UCLA Chabad Rabbi Assaulted by Pro-Palestinian Protesters

UCLA Chabad Rabbi Dovid Gurevich was assaulted by pro-Palestinian protesters on UCLA’s campus on the evening of June 10.

Gurevich told The Journal in a phone interview that he came to “support our students” after hearing that pro-Palestinian protesters were attempting to establish another encampment on campus and “wrapped tefillin with a couple of guys.” He later started filming “to capture the atmosphere” and went on Instagram Live. Gurevich said that an agitator “approached me from the side and violently slapped the phone out of my hand, and was just very aggressive and vulgar, verbally assaulting and getting in my face.” The protester was doing the same to some students too, the Chabad rabbi claimed. The situation then “escalated with some death threats at the end,” Gurevich said.

According to The Jerusalem Post, footage posted to social media shows a masked individual hitting Gurevich’s phone out of his hand. Gurevich was subsequently called a “pedophile rabbi.” “Masked activists threatened to beat the rabbi unconscious, and when Gurevich asked one why he concealed his face, the activist responded, ‘If I show my face, I’ll have to f—king kill you,’” the Post reported. The protesters also accused Zionists of being “fake Jews,” prompting Gurevich to retort: “You’re telling the rabbi who the real Jews are… stop gaslighting,” per the Post. He also told the protesters to leave the “students alone.”

Gurevich said that he told police nearby about what happened; he claimed that Culver City police told him he needed to talk to university police, and university police told him that “they were only there to deescalate” and that he needed to file a report at the police station. “I’m considering to possibly do it Friday I suppose, which is very difficult timing because we have finals and graduation here on campus, and probably more disruptions.”

The pro-Palestinian protest on campus started in the afternoon, as more than 100 protesters attempted to re-establish an encampment on campus for a third time, according to The Daily Bruin. The protesters marched on campus while holding faux bloody body parts and “a coffin-shaped object” to honor their “martyrs,” per the Bruin.

The Times of Israel (TOI) reported that, according to university police, 25 protesters were arrested “for willful disruption of university operations and one for interfering with an officer” and that the arrested individuals have been ordered to stay away from campus for 14 days. “The demonstrators repeatedly tried to set up tents, canopies and barriers as they moved to various locations, disrupting nearby final exams,” reported TOI. “The group also damaged a fountain, spray-painted brick walkways, tampered with fire safety equipment, damaged patio furniture, stripped wire from electrical fixtures and vandalized vehicles, the statement says.”

Gurevich said Jewish students are “exhausted from all this.” “It’s been a very long year, a very tough year for many of them and they just want it to be over with, this is the finals week and yet they’re still experiencing so many hateful disruptions and these kinds of vitriol directed basically against them because they feel very much personally targeted,” he said. “These people decided that there’s some ‘good Jews’ who support their cause and everyone else is ‘bad Jews’ and ‘Zionists.’ So the feeling that they have is being in a very toxic environment on campus and less safe.”

Gurevich added that he’s staying “focused on trying to do good and bringing light to dispel this darkness.”