Four student journalists who work for the UCLA Daily Bruin were attacked shortly before 3:30 a.m. Wednesday by Pro-Israel counterprotesters during a campus demonstration that turned violent.

Daily Bruin news editor Catherine Hamilton, 21, told The Times she recognized one of the counterprotesters as someone who had previously verbally harassed her and taken pictures of her press badge. The individual instructed the group to encircle the student journalists, she said, before they sprayed the four with mace or pepper spray, flashed lights in their faces and chanted Hamilton’s name.

As she tried to break free, Hamilton said, she was punched repeatedly in the chest and upper abdomen; another student journalist was pushed to the ground and beaten and kicked for nearly a minute. The attack was first reported in the Daily Bruin.

“We expected to be harassed by counterprotesters,” Hamilton said in an interview Wednesday, adding that every Daily Bruin reporter was instructed to use a buddy system, to report from outside the encampment and to leave the area if it became unsafe. “I truly did not expect to be directly assaulted.”

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240502114521/https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-01/four-student-journalists-attacked-by-counterprotesters-at-ucla

  • Black_Char@kbin.social
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    8 months ago

    You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villian is such a real thing. We as a country progressed so far and made this country a place where EVERYONE wanted to live. Then all of a sudden nazis/racists everywhere the eye can see. Then the worst part, like you mentioned, is that they are so quick to claim victim and abuse when it suits them, but brown and black people asking for recognition/help totally unacceptable.

    What does it mean when the Jews themselves are the nazis? What does it mean when the group of people that the whole world has recognized as having extreme hardships that they went to literal war for it, now is trying their hand at the same playbook? They Israelis are 1 step away from gas chambering people and yet they don’t recognize they deep seated flaws and hypocrisy.