Late Monday, police dismantled a pro-Palestinian protest centered around a student-erected religious structure on the UCLA campus.
Officials say the events of the Monday, Oct. 21 rally led to one arrest.
Around 150 UCLA students, faculty and staff came throughout the day to participate in the ritual of building a sukkah — a temporary hut-like structure made of natural elements — celebrating the traditional Jewish holiday of Sukkot, organizers from UCLA’s chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace said.
UCLA graduate and undergraduate students and faculty involved with Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, Faculty for Justice in Palestine and more were involved in what organizers billed the “Gaza Solidarity Sukkah.”
UCLA police said that “unauthorized” demonstrators arrived at Dickson Court North throughout the day beginning around 8:45 a.m. and obstructed student pathways. Programming for Monday’s “Sukkot for Palestine” — where protestors further discussed their demands including “divestment from genocide” and a boycotting of all university ties with Israel — started shortly before noon.
Several tents for a pro-Palestinian encampment were erected, prompting a representative from UCLA Student Affairs to inform protestors that they were violating the university’s “Time, Place, and Manner” policies because of where they were assembling, using unauthorized structures and amplified sound.
Sukkot, a week-long harvest also known as a “festival of booths,” is where traditional Jewish followers dwell in a man-made sukkah, lined with Jewish calendar pages. The holiday is all about finding a temporary shelter and honoring the land, according to a Jewish Voice for Peace at UCLA press release.
The “Gaza Solidarity Sukkah” was scheduled to last until the end of the holiday week, on Wednesday, Oct. 23, said Benjamin Kersten, a history graduate student and leader with Jewish Voice for Peace at UCLA.
The pro-Palestine demonstration — which some referred to as the “Gaza Solidarity Sukkot Encampment” — grew throughout Monday evening and was joined by some counter-protestors, according to reports from The Daily Bruin, UCLA’s student newspaper.
Police in riot gear arrived around 8:30 p.m. to begin clearing the demonstration. Police had issued several dispersal orders, according to Kersten. Most of the protestors had left with several remaining in the area at 9 p.m., and one person taken into custody for failing to disperse, UCLA officials said. The demonstration involved about 40 people.
One counter-protestor was caught in a “very disturbing video” tearing down some of the paper walls of the temporary sukkah hut, saying homophobic slurs, Kersten said.
Kersten, who left campus around 5 p.m., said that Jewish Voice for Peace “did not call for putting up an encampment.” Monday’s sukkah structure was erected as a way of “adding more Jewish perspectives and voices to campus,” and observing the Sukkot holiday while “thinking of the Palestinians displaced and killed.”
In past years, it was common to see at least one sukkah structure up on the UCLA campus for Sukkot, Kersten said.
Daniel Gold, director of Hillel at UCLA, said Monday that the group also celebrated the Jewish holiday with a sukkah, meals and communal gatherings held this past week on the Hillel property across from campus.
Before Monday’s protest was broken up, JVP organizer and UCLA graduate student Leah Jacobson said she refuses to “observe Sukkot as normal, when university investments continue to fund the genocide of Palestinians.”
“The principle of ‘pikuach nefesh,’ or saving a soul, demands we put other laws aside in order to preserve human life,” Jacobson said in a news release. “I am here aligning my Jewish practice with my support for Palestinian liberation.”
Kersten called the Gaza Solidarity Sukkah a way of “adding more Jewish perspectives and voices to campus.”
“This year, we cannot observe Sukkot without thinking of the Palestinians displaced and killed by the Israeli military with weapons, funding, and political cover provided by the United States,” said Kersten, a history graduate student.
After the last school year saw several high-profile demonstrations — some peaceful and others more violent — at Southern California colleges, including UCLA, the University of California has enforced a ban on encampments and wearing identity-concealing masks on its 10 campuses.
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On Tuesday, two UCLA students and two faculty members at UCLA sued the UC regents and university officials, alleging their rights to free speech and expression were violated when pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested at an encampment on campus last spring.
“Students decrying the genocide of Palestinians and the university’s complicity were brutally shut down by the same administrators who profess to support free expression and thinking,” said Graeme Blair, a plaintiff in the case and an associate professor of political science, in a statement. “As an educator, I am ashamed that the university failed our students.”
Plaintiffs allege that when police broke into the encampment in early May, protesters were not engaged in any violence or criminal activity. Nevertheless, the suit states, the university unlawfully declared the protest illegal, forced protesters to abandon the encampment, and invited police to round up and arrest those who wished to remain.
Officials said the university is aware of the legal action, and are in the process of reviewing.
UCLA “fully supports community members expressing their First Amendment rights in ways that do not violate the law or our policies, jeopardize community safety, or disrupt the functioning of the university,” officials said in a statement.
Staff writer Allyson Vergara contributed to this report.