JNS
“They were reading from scripts. They had clearly been trained on what they were supposed to do and say,” Jill Stark told JNS.
When four anti-Israel, masked protesters with keffiyehs disrupted Claremont Hillel’s Oct. 7 commemoration at Pomona College in southern California on Oct. 15, Jill Stark’s “first instinct was to protect the students,” the director of community relations at the Hillel told JNS.
“That was why I just went and I stood there,” she said.
Video footage that circulated on social media showed people forming a barrier to block the anti-Israel protesters from entering the room further. Stark was among those people.
She told JNS that protesters “dressed like Hamas terrorists” shouted statements like “Zionists are not welcome here” and “you’re all complicit in genocide” at the event, which included a survivor of the Oct. 7 attacks who showed photos and footage from that day.
“They were reading from scripts,” she told JNS of the anti-Israel protesters. “They had clearly been trained on what they were supposed to do and say.”
The protesters engaged in “targeted intimidation of Jewish students, marking one of our community’s most painful moments,” Stark said.
She was among six professors and staff members to form a barrier around the disruptors until other professors escorted them out. The barrier was a “two-layered, half-circle ring” shape, with those involved standing “shoulder-to-shoulder,” she said.
“They would have had to go through us to get further into the room,” Stark said. “It kept them contained.”
Because protesters had a camera, Stark was careful to “maintain composure, both for the sake of the students—I didn’t want to escalate things more—and I didn’t want to be caught on camera yelling or touching the intruders in any way.”
“I thought the best thing to do was to observe and also just make sure they couldn’t get into the room,” she said.
The barrier lasted about a couple of minutes before the protesters were removed, according to Stark.
The day after, Gina Gabrielle Starr, president of Pomona, and Avis Hinkson, vice president for student affairs and dean of students at the college, stated that the disruption was “shocking and deeply disturbing.” (Pomona is one of the five undergraduate schools that are part of the Claremont Colleges.)
“It is both outrageous and cruel to interrupt a space where members of our community come together to mourn,” Starr and Hinkson stated. “Antisemitic hate cannot be tolerated here. Our community is better than this.”
They said that the college will investigate the matter. A college spokesperson told JNS that “we are reviewing security and other kinds of footage, with the intention of identifying and disciplining the individuals involved.”
“We are continuing to receive information that has allowed us to advance our investigation, and appreciate any additional details that members of our community are able to share,” the spokesperson said.
The college’s response shows “what institutional support looks like,” Stark told JNS.
‘Medieval hatred’
On Oct. 23, Claremont Undercurrents, a student publication that says it reports on “Palestine liberation” among other topics, posted what it said was an anonymous statement from the protesters calling the event speaker, and Oct. 7 survivor a “genocidal maniac.”
The anonymous statement also accused Israel and the university of being complicit in crimes, including occupying land in Israel and in the United States and referred to Zionism as a “death cult that must be dealt with accordingly.”
A college spokesperson told JNS that the statement is “vile, threatening and highly disturbing,” and “this kind of antisemitic hate has no place on our campus.”
Stark told JNS that the statement is antisemitic and reflects a “medieval hatred.”
“The collective blame, exclusion, dehumanization and targeted threats constitute antisemitic harassment by multiple leading definitions,” she said. “This sort of hateful rhetoric leads to violence. The campus climate that fostered these sentiments and inspired the behavior of the antisemitic intruders needs to change and evolve.”
