After anti-Israel protesters disrupted a lecture by a visiting Israeli speaker last month at U.C. Davis, pro-Israel activists on campus have decided to fight back.
Students and faculty members are pressing university administrators to take action against the demonstrators who interrupted a March 7 lecture by Israeli diplomat George Deek, an Arab Christian from Jaffa. Members of Aggies for Israel (the student organization that sponsored Deek’s appearance) and Davis Faculty for Israel (a year-old organization of professors) have launched letter-writing and op-ed campaigns. One op-ed was published in the Davis Enterprise on March 23, headlined “Violating freedom of speech at U.C. Davis.”
“There is a student code of behavior that was probably violated,” Al Sokolow, the bylined author of the op-ed, told J. He is a former community development professor at U.C. Davis who founded DFI last year. “It’s appropriate for the administration to impose [sanctions].”
A few minutes into Deek’s speech, which was titled “The Art of Middle East Diplomacy,” several dozen protesters stood in front of Deek and unfurled a banner that read “1948 = 1492” — equating the year of Israel’s founding and the displacement of a portion of the native Arab population with the year Spain expelled its Jews.
While walking out, they shouted “Long live the intifada,” “Israel is an apartheid state,” “Israel is anti-black” and “Palestine will be free, fight white supremacy.” A one-hour video of the speech and demonstration was posted on YouTube (www.tinyurl.com/deek-speech) by Aggies for Israel.
As the protesters exited the hall, one audience member was heard to mutter, “They disturb the peace with impunity at this school.”
That’s what Aggies for Israel and the 45-member pro-Israel U.C. Davis faculty group are hoping to change.
Writing on behalf of DFI, Sokolow sent a letter to U.C. Davis chancellor Linda Katehi and provost and executive vice chancellor Ralph Hexter, urging the administration to “take strong action in response to the unruly disruption.”
The letter deemed the protest “a blatant violation of our campus’ lauded Principles of Community, which ask for civil discourse on contentious public issues.” It also demanded a thorough investigation, sanctions against identified participants and their organizations, a public statement deploring the outburst and a guarantee it won’t happen again.
As of late last week, Sokolow said he had not yet received a response from the chancellor’s office.
“This is a complicated thing,” he told J. “If they can work this out, and agree it was egregious and in violation of campus rules, they may take a while to enforce that.”
In response to a request for an interview with Hexter, J. received a written statement from U.C. Davis spokesperson Andy Fell, which read in part, “We do strive for a civil and respectful discussion of [views], however the right of free expression is a cornerstone value of the [university]. The safety of our campus community is always our highest concern, and at no time did it appear that any physical altercations occurred.”
Deek, 31, served in Israel’s embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, and was Israel’s deputy ambassador to Norway in 2014-15. Tabbed “Israel’s best diplomat” in a headline in Tablet magazine — “an Arab in a Jewish state and a Christian in a predominantly Muslim Arab world,” read the subhead — he is on leave studying law at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
His appearance at U.C. Davis was organized in part by Yinon Raviv, a native Israeli and U.C. Davis sophomore majoring in communications.
Four days after the incident, an op-ed by Raviv ran in the California Aggie, the student newspaper. Of the protesters, he wrote, “They called on my family to die [by calling for an intifada] … but what hurt the most was what they didn’t do. They didn’t go back to their seats. They didn’t stay to ask questions. We all lose when one side plugs their ears, stamps their feet and throws a temper tantrum.”
Zachary Nelson, president of Aggies for Israel, said he had invited the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine to participate in the event, given that Deek is Arab. The group declined, Nelson said.
Nelson also arranged to have five uniformed officers, an undercover officer and four campus police cars parked outside the hall. “Ever since BDS and this huge wave of anti-Semitism masked as anti-Zionism,” he said, “I have had to plan every event with heavy security.”
The officers did not intervene in the disruption. Nelson said once he saw the protesters in the audience, he expected trouble, but decided it should play itself out so Deek could continue his lecture, which he did.
Response to similar incidents, at least at U.C. schools, may change going forward after the U.C. Board of Regents last week adopted what it is calling Principles Against Intolerance. The principles, in part, call out “anti-Semitic forms of anti-
Zionism” and say infringements on the rights of speakers to be heard will not be tolerated.
“We use the [principles] to demand consequences or sanctions,” Nelson said. “They give us the legal basis to pursue action against these groups. That will be huge for us. I believe the school is too afraid to enforce this.”
After the incident, members of the Black Student Union at U.C. Davis contacted Nelson, he said, asking for an emergency dialogue because of the claims made by the protestors that Israel is “anti-
black.” Nelson said he was pleased the group reached out rather than accept the assertion at face value. A dialogue has been scheduled for later this semester.
Though Nelson said he hopes for better response to uncivil discourse in the future, he said it won’t come easy.
“The administrators see what we go through,” he said. “They’re helpful, but it’s hard for them to act because of free speech.”