I’m gonna keep this short and sweet.
The media is lying to you. They’ve been lying to all of us, but then that's nothing new. In this video UCLA staff who were there during the entire week of protests at the UCLA encampment, and during the hours of attack by Pro-Zionists against the protestors, and during the police action to remove the encampment and arrest protestors — stood up yesterday in defense of their students.
They personally counter the narrative that there was Anti-Semitism in the protests, as many of the participants were themselves Jewish. They counter the narrative the Jewish student were singled-out and prevented from attending their classes or studies. They describe the harrowing circumstances of dozens of their students being physically assaulted, attacked and pepper sprayed for hours by the Pro-Zionists.
They argue, quite directly, that the encampment was attacked by “Outside Agitators” who are White Supremacists and Accelerationists who are not students and have been recognized by media at other events. They complain that while the encampment was banned and removed a giant JUMBOTRON had been put in place less than 20 ft away from the Protestors showing harrowing and violent images of the October 7th attack.
And it’s still there — you can see it in the background of this video.
This has been a divisive subject — I’ve posted a much longer and detailed article including interviews with member of the UCLA campus paper, several of whom were attacked and assaulted and one was hospitalized the other night on my substack because I’m frankly concerned that freely addressing this subject, even here, is not safe.
Listen to what the UCLA staff has to say. Consider what you may have been told elsewhere just might not be the complete truth.
Some of this is gaslighting, some of this is an elaborate psyop, some of this is bullshit.
From the faculty at Columbia via the Guardian.
On Tuesday night, we watched in horror as hundreds of riot police flooded our beloved campus and brutalized our classmates. The next day, students awoke with swollen faces, bruised wrists and lacerations – all results of inhumane police treatment. The past two weeks have been tumultuous, marked with mass arrests of student demonstrators, an encampment on our lawns, national media attention and vile acts of hatred. Countless have spoken on our behalf. But by speaking over us, media outlets and politicians have created a distorted narrative – one which unfairly characterizes our community.
Now, it is time to elevate student perspectives, the “us”, rather than the “them”. The traumatic environment and militarization of our campus are not the sole product of ill-intended protesters or reckless non-affiliates, as claimed by administrative emails; rather, they are the fault of the senior administration themselves. For months, this crisis has brewed as administrators neglected student and faculty voices. We must be clear: the administration has put our students’ safety at risk and has failed to ensure a conducive learning environment. As student leaders, it is time for our voice to be heard.
The seeds of the NYPD’s 30 April raid on Columbia University were planted nearly six months ago. On 24 October, Columbia’s senior administration unilaterally created an illegitimate university event policy in the aftermath of peaceful pro-Palestinian demonstrations, granting them the power to regulate protests and “‘sole discretion’ to determine sanctions on student organizations and their members”. Thus, senior administration circumvented process and procedure and undermined shared governance, rather than adhere to the rules of university conduct, adopted by our university senate and set out in the university statutes.
This was only the beginning of what would become a pattern of executive overreach. The results of this unprecedented action first manifested on 3 November, when the Columbia chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) were suspended due to unsubstantiated claims of “threatening rhetoric and intimidation”.
When this rationale was questioned in January, senior executive vice-president Gerald Rosberg admitted that “there was no intent to insinuate that one group was threatening” and “if the reference was read that way, he offered his regrets”. This dismissive and inactionable apology was inadequate and unproductive. Rosberg’s comments did not rectify the university’s wrongdoing, and only further initiated a standard of stifling free speech. The move, condemned by both faculty and students, elicited a commitment from the administration to re-evaluate its actions and engage in more transparent decision-making processes.
So that pattern continued.
UCLA Student Press Conference.