Pro-Palestine and pro-Israel protesters clash in UCLA campus. Photo: NBC Los Angeles.
The Grayzone has obtained a dossier detailing the identities of the Zionist hooligans who assaulted University of California Los Angeles anti-genocide student protesters. It was sent to Los Angeles police, but no arrests have been made. And the cops still can’t explain why they disappeared for hours during the mob attack.
On April 30, thirty people were injured when a mob of Zionist hooligans savagely assaulted the pro-Palestine UCLA encampment shortly before midnight. For over three hours, local and campus police stood down as the masked thugs assaulted students, journalists, and even officers of the law with fireworks volleys, pepper spray, and metal pipes. Though multiple attackers have been identified by community members on social media, to date there have been no arrests of pro-Israel goons.
A Black REPORTER gets assaulted by pro-Israel supporters.
Justify that. pic.twitter.com/FdimEBT8dA
— Film The Police LA (@FilmThePoliceLA) May 1, 2024
The Grayzone has obtained a dossier composed by anonymous sleuths claiming involvement with the UCLA student protests which apparently identifies some of the attack’s perpetrators. The students emailed the document to the UCLA administration and police (UCPD), as well as Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. It contains detailed information about the identities of those who were filmed carrying out wanton violence.
Los Angeles-area police have arrested droves of students protesting Israel’s US-backed genocide in Gaza, accusing over 40 students and journalists of “conspiracy to commit burglary” for attempting a sit-in on school grounds. Yet local authorities have made a grand total of zero arrests in the coordinated Zionist mob assault against UCLA anti-genocide protesters on April 30.
The LA Times has reported that local law enforcement is relying on sophisticated facial recognition technology to hunt down the attackers. But as the UCLA sleuths’ dossier makes clear, many assailants have already been identified by matching their identities with social media profiles.
The UCPD and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department did not respond to questions from The Grayzone about whether the persons identified in the dossier were under investigation, or had been taken into custody.
Alleged attackers listed in the email include:
1. Liel Asherian: Asherian, who uploaded videos directly from the scene of the attack to Facebook, was reportedly seen assaulting pro-Palestine demonstrators with a tennis racket. In an interview with the New York Times, Asherian claimed without offering a shred of evidence that he was called a “dirty Jew” and doused in pepper spray. “That made me start breaking down their barricades,” he stated.
🚨 CAMPUS WATCH: Liel Asherian, identified among the group assaulting the @UCLA encampment pic.twitter.com/3qxwHr4EoD
— Stop Arab Hate (@StopArabHate) May 1, 2024
2. Nouri Mehdizadeh: Footage from before and after the attacks show Medizadeh was a constant presence on the periphery of the protest encampment. According to the email from student activists, Mehdizadeh “was involved in planning violence continuously” and UCLA officials were likewise “warned about him continuously.” The email’s author suggested Mehdizadeh’s actions would constitute hate crimes, given that he “referenced a desire to attack those who were not his “Jewish brothers.” A photo of Mehdizadeh taken shortly before the violence erupted indicates he had foreknowledge of the assault and may have helped organize the attack.
Later that evening, a masked Mehdizadeh was recorded attempting to destroy barricades while a compatriot with a speaker blasted “Mani Mantera,” a Hebrew-language children’s song that Israeli soldiers have played while torturing and/or taunting captive Palestinians on camera. Despite getting caught red-handed by several security officers—and despite nearly getting into a fistfight with another guard in a separate incident—Mehdizadeh was allowed to remain in the area.
3. Tom Bibiyan: Footage uploaded to social media by Bibiyan himself reveals he personally participated in the April 30 attacks. A day after the assault, Bibiyan published a video on Instagram highlighting his involvement, alongside a caption boasting that “we rushed the terrorist encampment.” When another Instagram user asked Bibiyan to clarify his role in the violence, he bragged, “yeah I’m in this video”—apparently confident that he would face no legal repercussions for his crimes. Bibiyan reportedly spent several years participating in questionable cryptocurrency schemes while part of the Los Angeles NFT community, before being exiled from such groups following accusations of indecent exposure and sexual harassment. A website representing the Bibiyan Family Philanthropic Foundation indicates the family regularly donated to not only vehemently Zionist groups like the zealous and insular Chabad ultra-Orthodox cult, but also to liberal news outlets like Democracy Now.
Violent Zionist thugs wave the flag of the messianic Chabad cult on their way to assaulting anti-genocide protesters at UCLA pic.twitter.com/FNdsLI6Vii
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) May 1, 2024
4. A man seen waving the “Moshiach” flag of the militant Zionist Chabad organization was identified by students as Rony Yehuda. An instagram account belonging to the virtually-unknown pro-Israeli rapper, @Judah_fire_, indicates Yehuda is a Los Angeles resident. The email by student organizers said the 35-year-old provocateur has returned to UCLA campus on multiple occasions since the attacks, despite lacking any affiliation with the school — and despite claims by students that they alerted police to the presence of the aggressive outsiders.Among the most prominent cheerleaders of Yehuda’s actions were members of Team Moshiach, a Chabad-affiliated outfit which describes itself as “a global non-profit organization that unites Jews from around the world in acts of goodness and kindness.” In the days following October 7, Team Moshiach spearheaded a campaign to funnel military hardware to the Israeli military, and even uploaded a video to Instagram showing an Israeli soldier personally thanking the group for the equipment.The director of the nearby Chabad House claimed to the NY Times his organization had no role in organizing the attack at UCLA.
5. Another outside agitator was identified as Narek Palyan, a local Armenian activist with a penchant for publicly performing the Nazi “sieg heil” salute, and who frequently posts material idolizing the Third Reich. Though the alliance between Zionist Jews and an avowed anti-semite might strike some as confusing, there is a long and well-documented history of collaboration between the two forces, which fundamentally depend on one another for their survival.Bizarrely, Palyan claimed in an interview with the NY Times that he only appeared at the protest “because he had seen a video of a Jewish woman on the pro-Palestinian side criticizing white people.”
Narek Palyan gives Nazi salute pic.twitter.com/AaZqB3BfKG
— Daisy Gardner (@daisykpgardner) August 23, 2023
6. A man seen spitting on pro-Palestine protesters and hurling racial slurs the day prior was revealed to be 23-year-old David Kaminsky. The trained boxer has admitted calling a student the n-word but denied accusations that he committed violent assaults, claiming he wasn’t in the vicinity of UCLA campus during the mob attack. Kaminsy has appeared in videos training with the rapper, Blueface, who was sentenced to two years probation for a 2022 shooting at a Las Vegas strip club.
🚨 UPDATE: The man who spat on someone and called him the “n word” at @UCLA has been identified as David Kaminsky
He is a boxer and owns Kaminsky Boxing Gym in Los Angeles pic.twitter.com/PTGnQjxz97
— Stop Arab Hate (@StopArabHate) April 29, 2024
7. Aaron Cohen: Cohen is an Israeli ‘counterterrorism analyst’ who embedded with police shortly before their May 2 raid on the encampment while shooting an ‘undercover’ special for television personality Dr. Phil. The actor previously served in Duvdevan, the infamous Israeli military unit upon which Netflix’s notoriously propagandistic series Fauda was based. Though he hasn’t been accused of participating in violence directly, shortly before the raid, Cohen wrote on Instagram: “I just wrapped [up] a [sic] independent quiet infiltration operation for @drphil tonight into the heart of the UCLA encampment. I’m now down here with LASDs elite SRT who’s staging now and preparing to make entry onto the pro terror antisemitic encampment.”
Global Uprisings for Gaza: The Moral Triumph of Student Revolts
Also present in the run-up to the attack were members of Magen Am, a Los Angeles-based Jewish private security firm founded in 2017 by Yossi Eilfort, an MMA fighter-turned-Chabad rabbi. Magen Am, which claims to employ 12 former Israeli and US soldiers, bills itself as “the only Jewish, non-profit organization licensed to provide physical, armed security services on the West Coast of the United States.”
Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, Eilfort admitted coordinating with UCLA on an April 28 counter-protest aimed at antagonizing the pro-Palestine encampment, which featured speakers including an Israeli diplomat and a member of the California State Assembly. Footage published to social media appears to show a member of the group hulking over students and violently ripping them away from the encampment.
The group maintains a close working relationship with local law enforcement. At the conclusion of a training ceremony in 2020, LAPD commander Vic Davalos publicly declared: “I see Magen Am as the next evolution of an organized public/private first responder partnership in the community.”
"I see Magen Am as the next evolution of an organised public/private first responder partnership in the community."
LAPD commander Vic Davalos praises the Zionist militia group Magen Am, which is staffed by former Israeli military personnel. Did it have a role in clearing UCLA? pic.twitter.com/WPG9AJCKD6
— Lowkey (@Lowkey0nline) May 4, 2024
That “partnership” appears to be paying off, with Magen Am now openly boasting about its ability to influence LAPD operations. In an Instagram post published in early January, the group wrote that the LAPD’s new “online hate incident reporting policy” had been “spearheaded by Magen Am.”
In an accompanying video, the now-deceased head of Magen Am, Ivan Wolkind, described the change as “a project that we’ve been working on for about a year with LAPD,” and offered a hint as to its purpose: “Why are we excited about this and why is it important to report these incidents?… First of all, every police department in the country makes resource allocation decisions based on the number of incidents reported. If these incidents are occurring in our community and we don’t report them, the LAPD has no way of knowing that they should allocate more staff time and more patrols in our areas.”
But their links to the security state don’t end there. Magen Am’s official website boasts: “We have direct connections at the FBI and Local law enforcement, including the LAPD, Sheriff’s Department, DA’s office and the US Attorney’s office.” This means, they say, that “If, God forbid, an incident occurs that requires immediate attention, Magen Am is able to push it all the way up the chain of command.”
The Grayzone wrote to Magen Am to inquire whether any of its members were involved in the April 30 attack, and solicited their opinion on the violence, but received no response. Phone calls to Magen Am’s Los Angeles office also went unanswered.
As of publication, some of the most violent perpetrators in the April 30 mob assault have yet to be identified. According to students, these include:
1. A man in a red bandana, seen beating students with a rod, who admitted during an interview with local media during the mob assault that he was not a UCLA student—a literal outside agitator.
What a shock. Red Bandana, one of the terrorist ringleaders who likely beat a UCLA student so badly he was hospitalized, is not a student at the school. I mean it's not like we can't tell just from looking at him that he's not a college student. If you got info, drop it. https://t.co/An3biNOiQx
— doloresquintana (@doloresquintana) May 5, 2024
2. A large man in a white t-shirt and Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap, who was accused of violence against students on April 30, remains unidentified as well.
So far, none of the figures listed above has faced legal consequences for the well-documented acts of violence they carried out against peaceful student protesters.
But the mollycoddling of violent pro-Israel agitators does not appear to be limited to UCLA.
Though he’s been removed from his postdoctoral teaching position at Arizona State University, Jonathan Yudelman, who moonlights as an assistant professor at the University of Texas, has so far faced no legal repercussions after being filmed hurling sexist obscenities while physically intimidating a Muslim woman in Tempe—despite a call by the Council of American Islamic Relations’ chapter in Arizona for “law enforcement to arrest… Yudelman for allegedly harassing and assaulting a Muslim woman in a hijab during his participation in a pro-Israel protest near campus.”
This is Jonathan Yudelman, a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University, verbally abusing a Muslim woman, invading her personal space & forcing his body towards hers.@princeton this is unacceptable and he must immediately be investigated.
Twitter, do your thing. pic.twitter.com/gptlDfHumx
— Niz (@NizMhani) May 6, 2024
Another agitator filmed in the incident was identified by social media users as Sammy Ben, a US citizen who has recently documented himself repeatedly violating the Geneva Conventions while he spent two months occupying Gaza in an Israeli uniform, despite holding only a tourist visa.
Here is Sammy Ben explaining how he ended up fighting for Israel in Gaza pic.twitter.com/K7RUIEd8SO
— In Context (@incontextmedia) May 6, 2024
Meanwhile, at Columbia University, two former Israeli army soldiers who attacked students with toxic chemical “skunk” fluid this January, sending at least 10 anti-genocide protesters to the emergency room, have not been expelled from campus, nor have they been arrested. “There are no arrests, and the investigation is ongoing,” an NYPD spokesperson told HuffPost.
(The Grayzone) by Wyatt Reed
Wyatt Reed
Wyatt Reed is a Blacksburg, Virginia-based writer and activist who spent several years in Latin America.
