizations, students and faculty at Berkeley to support any and all action that helps expose and punish wrongdoers, holds school officials accountable, and defends the rights of Jewish students. StandWithUs is a signatory on a new coalition letter of leading Jewish and pro-Israel groups calling on Berkeley Law School to “immediately take all lawful and necessary steps” to compel student groups to rescind the antisemitic provisions of their bylaws.

At the same time, as StandWithUs is helping move the situation at Berkeley through public pressure, we are also exploring legal options. Anti-Israel groups frequently use “Zionist” as a stand-in for “Jew” to enable them to stigmatize and discriminate against Jewish students while pretending they are merely criticizing Zionism. Yet for the majority of Jews, Zionism—support for Israel’s existence and the right of Jews to self-determination in their ancestral home—is central to their Jewish ethnic and religious identity. When Jews are discriminated against under the guise of “Zionism,” they are being discriminated against for being Jewish. StandWithUs is at the forefront of efforts to enforce Jewish student rights and combat any attempts at discrimination against Jewish identity by using the cover of “Zionism.”

They also claim some of these student groups are being funded by major law firms:

BREAKING: You saw the outrageous news last week that a coalition of @BerkeleyLaw School student groups passed bylaws prohibiting "#Zionist" (i.e.
Jewish) speakers at their events. We found that 1/2 the #antisemitic groups are FUNDED BY MAJOR LAW FIRMS, & we have the receipts. 1/7

— StandWithUs (@StandWithUs) October 13, 2022

Berkeley's Asian Pacific American Law Students Association is directly funded by @CovingtonLLP, @JennerBlockLLP, @lathamwatkins, and
more: https://t.co/Eb6ckXXfeE
2/7 pic.twitter.com/yKlg5Qpq39

— StandWithUs (@StandWithUs) October 13, 2022

Berkeley's Law Students of African Descent is directly funded by @Kirkland_Ellis, @CooleyLLP, @CovingtonLLP, @lathamwatkins, and more. https://t.co/UDN7frpEGC
3/7 pic.twitter.com/vh7mrQ98ou

— StandWithUs (@StandWithUs) October 13, 2022

Then there are firms that sponsor networking events for antisemitic Berkeley Law groups. Here are @lathamwatkins, @MorganLewisLaw, @omelvenymyers, & others sponsoring the BDS-supporting Middle East & North African Law Students Association. 4/7 pic.twitter.com/sbPL5NraEG

— StandWithUs (@StandWithUs) October 13, 2022

Berkeley’s “Womxn of Color Collective” supports antisemitism, and big law firms support it: Munger, Tolles and Olson, Wachtell Lipton, @McDermottLaw, and others. https://t.co/xUZHs73ORq
5/7 pic.twitter.com/RhwcDkebsH

— StandWithUs (@StandWithUs) October 13, 2022

StandWithUs calls on every firm that has donated to, or sponsored an event for, an #antisemitic student group at @BerkeleyLaw to terminate its financial involvement; to conduct a review to ensure that firm resources are not funding #antisemitism at other schools; 6/7

— StandWithUs (@StandWithUs) October 13, 2022

& to make a strong statement condemning the #antisemitism of the student groups that participated. 7/7

— StandWithUs (@StandWithUs) October 13, 2022

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