Video: Antisemitism On Display At UCLA

The other day, Ryan – in his fantastic piece on the bigotry of BDS – mentioned the discriminatory act to which Jewish student Rachel Beyda was subjected.

Last week, I attended a council meeting to support my roommate, sorority sister and best friend, Rachel Beyda, as she went through the last step of being confirmed by the council as an appointed justice to the Judicial Board of the Undergraduate Students Association Council. I greatly admire Rachel’s academic success and the passion and determination she has demonstrated toward her goal of becoming a lawyer. I have seen her accrue immense leadership skills and experience in the legal field, both at UCLA, as the current law clerk for the Judicial Board and beyond. Therefore, as I ascended the stairs to Kerckhoff 417, I incorrectly assumed the confirmation of Rachel’s appointment would be quick and simple.

Rachel had been unanimously approved by the Appointments Review Committee consisting of three council members before she flawlessly introduced herself to the council. However, the first question directed at her by General Representative 3 Fabienne Roth was an attack on Rachel’s ability to be a justice based on her involvement in the Jewish community. At President Avinoam Baral’s insistence, the question was phrased slightly more considerately by Transfer Student Representative Negeen Sadeghi-Movahed, but this first question set the tone. Rachel finished the interview, making two important points: first, anyone qualified for the position would be a critical thinker who is knowledgeable about campus issues and therefore, has his or her own opinions and second, she has no significant political affiliations. Furthermore, she demonstrated an understanding of what actually having a conflict of interest means and acknowledged that a justice should remove herself from the decision-making process under those circumstances. Rachel was asked to leave the room for council discussion. What followed was a disgusting 40 minutes of what can only be described as unequivocal anti-Semitism during which some of our council members resorted to some of the oldest accusations against Jews, including divided loyalties and dishonesty.

StandWithUs has some video from the UCLA student meeting in question. And seeing it makes the blood boil more than just reading about it.

http://youtu.be/rpULMwxQnz4

19 thoughts on “Video: Antisemitism On Display At UCLA”

    1. Hard Little Machine

      The Jewbaiting will reach to the sky now. Now is the time that the student council calls to invites the Nazi party, the NOI, Hamas and anyone else they can find. You know that’s happening.

      1. They have already. At UC Berkeley Farrakan spoke to the Black Students Union a few years ago. Nobody showed up to demonstrate against that that pig.

  1. (It should probably be made clear that those quotes are not from Ryan, but from Rachel’s sorority sister.)

    Here’s the money quote:

    What followed was a disgusting 40 minutes of what can only be described as unequivocal anti-Semitism during which some of our council members resorted to some of the oldest accusations against Jews, including divided loyalties and dishonesty.

  2. Regarding the British accent (Facebook comment), it seems from the above that she was just reading a toned-down version of a question asked by another council member, whose name sounds somewhat Jewish.

          1. I think the photographer has a thing for her.

            She is Swiss in origin but when she speaks English she has a cultured middle to upper class London/Home counties accent. If I had to make a bet, I’d say parents from Guildford in Surrey or she was schooled in the UK.

  3. Gregory Allen Perry

    So let’s just perform a little mental experiment here and assume the people asking the questions are right (which they are not) and this girl has some kind of pro-Jewish or pro-Israeli biases based on her ethnic identity. What exactly is the UCLA student government deciding on that requires an unbiased opinion on “Jewish” issues? If the “Jewish” and “Palestinian” frat houses are right next door to each other and one side builds the fence around their back yard six inches over the other’s property line, would this girl be the judge deciding the case? Even if these people had a point, they don’t have a point.

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