UC faculty group stood with Palestinians. That ‘legitimized’ Hamas ‘terrorism,’ regent says

A person holds a Palestinian flag as students participate in a “Walkout to Fight Genocide and Free Palestine” at UCLA last week. A letter from a University of California faculty group condemning UC’s use of the word “terrorism” to describe this month’s Hamas attacks on Israel and urging the administration “to uplift the Palestinian freedom struggle” has drawn a furious counter from one university regent, who responded with a letter of his own Tuesday. Jay Sures, vice chairman at United Talent Agency and a member of the UC Board of Regents, wrote that the letter sent Oct. 16 by the UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council to the board, UC president and campus chancellors was full of “falsehoods, inaccuracies, and antisemitic innuendos” and “seeks to legitimize and defend the horrific savagery of the Hamas massacre of October 7.” “Our statement of condemnation of the October 7th massacre of Israeli civilians by Hamas was absolutely justified and necessary because terrorism has no place in our world,” Sures wrote. “As human beings we need to condemn it immediately and forcefully without fear of retribution or that some may be offended.” The Oct. 9 statement from Board of Regents Chair Richard Leib and UC President Michael Drake called the Hamas attack, which killed about 1,400 Israelis and led to more than 200 others taken hostage, “an act of terrorism” and the violence “sickening and incomprehensible.” In response, the Ethnic Studies Faculty Council, which represents more than 300 faculty members across the UC system, called on the administration to “retract its charges of terrorism, to uplift the Palestinian freedom struggle and to stand against Israel’s war crimes against ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people.” Since the ambush by Hamas militants, Israel has launched a barrage of airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, sealed it off from vital resources such as fuel and begun a more recent ground incursion. “To equate the two and to hold the oppressed accountable for ‘terrorism’ reinscribes a colonial narrative that seeks to have the world believe that history began on October 7, 2023.” Andrew Jolivette, co-chair of the Ethnic Studies Faculty Council and chair of UC San Diego’s Department of Ethnic Studies, wrote in an email that Sures’ comments “speak volumes on their own about what he thinks of what is happening principally to Palestinian children, with consequential impact also on Israeli children and issues of multi-generational trauma.” Sures urged the council to retract its statements and to condemn the Hamas attack unequivocally.