LA JOLLA, Calif. (KGTV) – The impact of the Israel-Hamas war is being felt by plenty of students on the campus of UC San Diego, and on Wednesday night, the Associated Students -- UCSD the student government -- listened to concerns from both Jewish and Palestinian students.
“Just yesterday, one of our sisters who was visibly Muslim, hajabi, was followed by two Zionist guys. She was followed and harassed verbally while they chanted, ‘I love Israel’ at her,” one student said during public comment.
“As you will hear tonight, most of the Jewish students on this campus have experienced hate. A very specific type of hate, Jew-hatred,” another student mentioned during public comment.
ABC 10News spoke with both Jewish and Palestinian students about what they were experiencing on campus and why they felt the urge to speak at Wednesday night’s meeting.
“We’re all facing fear for our safety. We’re afraid to come to school. However, I want to make one thing clear, that our reasoning for coming to these events is to get the school to acknowledge us. We not once or never will or never have an issue with the Jewish community,” a UCSD Palestinian student told ABC 10News.
“We’d like the Associated Student Body to condemn antisemitism in light of the atrocities that we’ve experienced on this campus but across campuses on the United States,” Gil Pasternak, a UCSD grad student, said.
Wednesday night’s meeting comes on the heels of UCSD’s chancellor issuing a statement to the campus community. He called for the campus community to condemn both antisemitism and Islamophobia as well as supporting free speech but reminding people of the impact words have on others.
Some feel the chancellor’s words hit the mark.
“Just like him I condemn Islamophobia. I condemn antisemitism and Jew-hatred. I think that free speech can escalate to violence. I do think that there’s a point of danger but, simultaneously, free speech is important on campuses,” Pasternak said.
But others felt otherwise.
“Chancellor Khosla missed the target. We had specifically for him to demonstrate the Palestinian world view and he didn’t. He has yet to state how many civilians have died which is 10,000 now. It’s really upsetting to see that the chancellor has yet to acknowledge that,” a Palestinian student told ABC 10News.
