A group of anti-Israel students from the University of California, Los Angeles vandalized the home of a top school official on Wednesday, according to authorities.
Early Wednesday morning, about 70 people affiliated with a pro-Palestinian UCLA group called Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine gathered at the University of California Regent Jay Sures’s home. The activists, who covered their faces with masks, were gathered to “demand divestment from corporations directly involved in the oppression and genocide of the Palestinian people,” according to a statement from the group.
The group hung a banner on the regent’s bushes that read, “Jay Sures you will pay until the day you die,” surrounded by antisemitic imagery of pigs wearing military caps.
The news follows demonstrations that have engulfed UCLA ever since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Pro-Palestinian protesters have attracted scrutiny over their opposition to Israel during their demonstrations, and UCLA released a statement following a violent demonstration in June 2024 urging student activists to stand down and protest peacefully.
Sures said the agitators surrounded his wife’s car and prevented “her from free movement” in comments to Deadline.
“It’s one thing to peacefully protest, but to go to an administrator or a regent’s house … to put up signs threatening my family and my life and vandalize the house, that is a big escalation,” Sures said.
The student activists also left red handprints on the house’s walls. The gesture is seen by Jews as “violent antisemitism” with origins in the Ramallah Lynching of 2000, Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, told Fox News. At the time, a mob in the West Bank cheered at the sight of a Palestinian celebrating with bloodied hands after murdering two Israeli soldiers.
The protesters camped out at Sures’s home from 6 a.m. through 8 a.m., blocking the street and Sures’s driveway, pounding drums and chanting.
The UCLA Police Department arrived at the regent’s home at 6:15 a.m. and later filed a vandalism report, although authorities allowed the protest to continue as they monitored the incident.
In a post to Instagram, the group of student protesters complained that Sures had responded to their actions by “calling in over thirty police officers and security guards, many provided directly by UCLA, with less-lethal firearms and riot gear, maliciously framing our actions holding him accountable for his reprehensible decisions as ‘hate crimes.’”
The student group has targeted Sures via social media before for representing organizations affiliated with Jews or Israel in his role as vice chairman of United Talent, a leading global entertainment company.
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Following the incident, a spokesperson for the University of California system issued a statement saying it “strongly supports freedom of speech and the rights of our community members to participate in nonviolent protests, and we condemn all crimes and harassment committed against members of our UC community.”
The incident at Sures’s home mirrors a similar confrontation at the University of Michigan in December 2024. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators vandalized Jewish Regent Jordan Acker’s home and car, with the incident coming after they had twice targeted him, leaving bloodied handprints on the door to his law office.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
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