Students Supporting Israel at UCLA

ארגון

On Thursday, May 17th, Students Supporting Israel at UCLA(SSI) hosted an event called "Indigenous People Unite." The event provided a platform to three different indigenous communities to share the stories of their people, by providing an overview of their history, struggles, and aspirations. The indigenous groups represented were the Jewish, Kurdish, and Armenian communities, three groups who are often ignored when speaking about indigenous history.

In the middle of the Arm...enian student-panelist Darion Ouliguian's speech on his personal ties to his homeland, the group Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA (SJP at UCLA), violently disrupted the event. The disruption included physical and verbal abuse of panelists and the audience, denial of the heritage and identity of the panelists, throwing of objects at the audience, ripping down SSI’s Armenian and Israeli flags, taunting of the panelists, chants that called Jews white-supremacists and called for the destruction of the state of Israel (“We don’t want two states we want 1948”), and yelling of obscenities at those in attendance. SJP made it very clear that they were not there to have discussion or even to speak regarding Palestinian identities when they refused an invitation for them to sit down and have a conversation on their grievances. All SJP was looking for is the destruction of our event, shouting down free speech, and denying the academic freedoms which our university stands for.