On May 18, students at the University of California, Irvine, protested a screening of the documentary “Beneath the Helmet,” an Israeli film about the Israeli Defense Forces.
“They were screaming. They tried to push open the door, but we were holding the door from the inside,” said President of Students Supporting Israel Katrin Gendova in an interview with the Orange County Register.
Along with the film, there was supposed to be a panel featuring several IDF soldiers.
UC Irvine’s Students for Justice in Palestine released a statement saying that the protesters, which included students from SJP, the Black Student Union, the Muslim Student Union, Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán, La Resilencia Trans/Queer de UCI, American Indian Student Association, Asian Pacific Student Association, and Jewish Voices for Peace, felt threatened by the presence of IDF soldiers and the police.
“Our demonstration was held to protest the presence of military and police forces on campus, which threaten the lives of Black and Brown people every day.”
Campus police escorted several students attending the event away afterward.
In a statement, Hillel International President Eric Fingerhut said, “We cannot allow Jewish students to be intimidated, threatened or harassed when they exercise their rights to assemble for student programming.”
SJP pushed back against this in their statement, saying, “In talking about providing a safe environment for all students on campus, administration’s double standards must be acknowledged.
“There have been countless incidents, reported and unreported, to which administration has never been responsive to.”
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