On April 25, Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of California Los Angeles erected their Palestine Solidarity Encampment on campus, joining hundreds of students across the country protesting the genocide in Gaza. Five days into the encampment, a mob of violent pro-Israel counterprotesters attacked the students — videos, reports, and testimonies circulated online describing how “at least 100 masked” men beat, gassed, and terrorized students at the encampment close to midnight on April 30.
None of the assailants were arrested that night, and police and campus security response was not only delayed, but some left the scene. In response to this attack, UCLA announced a dispersal order against the encampment the next day, resulting in the arrests of over 200 faculty and students engaged in peaceful protest on May 2.
Six months later, on Oct. 18, UCLA Student Body President Adam Tfayli announced via a statement on Instagram that two attackers responsible for injuring scores of students, faculty, and community members on April 30 have been arrested.
On Oct. 22, professors Graeme Blair and Salih Can Açiksöz, along with students Benjamin Kersten and Catherine Washington, held a press conference announcing a lawsuit against UCLA, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. The lawsuit responds to the repression of their First Amendment rights, based on what they claim was an unlawful dispersal of the encampment and subsequent arrests of peaceful pro-Palestine protesters on May 2.
On April 25, 2024, Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA set up a Palestine Solidarity Encampment in the middle of campus at Royce Quad. By then, Israel had killed over 35,000 Palestinians. Today, the death toll exceeds 45,600 Palestinians, according to local authorities. This number is likely much higher according to The Lancet. It also doesn’t include the thousands missing or whom authorities could not count due to Israel’s destruction of infrastructure and communications in Gaza. Organizers of the UCLA encampment demanded that the university divest from any financial and academic ties to Israel, along with weapons manufacturers complicit in the genocide. Students also demanded that the university fully disclose its assets.
Encampent Day 1, April 25, 2024: Large banner reads "UCLA SAYS FREE PALESTINE." Photo credit: Rinichi Abe. Graeme Blair, Associate Professor of Political Science who is one of the four plaintiffs suing the university, and Nour Joudah, Assistant Professor at the Department of Asian American Studies, visited the encampment daily. Both were members of the Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP).
“I think the most important thing students can do at this moment is not only continue to center Palestinian lives but to center why the [university has] a responsibility to those lives. Outside of the greater moral responsibility, we are profiting off their deaths,” Joudah commented in response to the demands for divestment.
“It's bad enough that my taxes help bomb my whole family. Now I'm being told that I don't have a right to control whether or not the investments that’ll help me retire one day also help bomb my own family.”
Looking back on the learning and sense of community created by the encampment, Blair told Palestine Square via video call, “The university did not provide students with a safe environment to learn and talk about Palestine.” He added that due to the discrimination and harassment students have experienced on campus since Oct. 7, the encampment offered a space for learning, conversation, and organizing that wasn’t possible before. “It allowed [that space for] students and faculty who shared solidarity with Palestine, but felt afraid to participate in conversations that were not as easy to have in public before.”
Joudah and Blair, along with other FJP members acted mainly as a support system for student organizers. Professors often stood near the encampment holding a “UCLA Faculty and Staff Support our Students” sign. Faculty also participated in a walkout toward the encampment on April 29; they led the students and gave speeches.
The encampment was a hub for educational conversation. It included teach-ins about the history of Palestine and its connection to resistance movements worldwide. Most notably, the encampment became a space that welcomed people of all faiths and backgrounds.
According to the text of the lawsuit filed against the school: “The encampment became a space for mutual association and camaraderie where students of all faiths spent time together, studied together, and prayed together,” offering both Jummah and Shabbat services side by side.
In a video call with Palestine Square, professor Nour Joudah recalled the story of a student who expressed a sense of safety at the encampment, knowing that they had shelter, food, and medical care accessible to them every day they woke up.
“It is such an indictment of the world that we live in that it took a volunteer student protest standing up against genocide halfway across the world to help give this American student food and shelter,” Joudah exclaimed.
Joudah has family in Gaza, many of whom were killed during the genocide.
“I often [spoke] to [my family] from the encampment and it was a really indescribable thing to convey what it meant to them … To see people stand up for you in a world that doesn’t seem to care whether or not you exist is not a small thing,” she said. “The students were my greatest source of love, and getting to see that play out every day was a main source of sustenance, particularly on days when I couldn’t reach family in Gaza."
Encampent Day 1, April 25, 2024: mural lists student demands including divestment, transparency, ending the university's silence, boycott, and abolishment of policing on campus. Photo credit: Rinichi Abe.
Though the community within the camp thrived, its inhabitants and the journalists visiting it were still subjected to verbal and physical harassment from pro-Israel counterprotesters stationed right outside the encampment. Students reported incidents where counterprotesters released mice into the campground while blasting the sound of babies crying, sirens, and an Israeli children’s song, “Mamtera Em Mamtera.” The song is reportedly used by the Israeli Occupation Forces as a torture tactic and has been featured in an Israeli TikTok trend mocking Palestinians who are subjected to torture by Israeli soldiers. Counterprotesters also set up a stage facing the encampment, propping up a screen that played a continuous loop of footage of Hamas carrying out its operation on Oct. 7.
The actions of the counterprotesters were disturbing and distressing for many students at the encampment. Pro-Palestine students and faculty were not the assailants' only targets, as journalists and student reporters also experienced harassment and violence.
Photo of Encampment at UCLA, courtesy of UCLA student who wished to remain anonymous. Catherine Hamilton, the Daily Bruin’s former news editor, told Palestine Square over text messages about her interactions with the men who attacked the encampment, three days before the mob attack.
“[April 27] was a violent night. That was the night where one of [the men took] photos of my press badge and said ‘Good luck getting a job Catherine Hamilton,’” Hamilton said.
Similarly, Dolores Quintana, an editor for Mirror Media Group, reported receiving threats from counterprotesters every day she visited the encampment. Over messages on X (formerly Twitter) with Palestine Square, Quintana named Edan On, Matin Mehdizadeh, Dean Golan Cohen, and Ronald Mishiyev as the individuals who threatened her the days before and during the mob attack. Quintana posted a video on X of counterprotestors agitating encampment members captioned, “From the first day of the encampment, Zionists were trying to get in, cause chaos, and start fights. Here's Dean Golan Cohen threatening to beat people on April 25. Matin and Nouri Mehdizadeh, who participated in the April 30 attack, were there too.” She also identified a man she referred to as “UCLA Red Bandana,” who was recorded beating a member of the encampment, as another person who threatened her.
She identified her main attacker as Eyal Shalom, whom she reposted a video on X filmed by the account @FilmThePoliceLA showing him saying, “The score is 30,000, motherf*cker, 30,000 and counting, b*tch” during the mob attack. He was referencing the death toll of Palestinians killed by Israel in Gaza at the time.
A pro-Palestine demonstrator (Bottom) is beaten by counterprotesters who attacked the UCLA encampment. (Photo by ETIENNE LAURENT/AFP via Getty Images) The attacker in the light burgundy hoodie has been identified as Eyal Shalom. Nouri Mehdizadeh was also identified as one of the attackers in a post shared on X by the account @PplsCityCouncil. He was reportedly seen by students around the encampment every night yelling threatening language into a megaphone. A widely circulated video from the first day of encampment captures him pushing a woman to the ground after she attempted to grab his sign, he is seen approaching her while she is on the ground before others nearby stopped him. He was also pictured near the encampment holding his phone up hours before the mob attack showing a message on his phone screen that read “Enjoy Tonight.”
On the night of the mob attack, April 30, SJP organizers spoke with Blair and other FJP members, pleading with them to provide extra security measures due to the constant threats the students were receiving. FJP decided to form a watch group, assigning shifts to patrol the area at different times — Blair was originally assigned the midnight shift on the night of the attack.
“I think [their plea] was the moment I decided that I would be there with them no matter what happened because the university wasn’t doing that,” Blair recalled.
Close to 11 p.m. on April 30, pro-Israel counterprotesters in white purge masks began violently ripping the wooden barricade of the encampment piece by piece. They assaulted students in the encampment with pepper spray, bear mace, tear gas, and plywood. They also set off fireworks into the crowd of students at the encampment. Blair rushed to the encampment when he and other FJP members received messages from students with videos of the mob preparing to attack.
“[One of the] first things I remember [was] that someone said ‘Everybody up, they’re shooting fireworks at the tents,’” Blair said. He described seeing a group of 20 counterprotesters ramming into the barricade while throwing projectiles and pepper spraying anyone holding the barricade up. “This mob wasn't just people who supported Israel's actions in Gaza but it was white supremacists … to have those different groups of people willing to do anything to harm people in this encampment was really scary.”
Just outside of the encampment, the mob attacked both journalists Hamilton and Quintana who had been reporting about the encampment. Both said they had been recognized as press by these counterprotesters.
Hamilton mentioned that on the night of April 30, one of the counterprotesters who previously harassed her days prior, followed her around for the majority of the night. At one point, Hamilton described her attackers circling her and chanting “Go home, Catherine.”
“My peers [and I] at [the] Daily Bruin left to go back to our office, [my attacker] saw me … and then a group of 10 followed us and then attacked us.” Shortly after cornering the student reporters, the assailants pepper sprayed Hamilton and her peers in the face and physically struck her multiple times, as reported by CNN.
In a separate incident, Quintana told Palestine Square that Eyal Shalom pepper sprayed her that night, “after one of his confederates put an LED light in my face.” She had posted video evidence of the attack in May. Quintana posted other videos from the mob attack — one video where she is heard saying, “I'm press and if you hit me, I guarantee you'll go to jail,” to a masked Edan On walking outside the encampment with a pole. The other video includes multiple members of the mob swarming around her after she slipped, with who she identified as Ronald Mishiyev pointing a bullhorn in her face. Quintana also shared a photo with Palestine Square of “UCLA Red Bandana” holding a wooden plank in front of her face and covering her phone.
Once police arrived, Quintana said she stood behind the police line. She documented mob attackers surrounding her and accusing her of pepper-spraying people, while they shined flashlights in her face. Quintana also mentioned that Matin Mehdizadeh shone a light in her face while trying to intimidate her. Worried for her safety, she said that she stayed near the police line until someone pointed a laser at Mehdizadeh, allowing her to escape.
“It was the far most dangerous situation I’ve ever found myself in as a journalist,” Quintana said, mentioning she has had experience in dangerous situations with LAPD as a journalist before, but that this was elevated. “I was afraid [counterprotesters] were going to kill someone. I heard another assault on [the Daily Bruin] journalists from about a hundred feet away.” Quintana noted that the same people that crowded her likely attacked the student reporters.
Aside from volunteer medics within the encampment, camp inhabitants and journalists reported receiving no professional on-site medical treatment or assistance during the hourslong attack that ended a little past 3:30 a.m. The Daily Bruin reported that some police cars and an ambulance arrived around 11:13 p.m. and left 10 minutes later. SJP representatives claimed during a press conference the next day that it was to pick up an injured counterprotester. The Daily Bruin reported that on-campus security hired by UCLA left the scene and barricaded themselves in a building near the encampment, locking out everyone including one student journalist. UCLA Vice Chancellor for Strategic Communications, Mary Osaka, released a statement saying UCLA had called for police assistance at 12:40 a.m. Police only showed up hours later, according to the Daily Bruin. Once they arrived, police simply formed a line, slowly moving in to disperse the counterprotesters, while Daily Bruin journalists were attacked by the time police arrived at 3:30 a.m. The night ended with zero arrests.
“We keep us safe. The police did not keep us safe, and they will not keep us safe,” an encampment organizer stated in the press conference the day after the attack.
Student organizers also reported that over 150 students were pepper-sprayed and “at least 25 protesters ended up being transported to local emergency rooms to receive treatment for injuries including fractures, severe lacerations, and chemical-induced injuries,” according to CNN.
Police arrived at the UCLA campus in droves by 4 p.m. on May 1, the next day, preparing to disperse the encampment. UCLA’s current Chancellor Darnell Hunt entered the encampment before any official dispersal order. Witnesses reported that after a fruitless back and forth with protesters, he reaffirmed the assembly as unlawful and announced that the police would arrest anyone who remained inside the encampment. By 6 p.m. the first dispersal order was announced, while protesters began mentally and physically preparing to be arrested.
Students rebuilt the barricades as a final effort to protect the Palestine Solidarity Encampment.
“Students still had pepper spray and bear spray on their clothes when they were prepping the barricades for the camp clearing. The next morning [after the mob attack], it didn’t even occur to UCLA to [think] ‘let us send nurses and staff to make sure that whoever is still there has had their injuries dealt with,’” Joudah commented.
By 8 p.m, the Daily Bruin reported that police officers began forming lines near the encampment, while prison buses were brought to campus earlier to transport the arrestees.
Police enter a Pro-Palestine encampment at UCLA on May 2, 2024. (Photo by Eric Thayer/Getty Images)Blair returned to the encampment that day “to naively prevent [the police from inflicting] harm when they came in, but also to bear witness to what the university decided to do with this peaceful encampment of people talking about one of the most important issues today,” he explained.
On May 2 at around 3 a.m. officers from the University of California Police Department, the Los Angeles Police Department, and the California Highway Patrol all wearing riot gear moved in between Royce and Haines halls, after failing to enter earlier because protesters were blocking the front entrance. Students also reported seeing snipers stationed on top of nearby buildings throughout the day. They violently tore the wooden boards and tents of the encampment, while beating their way through students and firing less-than-lethal rubber bullets into the crowd, shooting at least five students in the head. Witnesses say they shot indiscriminately at individuals without assessing if that force was necessary.
“I knew some of those students [who were brutalized] and had seen what they had been up to in the preceding days, and as we allege in the lawsuit, they were doing nothing unlawful when the police were called in,” Blair shared.
Student chants echoed “Peaceful Protest … We’re Just Students … Please Don’t Shoot Us,” as police prepared their batons and weapons, closing in on hundreds of protesters, ripping keffiyahs and protective wear off the bodies of students.
“I watched police officers who had been sent by UCLA administrators grabbing students by the shoulders and throwing them through the air and then jumping on [top of] them,” Blair said. "Just to see that level of violence and repression. It was deeply upsetting, and I'll never forget those [scenes].”
Blair was arrested that night and subjected to a zip tie, along with other faculty colleagues who were forced to sit aside as police brutalized their students for hours. Blair said he was released at 8 a.m. on May 2, five hours after the arrest. He mentioned some arrestees were jailed until midnight, while students, faculty, and organizers attempted to provide jail support throughout the day.
The dispersal resulted in over 200 arrests and nothing left of the Palestine Solidarity Encampment, aside from scattered tents, clothes, and food trampled on by the boots of riot police, along with graffiti nearby reading “Let Gaza Live.”
For a few weeks in May, UCLA moved its classes online. When permitted to return to campus, students were met with heavy surveillance via security guards and a stronger on-campus police presence. Former UCLA Chancellor Gene Block announced a new Office of Campus Safety, in collaboration with UCPD and led by former Sacramento Police Chief Rick Braziel. Other significant policy changes were made on May 9, when UC President Michael V. Drake announced a new systemwide policy that requires disciplinary proceedings against all arrested students and faculty without exception, while disciplinary actions based on criminal records were previously pursued on a case-by-case basis.
According to Blair, UCLA opened an investigation against him based on his arrest without providing evidence specific to him that proved he broke any code of conduct. His case remains open, though the advising Faculty Committee that investigates these complaints found no probable cause for the accusations. The school has left most cases open, leaving room for further action against faculty and staff, while students were required to sign letters agreeing to follow the student code of conduct or potentially face the reopening of their case in the future.
Along with these disciplinary proceedings, a majority of pro-Palestine actions were violently shut down by police following the original encampment, including attempted encampments in May and June, ending in immediate dispersal orders, the latter ending in 27 arrests. Another incident resulted in the arrest of 43 students in a UCLA parking garage on May 6. The students originally planned a sit-in but were detained before they could enter any building.
In October, UCLA dispersed and dismantled a Sukkot set up by Jewish students in solidarity with Palestine. A Zionist mob also vandalized it while police watched before tearing it down themselves, according to Joudah. She also noted that students in support of the Sukkot were forced to disperse by police, while the mob was allowed to stay. “[The Zionists were] the ones that made the first tear on the Sukkot, there's no consequence for any of them,” Joudah told Palestine Square.
Most recently on Nov. 19, four students were arrested in three campus parking garages hours after participating in an SJP demonstration. They were arrested for allegedly obstructing Bruin Walk — with one arrest for interference with a police officer, according to the Daily Bruin.
In August, UC President Michael V. Drake officially outlawed any encampments without university approval, along with other “time, place, manner” restrictions on free speech.
On Oct. 18, Student Body President Tfayli along with two student body vice presidents announced in a statement that two counterprotesters involved in the mob attacks in April were arrested. Both were charged with felonies. The statement also said that two other counterprotesters had warrants issued against them, one consisting of a felony charge and the other lowered from a felony to a misdemeanor. The statement said that one additional case was under review by the U.S. attorney’s office in relation to the mob attack.
The LA County DA did not publicly release the names of these men. However, investigative journalist Eric Levai obtained the information, revealing the names of Malachi Marlan Librett, Eyal Shalom, and Noel Padilla, along with their case numbers from the DA’s office.
Librett, a UC Santa Cruz student, was arrested and charged with a felony of Assault With a Deadly Weapon, Use of a Deadly Weapon, Hate Crime, and a misdemeanor of Battery. According to his record, Librett was arrested in August, and “Released on Own Recognizance” on Sept. 18, meaning he was released by signing a promise to return to court hearings in the future. Two preliminary hearings were held on both Sept. 18 and Nov. 22. Librett pleaded not guilty to all charges. He was further ordered to stay away from the UCLA Campus and two victims named in the case. Another court date is set for Jan. 10, 2025.
William Gude, a police accountability activist who filmed three hours of the mob attack, was assaulted by Librett and received a “victim notification of hearing” from the DA’s office back in October.
According to the online records obtained by Levai, Padilla was charged and arrested in July, “with two felony counts of resisting an executive officer; one misdemeanor count of battery upon a peace officer; and two misdemeanor counts of resisting or obstructing a peace officer on May 1.” Padilla was “Released on Own Recognizance” on July 30. He has attended multiple hearings since July, most recently on Nov. 5. He pleaded not guilty, with his next hearing set for Jan. 7, 2025.
According to Levai, the District Attorney’s office did not clarify if Padilla was a counterprotester or an encampment member, and declined to share information about other attackers it identified.
As for Eyal Shalom, whom Quintana identified as her attacker, he was charged with a felony count for Illegal Use of Tear Gas as a Weapon. An arrest warrant was initially requested in August, though it is unclear whether he was arrested.
Additionally, Beverly Hills High student Edan On had his felony charge of “Assault with a Deadly Weapon” lowered to a possible misdemeanor. He was arrested by police in May. On's mother said in a now deleted Facebook post “Edan went to bully the Palestinian students in the tents at UCLA and played the song that they played to the Nukhba terrorists in prison,” according to CNN. His case is under review by city attorney Hydee Feldstein-Soto, according to an article by Quintana. Soto’s office notified Eric Levai via email that the case was still under review.
UCLA professor Graeme Blair is one of four plaintiffs suing the UC Regents, along with professor Salih Can Açiksöz, and graduate students Benjamin Kersten and Catherine Washington. They filed their suit in the Superior Court of California on the grounds of suppressed free speech, a right outlined in different sections of Article 1 of the California Constitution.
The suit alleges that UCLA unlawfully arrested two of the plaintiffs, as the California Supreme Court only allows a dispersal order if a group is engaging in criminal conduct or poses an immediate threat. The lawsuit states that UCLA admittedly based the dispersal order on a Heckler’s Veto and the actions of the violent mob the night before, instead of the actions of the encampment members.
Police enter a Pro-Palestine UCLA encampment on May 2, 2024. (Photo by Eric Thayer/Getty Images) The complaint further mentions that Chancellor Darnell Hunt cited security risks as a reason to sweep the encampment. “[T]he point is to shut down an unsafe situation because we think the people [referring to the mob] are going to come back and we don’t know how many may come back,” the lawsuit quotes Hunt from statements he made during his visit to the encampment on May 1.
“The university knew at every moment that th[e mob attack] was a risk, because we told them,” Blair emphasized. “I hold [UCLA] responsible for the violence that happened both th[e] night [of the mob attack] and the night of the police clearance.”
According to the filed complaint, the plaintiffs are demanding that the court decide the dispersal to be unlawful, require both police and the school to expunge related criminal and disciplinary records, prevent the school from dispersing future protests based on school policy, protect the plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights, and protect them from any further discrimination for their Pro-Palestine activism and participation in the case. UCLA has still not yet publicly responded to the complaint.
The lawsuit aims to challenge the validity of the dispersal and the discriminatory policies against Palestine activists showcased in the May 9 policy, along with the police brutality targeting protests specifically in support of Palestine.
“They have changed the rules about where you can exercise your First Amendment rights that I think will prove to be unconstitutional,” Blair told Palestine Square. He expressed hope that this lawsuit would help reduce the practice of police violence against students and faculty, especially concerning free speech.
"I think this [lawsuit] is one small piece of a puzzle of pushing back against the way that UCLA has treated Palestinians and Palestinian solidarity activists,” Blair explained. “When there's a crackdown on activism there's a crackdown on scholarship … so I hope that this will be one small part in enabling not only activism to continue, but scholarship on how we could end these colonial practices in not only Palestine but beyond.”
Many attackers remain unnamed and are roaming freely without accountability for their violent actions. This fact, paired with the continuous targeting of pro-Palestine activists by school-sanctioned police brutality and increasingly discriminatory university policies, has created a fearful environment for both students and faculty.
Blair says, “The message the university wants us to hear is that we need to be careful. They want us to be silent and if we’re not going to be, there will be consequences. It is not just activism that the university doesn’t want, they don’t want people talking about Palestine on campus in any way.”
Joudah emphasized the gravity of the one-sided repression of students in support of Palestine,
“There is a significant lack of safety that is felt in the classroom. Students don’t know who they can speak in front of without facing repercussions, [with some] faculty themselves taking part in doxxing their own students.”
A student waves the Palestine flag on the UCLA campus on April 29, a chopper is seen in the sky. Photo credit: Rinichi Abe. Blair, Hamilton, and Quintana all noted that UCLA didn’t reach out to cover medical expenses or collect details about the assaults they experienced and witnessed. Both journalists Hamilton and Quintana filed police reports with little to no follow-up.
Quintana expressed hope to receive justice and see her attackers in jail, almost seven months after her assault, “You have to hold people like that accountable otherwise they'll never stop,” she said about the mob.
Hamilton commented on the current state of the campus, “I don't feel safe in the aftermath of these attacks … UCLA’s security is spending too much time surveilling us and not enough time protecting us from people that might come attack us.”
“I traveled 2000 miles across the country to [attend] this university where I thought advocacy and protecting students would be of the utmost importance,” she added. “My attack was so public … and still just nothing. No commitment to bring me peace, no commitment to protect me, no commitment to listen to me. And that I think shows that this university is a corporation, not an educational institution.”
