https://facebook.com/JewishVoiceforPeace/videos/10156184089004992/
Below are the comments I added to the reader thread.
"This is a very carefully edited video. In the beginning, the young man who is talking with SJP at their table claimed that he was told, "Go away, white man." As for the reservist event, I was there. It was peaceful until the SJP and their friends arrived. At that point I videotaped everything. You can see me in the background doing so. What the video cuts out is when the young girl leading the disruptions throws f-bombs at the reservists in the presence of the Asst vice chancellor."
"This was a disruption and is typical tactic of SJP and JVP (at least one JVP member was present.) I can only repeat the question I posed as a vet to these students. How many of them have ever put on the uniform of their country and served in uniform like the five reservists, two of whom were female, one a Lebanese Christian gay whose family had to flee Lebanon for Israel, and one a Bedouin Muslim? The response I got was a loud "Never!" and that is when things went to hell. All that was left out of the video. You have no respect for the American principle of free speech. You disgust me."
I also have added my own video of the entire disruption inside the room (See above hyper-link in the first paragraph.)
Here is more of what JVP and Palestine Legal are putting out about the incidents.
"For four straight days this past May, a group of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers called “Reservists On Duty” harassed University of California, Irvine (UCI) students at their mock apartheid wall. The IDF soldiers surveilled, disrupted, and physically assaulted Palestinian members of UCI SJP, along with their Latinx, Black, Native and Jewish allies.
This occurred in full view of administrators who took no action to protect students from foreign military agents. When students complained, they were told that nothing could be done.
Email UCI Chancellor Gilman to tell them - protect your students, not Israeli soldiers on campus!"
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If I want to be charitable, I would call this account grossly exaggerated if not downright false. I should add that I was on campus during the events on Tuesday, Wednesday night, and Thursday afternoon. I did not witness what this alleges. I did see the IDF soldiers (not in uniform) at the mock apartheid wall giving their own information on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to those who were interested. I would hardly call it surveilling. I did not see them harassing anyone or disrupting anything. I certainly did not see them assaulting anyone.
As I previously reported, Thursday, May 11, was a day full of anger as pro-Palestinian students gave fiery speeches at the microphone. The IDF reservists were present and a couple of the female reservists stood right in front of the speakers. One was asked by campus administrators and a campus cop to move back which she eventually did. The reservists did follow the protesters as they marched to the administration office and then around Ring Road at which point I went back to the mock apartheid wall.
On Wednesday evening, there was an allegation that an Israeli girl shoved a protester. I was right there with my video camera. She was shouting at someone in the back, and one of the protesters who can be seen in the video, a small black kid with glasses, was blocking her from advancing. They were separated but both in my video and the just released JVP video, someone is blocking the view, so you cannot definitively tell if anyone shoved the other.
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