About 100 Berkeley middle-schoolers left class to march in support of Palestinians on Friday morning, the same day that an antisemitic message was discovered on a classroom whiteboard at their campus, Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School.
During their march, the students protested outside the nearby JCC of the East Bay, where preschool was underway, in a way that felt targeted, the center’s CEO said Monday. Students repeatedly shouted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” and other chants.
CEO Melissa Chapman said the group stopped outside the JCC but that the reason for pausing wasn’t clear. There is a stop sign near the building, she said, and a student was on crutches, so the student may have needed a rest.
“After looking at the video, you can see that folks are stopped. You can see that adults are stopped,” Chapman said. “It’s hard to say. I’m trying to be unbiased. Looking at the facts — there’s definitely a moment where folks are stopped and turned around. And it doesn’t feel very good.”
A spokesperson for a group affiliated with the walkout denied that the protest intentionally targeted the JCC.
Two King administrators accompanied the students during their march for safety reasons, the school reported. Parent volunteers were also present.
The antisemitic message and the unsanctioned walkout, which were reported earlier in the Berkeley Scanner, have again put an uncomfortable spotlight on the Berkeley Unified School District. They happened just two days after Superintendent Enikia Ford Morthel was questioned by members of Congress about the district’s response to antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment since Oct. 7. The district is also under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
Since the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre in Israel and the ongoing war, student walkouts protesting the war in Gaza have become commonplace at Bay Area schools. Berkeley High students walked out on Oct. 18 and again on March 13. Students in Oakland walked out of school on Feb. 28 and again on May 1. Students in San Francisco also walked out on Oct. 18.
Heightening tensions at King was the antisemitic statement scrawled on a classroom whiteboard the same day of the walkout. “A— hates Jews,” it read. “We stand with A—.” J. has chosen to redact what appeared to be the name of a student.
Ford Morthel sent a statement to J. on Monday responding to what she described as graffiti. “We take these incidents very seriously and are committed to investigating and taking the appropriate next steps,” she said.
“I was deeply saddened to learn about a graffiti incident in a BUSD middle school classroom on Friday as well as student behavior during an unsanctioned student-led walkout the same day,” she added. “These incidents are unacceptable and not who we are.”
In a separate email obtained by J. that Morthel sent to a Jewish BUSD parent, the superintendent said she is “outraged and disgusted” by the antisemitic message and that the administration at King is investigating the matter.
Video of the walkout showed a mass of students, many wearing kaffiyehs, marching on the streets of Berkeley, waving large Palestinian flags and chanting “Free, free, free Palestine!” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” The students walked just under 2 miles to UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza, where a pro-Palestinian tent encampment is entering its fourth week.
One video posted on social media by protest supporters showed ugly confrontations along the route. In one, a woman who appears to be pro-Israel gives two middle fingers to the group. In another video, a different woman is said to have a knife. A student yells, “She’s got a knife!” Then another student says the woman is holding a gardening tool.
Police became involved after someone in the group of protesters used a cardboard sign to strike the woman who held up her middle fingers and another protester “threw water on her,” according to a statement from the Berkeley Police Department.
“The reporting party did not report any pain or injuries from the encounter and only asked that we document that the incident occurred,” BPD spokesperson Byron White told J. in an email Monday.
The incident at the JCC raised significant concerns. It sits roughly a half-mile due east of King. Chapman said the protesters arrived around 10:40 a.m. and their chants could be heard inside the building. “Our windows are 110 years old,” she said.
Of particular concern was the chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” which Chapman considers to be a call for the elimination of Israel.
She said a preschool parent asked one of the adults with the group to intervene.
“The adults in the group were not agreeing to leave,” Chapman said.
Chapman found the experience unsettling, even as she did not feel physically threatened.
“Do I believe that most of these sixth- to eighth-graders understand what chanting ‘From the river to the sea’ means? I sure hope not,” Chapman said. “But for any adult to try to push aside the real meaning of that and not acknowledge the deep trauma that causes the majority of Jewish community members — it’s pretty devastating.”
She added, “It’s difficult to believe that any adult would allow those kids to use such vitriolic propaganda and rhetoric in front of, basically, a preschool.”
Two activist groups expressed support for and published videos of the march: Berkeley Families for Collective Liberation and the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, an anti-Zionist group well known in the Bay Area for orchestrating large protests against Israel, such as blocking Israeli-owned ships from unloading cargo at the Port of Oakland.
Berkeley Families for Collective Liberation is affiliated with Berkeley Jewish Parents for Collective Liberation, a left-wing group with ties to the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace. Berkeley Jewish Parents for Collective Liberation is attempting to counter allegations of widespread antisemitism in the school district, which it calls “right-wing attacks.”
A member of Berkeley Jewish Parents for Collective Liberation who was not authorized to speak publicly told J. that the protest was “organized by the middle-school kids themselves” with support from parents, “including Jewish parents.” The principal of King Middle School, Michael Tison Yee, also said in a statement that the protest was “student-led.”
“While the majority of our students stayed in their classes today, approximately 100 of our students participated in a walkout that ended at UC Berkeley,” Yee wrote in an email to parents obtained by J. “As indicated in my previous email, this was not a school sanctioned event.”
Yee added that the King administrators accompanied the group “because of the large number of students involved.” He wrote that the graffiti incident is “being investigated.”