Steve Garvey, a Republican running for the Senate, spoke out strongly against college students protesting the Israel-Hamas war on Thursday. He called them “terrorists” and asked university leaders and police to do something.
At a news conference in Los Angeles, he stood in front of Israeli flags and said, “What they’re saying is: they’re pro-Hamas.” “They back terrorists. They are helping terrorists.
A former baseball star for the Los Angeles Dodgers named Garvey is running against Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff for the place of the late Dianne Feinstein in the Senate. His comments came a day after hundreds of students were arrested across the country, including in Los Angeles, for protesting the war.
On Wednesday night, riot police from the University of Southern California came to clear protesters who had set up camp in the middle of campus. They arrested 93 of them and led them away with their hands in zip ties.
Things went something like this this week on the grounds of Columbia University and the University of Texas at Austin. Protesters are in the fourth day of a sit-in at the University of California, Berkeley. They want the university to cut ties with Israeli institutions and stop investing in companies that back Israel.
With an Israeli Special Operations veteran and a rabbi by his side, Garvey said that the protests were “terrorism disguised as free speech.” He also said that the students were “probably making a statement that they don’t really understand what it’s about.”
“This is organized support of terrorism,” he said, adding that he supports free speech but thinks that disrupting lessons and making it impossible to learn is terrorism.
At a separate press meeting Thursday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said that his team is “very aware of what’s going on on the campuses and want to protect people’s rights and protests, but do so peacefully and without any hate.”
The protests happen as the war enters its seventh month. Since Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, which killed about 1,200 people, more than 34,000 people have died in Gaza because of Israel’s response.
The war in Gaza is making things more tense among California Democrats. Moderates in the establishment are mostly supporting Israel’s actions, while leftists want to be tougher on Israel, which has been an ally of the US for a long time.
Politicians and college leaders have also expressed worry about the rise of antisemitism on college campuses, where Jewish students have been criticized and abused.
There was a lot of disagreement among the three Democrats running for the Senate primary about the war. Schiff took a more moderate stance than more progressive Democrats, saying that the US should support Israel but also hold its ally to high standards.
