Anti-Israel activists are trying to “dox” — to reveal the identity and personal information of — pro-Israel vigilantes who attacked the “Palestine Solidarity Encampment” at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) this week.
As Breitbart News reported, after nearly a week in which members of the encampment chanted antisemitic slogans, assaulted journalists, and bullied students and members of the public, without interference by the university, about 100 vigilantes arrived on campus late Tuesday night and began tearing down the barricades at the encampment. For several hours, activists and vigilantes battled each other until, finally, the California Highway Patrol arrived on scene.
It was only after the vigilante attack that local Democratic officials, such as Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, condemned the violence and lawlessness at UCLA, which they had previously attempted to ignore.
Bass, and university officials, have vowed to prosecute the vigilantes — again, after ignoring violence by activists.
The Los Angeles Times reports that an army of online “sleuths” is trying to help them by identifying participants and “doxing” them — even though, the Times notes, sometimes the volunteer detectives identify the wrong individuals:
When a large group of men wearing black outfits and white masks stormed into the UCLA encampment Tuesday evening, Pro-Palestinian groups almost immediately began trying to identify them.
…
Shortly thereafter, the business website of a Los Angeles man who had been named as one of the attackers was mobbed with angry reviews. Others who had been identified rushed to make their social media profiles private, turned off comments on their business pages and set their phones to send all calls to voicemail.
In some cases, the online doxing was quickly followed by apologies for identifying the wrong person.
Law enforcement dismantled the UCLA encampment Wednesday night into Thursday morning, making 210 arrests. Activists believe that police sided with the pro-Israel vigilantes by not intervening to stop them the previous evening.
In reality, UCLA and its security contractors, as well as law enforcement, had protected the encampment, allowing members to assault and harass people with impunity for days, and appeared to delegate security authority to them.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.