Tikvah: Students for Israel

UC Berkeley junior Milton Zerman announced his candidacy Friday for the 2019 ASUC elections, running under the newly established party Students First.

Approximately 50 protesters of the occupation of Palestine participated in a die-in and march, which began in Downtown Berkeley and proceeded to campus Thursday afternoon.

After months of deliberation, the UC Board of Regents released a report of its revised statement of Principles Against Intolerance on Tuesday, which now expressly condemns anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.

The Berkeley Hillel is a center for Jewish students at UC Berkeley and a chapter of the larger foundation Hillel International. Though the alumni letter sent last week recommends that the organization become an “Open Hillel” – a reference to a student movement that advocates opening Hillel’s restrictions on opinions about Israel – the letter instead began through a series of conversations between Jeremy Elster, a 2012 UC Berkeley graduate, and other alumni, all living in Israel at the time.

Holding Israeli flags and standing with locked arms, a group of students gathered at noon Thursday on Sather Gate to protest a recent ASUC bill pushing for Israeli military divestment.

Following a similar action taken by the UC Student Association, the UC Berkeley Graduate Assembly voted Thursday to pass a resolution denouncing HR 35, a state Assembly measure aimed at curbing anti-Semitism at the state’s higher education institutions.

Following the July settlement of a lawsuit alleging UC Berkeley administrators failed to mitigate an anti-Semitic environment on campus, Berkeley officials that they will consider implementing changes to public expression policies.

For weeks, Jewish student groups were left in the dark while a resolution was penned for the UCSA condemning HR 35 — a California Assembly resolution that condemns anti-Semitism at California’s higher education institutions — claiming it stifles free speech.