UC-Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and his wife hosted a dinner at their home for students this week and the event was hijacked by anti-Israel student activists.
One young woman who is the head of Students for Justice in Palestine at Berkeley Law even launched into an anti-Israel speech with a microphone.
The Washington Free Beacon has details:
Anti-Israel Agitators Derail Dinner at Home of UC Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin ChemerinskyAnti-Israel hecklers crashed a Tuesday dinner that U.C. Berkeley’s Jewish law school dean hosted for graduating students, days after activists circulated a blood libel cartoon targeting the dean and referencing the planned dinner.Malak Afaneh, the head of Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine, stood in the midst of the backyard dinner hosted by law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky and his wife while roughly 60 law students were eating. Wearing a keffiyeh and hijab, she delivered an anti-Israel speech through a microphone, according to a Wednesday statement from Chemerinsky and an Instagram video from the Bay Area Palestinian Youth Movement that depicted the disruption.”Please leave our house, you are guests in our house,” Chemerinsky can be heard saying, as his wife put her arm around Afaneh. Afaneh refused to budge, stating with her eyes half-closed that “we have attorneys” and that the disruption at the private home was their “First Amendment right.” Ultimately Afaneh left with about 10 other students who had accompanied her.The disruption came a week after the law school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine posted a cartoon on Instagram showing Chemerinsky holding a fork and knife dripping with blood over the dinner, captioned with “No Dinner With Zionist Chem While Gaza Starves.”
Leftists are trying to paint Malak Afaneh as a victim, naturally. Note the words posted on the video, not the description of what happened by this Twitter/X user:
And look at the antisemitic propaganda put out by these activists:
Afaneh did not have First Amendment grounds here.
Dean Chemerinsky has released a statement:
From the statement:
On April 9, about 60 students came to our home for the dinner. All had registered in advance. All came into our backyard and were seated at tables for dinner. While guests were eating, a woman stood up with a microphone, stood on the top step in the yard, and began a speech, including about the plight of the Palestinians. My wife and I immediately approached her and asked her to stop and leave. The woman continued. When she continued, there was an attempt to take away her microphone. Repeatedly, we said to her that you are a guest in our home, please stop and leave. About 10 students were clearly with her and ultimately left as a group.The dinner, which was meant to celebrate graduating students, was obviously disrupted and disturbed. I am enormously sad that we have students who are so rude as to come into my home, in my backyard, and use this social occasion for their political agenda.The dinners will go forward on Wednesday and Thursday. I hope that there will be no disruptions; my home is not a forum for free speech. But we will have security present. Any student who disrupts will be reported to student conduct and a violation of the student conduct code is reported to the Bar.I have spent my career staunchly defending freedom of speech. I have spent my years as dean trying hard to create a warm, inclusive community. I am deeply saddened by these events and take solace that it is just a small number of our students who would behave in such a clearly inappropriate manner.
As I have said before and as this incident makes clear, these activists are not trying to win people over to their side. They are trying to assert dominance.
Featured image via Twitter video.
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