Aaron Schwartz wasn’t looking for a fight when he crossed a Berkeley street to confront a man jeering him with Hitlerian salutes. But he got one.
The 23-year-old former Berkeley resident claims the man’s actions were meant to lure him across the street adjacent to the U.C. campus, where eyewitnesses claim he was subsequently grabbed by two other men and punched in the face.
While attacks from men aping Nazi behavior are not the norm, campus Jewish leaders contend U.C. Berkeley has become an uncomfortable place to be identifiably a Jew.
Adam Weisberg, Berkeley Hillel’s executive director, said many campus anti-Israel activities have turned anti-Jewish. Following the Sept. 11 tragedies, bulletin boards were installed on campus for students to write their opinions. Weisberg quotes one written message: “It’s the Jews, stupid.”
Last week, he added, a man wearing a yarmulke while walking to services at Hillel was heckled by a passing motorist, who leaned out the window and shouted, “Damn kike.”
After a Simchat Torah celebration the night of Oct. 9, Schwartz was at the tail end of a group of revelers making their way back to Berkeley Hillel on Bancroft Avenue after dancing on U.C. Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza. After crossing the street, Schwartz noticed a man mocking the overtly Jewish procession. He said the man was raising his arm in a sieg heil salute while goose-stepping in place.
“I didn’t think it through very clearly,” said Schwartz, discussing his decision to walk back across Bancroft Avenue and confront the group. “I saw him do something that was wrong and chose not to ignore it.”
Schwartz claims he verbally engaged the man — described in the police report as being in his early 20s, of Middle Eastern appearance and standing 5-foot-10 with close-cropped hair and dark facial hair — on what he thought he was doing.
Schwartz said the man then walked several feet toward him while shouting, getting close enough that “he was in my face, I had to lean back away from him.” At this point, the report claims Schwartz pushed the man away, but Schwartz now says he is unsure if he did.
Following the alleged push, Schwartz recalled being grabbed and punched by one of the three men, who knocked him to the pavement, leaving him with a swollen and blackened right eye. The whole interchange took roughly 10 to 15 seconds. The three men apparently walked off and were not apprehended.
Schwartz, who has not seen a doctor, said the blow seems to have affected his memory. He said he has no recollection of standing up, crossing the street and walking into a cafe as eyewitnesses tell him he did. He said witnesses also tell him he told police he pushed the man, though he now is uncertain.
Following Schwartz’s alleged assault and what many claim are rising levels of anti-Semitism on campus, Jewish student leaders organized a Sproul Plaza vigil, which was scheduled to take place yesterday.
“In the same way that members of the Arab and Muslim communities are being scapegoated, other members of the community are simply…scapegoating Jews,” said Weisberg. “There has been an increase in the level of anti-Jewish rhetoric and an increase in the brazenness with which Jewish students have been approached and verbally assaulted.”
Captain Bobby Miller of the Berkeley Police Department said Schwartz’s alleged assailant could be charged with battery but added that he does not feel the incident meets the requirements of a hate crime.
“It looks like the victim is the one that approached them from the standpoint of confronting activity,” said Miller. “From the statements made in the report, it appears the victim made the first physical contact and then the fight ensued out of that.”
Schwartz, however, emphatically disagrees.
“I was not in a fight on Tuesday. I was assaulted,” he said. “I wasn’t hit because of who I was; I was hit because of what I am, and that’s a Jew. My thinking is he was the bait and I took it. The other two were lying in wait.”
Schwartz said his “first shiner” should fade by the end of the month, but the experience will stay with him for much longer.
“I feel a sense of loss; the innocence is gone. Intellectually, we know these things exist, but to find it in Berkeley, this bastion of liberal education?” he said. “In a sense, I’m grateful for it. It reminded me that there are such things in the world. It’s something that’s too easily forgotten and overlooked. It’s definitely encouraged me to be more fiercely proud of my Jewish identity.”