Two pro-Israel vigilantes have been arrested in connection with an attack this spring on the violent pro-Palestinian “encampment” at the University of California Los Angeles — which prompted officials, finally, to clear the protest.
There are also warrants for the arrests of two other vigilantes, and possible federal charges pending, relating to the overnight attack on April 30 and May 1 that led to rioting and, later that same day, to the clearing of the encampment.
Activists had set up the encampment in a central, public area of campus on April 25, building wooden barricades and posting guards on the perimeter. They refused to let Jewish students pass unless they denounced Israel and Zionism.
(Zionism is the belief that Israel has the right to exist. It is reflected in daily prayers that Jews have recited for thousands of years, and is a belief held by the vast majority of Jews in the United States and around the world.)
The activists used force to exclude others from the area of the encampment; this journalist was assaulted by a group of activists on April 26 after initially being granted access to the encampment through a marked press entrance.
For days, UCLA administrators did nothing; in fact, they reinforced the boundaries of the encampment with steel and plastic barriers.
A federal judge found in August that UCLA had allowed the freedom of Jewish students to be violated. “UCLA does not dispute this,” he wrote. “Instead, UCLA claims that it has no responsibility to protect the religious freedom of its Jewish students.” He dismissed UCLA’s arguments and ordered it to take several steps to protect Jews on campus.
Similarly, UCLA’s antisemitism task force concluded this week that “Jewish students and staff at the University of California, Los Angeles, were harassed, threatened and assaulted as pro-Palestinian protests spread on campus,” the Wall Street Journal reported. The task force’s report including a finding that “respondents did not have confidence that reporting discrimination to UCLA administrators would lead to any effective action by the campus.”
It was only after a large group of pro-Israel vigilantes attacked the encampment on April 30 that the university brought law enforcement onto campus to clear the encampment. Elected officials, including Mayor Karen Bass, who had been silent about the violent encampment suddenly found their voices in condemning the vigilantes.
There have been two arrests, according to the student government, as reported by the Daily Bruin student paper:
The arrests were announced in a transparency report posted to Instagram on Friday evening by Undergraduate Students Association Council President Adam Tfayli, Internal Vice President Josh Garland and External Vice President Javier Nuñez-Verdugo. The report said two individuals have been arrested on felony charges with primary hearings scheduled, and two more individuals have active warrants for arrest – one with a felony warrant and one with a misdemeanor warrant. The report also said there is one additional case being reviewed by United States Attorney for the Central District of California E. Martin Estrada’s office.
One of the individuals with felony charges was Eyal Shalom – who was coined by several accounts as “#UCLAMaroonHoodie” on X, formerly Twitter. Shalom was arrested for illegal use of tear gas May 1. Journalist Dolores Quintana took to X in May saying Shalom pepper sprayed her in the eye, while another man shone a light on her face.
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The other individual arrested with felony charges, Malachi Joshua Marlan-Librett, was charged with assault with a deadly weapon – not firearm – as well as special circumstance allegations of a hate crime and a use of a deadly weapon from May 1. Marlan-Librett, who graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 2020, was also charged with two felony counts of battery from April 28.
Hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists were arrested in the clearing of the encampment. UCLA is situated in Westwood, near Beverly Hills, one of the most heavily Jewish and pro-Israel neighborhoods in the United States.
The vigilantes, who used sticks, fireworks, and tear gas, enjoyed the quiet approval of many people in the surrounding community, who were outraged by scenes of Jewish students being denied access to classes or dormitories.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
