Shocking video footage captured the moment an anti-Israel student protester interrupted a dinner party honoring Berkeley Law School graduates to rail against the Jewish State — at the home of the Jewish dean.
What should have been a celebratory occasion for upcoming graduates quickly turned into an unsettling confrontation over the Israel-Hamas war after the student disrupted the event, hosted by Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of Berkeley Law School and his wife, Professor Catherine Fisk, in their backyard.
Law student Malak Afaneh can be seen in the footage, shared widely on social media, standing up and offering the traditional Islamic greeting in Arabic, which translates to “peace and blessings upon you all,” before demanding the university divest from corporations funding Israel’s role in the war.
Afaneh, wearing a white “divest” shirt, a black-and-white keffiyeh around her neck, and a red hijab, is immediately approached by Chemerinsky and Fisk, who both ask her to leave.
“Please leave. No. Please leave. Please leave,” Chemerinsky interjects, as his wife tries to grab her microphone, telling her, “This is not your house. It is my house and I want you to leave.”
The situation then devolves as Afaneh and Fisk grapple with the microphone, and another student accuses Fisk of getting “aggressive.”
“We refuse to break our fast on the blood of Palestinian people,” Afaneh later declares, as Fisk pleads, “You were not invited for this purpose.”
“There is a genocide going on,” a third student chimes in during the confrontation.
In a statement released by Berkeley Law, Chemerinsky said that he “never imagined that something that we do to help our community would become ugly and divisive.
“The dinner, which was meant to celebrate graduating students, was obviously disrupted and disturbed. I am enormously sad that we have students who are so rude as to come into my home, in my backyard, and use this social occasion for their political agenda,” the statement continued.
The educator also revealed he had been the target of antisemitic harassment the previous week at the university, where posters of a caricature of him holding a bloody knife and fork with the words “No dinner with Zionist Chem while Gaza starves” were displayed around campus.
“I never thought I would see such blatant antisemitism, with an image that invokes the horrible antisemitic trope of blood libel and that attacks me for no apparent reason other than I am Jewish,” he said.
“The students responsible for this had the leaders of our student government tell me that if we did not cancel the dinners, they would protest at them. I was sad to hear this, but made clear that we would not be intimidated and that the dinners would go forward for those who wanted to attend. I said that I assumed that any protest would not be disruptive.”
Chemerinsky said about 60 students attended the celebratory dinner on April 9.
In a separate video of the incident, Fisk can be heard saying, “We agree with you about what’s going on in Palestine” as some students leave.
“Then what have you done about divestment? Nothing. Nothing,” another student says as she walks away.
“We don’t control the investment,” Fisk replies.
Afaneh told the Los Angeles Times she felt assaulted by Fisk and was considering pressing charges.
“The aggression with which she ran at me when I said ‘as-salamu alaykum.’ She saw my hijab and keffiyeh, and that was a risk for her,” Afaneh said.
Meanwhile, Chemerinsky also held a dinner for students Wednesday night and has another scheduled for Thursday, though this time with security.
“Any student who disrupts will be reported to student conduct and a violation of the student conduct code is reported to the Bar,” he said in the statement.
“I have spent my career staunchly defending freedom of speech. I have spent my years as dean trying hard to create a warm, inclusive community,” he continued.
“I am deeply saddened by these events and take solace that it is just a small number of our students who would behave in such a clearly inappropriate manner.”
