UPDATE: April 30, 3:27 p.m.
The Daily Illini spoke with Ben Shapiro, junior in LAS and the president of Hillel, about his experience being spat on while at the demonstration of Jewish pride.
DI: Can you tell me a little bit about what happened here?
Shapiro: With regard to the overall event?
DI: With your personal experience right now that just happened.
Shapiro: Are you talking about the student that spat? I only saw him briefly. He said something about killing children. I didn’t kill any children. No one here killed children, but obviously that’s not what he’s referring to, right? He’s referring to the situation in Gaza where you have Israeli Defense Force soldiers going in and targeting Hamas, and as a result of it being a war, there are innocent civilians dying. I by no means condone that that’s not okay, but at the same time, I mean, that’s war. I ask why is the war happening? What’s the cause? And this is a direct result of Hamas terrorists going into Israel and killing 1,000 Israeli civilians, not military targets, civilians. So obviously there has to be a response. You cannot just have terrorists living next door, and so the choice was made to send the IDF to go target Hamas. When we were fighting Germany in World War Two, we were targeting their military just as Israel is targeting Hamas, and unfortunately innocent civilians are going to die. I mean, urban warfare is a complicated thing. Once again I’m not excusing the deaths of civilians or the deaths of children, but understand this is a result of Hamas. The deaths of those children are not nearly as much on the IDF as it is on Hamas. Had Hamas not come into Israel and literally burned children alive in their cribs we would not be in the situation.
DI: Can you give me a little bit of a play-by-play of what happened with the pro-Palestinian protester today?
Shapiro: He came by and he just spit his drink out at us and called us baby killers. I mean, just disgusting. But, you know, it kind of shows I want to talk about two things. Number one, we’re not scared to be here. You don’t see us wearing masks. You don’t see us covering our faces. You don’t see us hiding our identities. You see that in the encampments, right? But we’re proud to be here. Number two, no one here wants any violence against those students. We purposely chose this location right here so there’d be no confrontation. This is not a counter-protest. We’re not trying to make a statement necessarily against the encampments. What we’re doing here is we’re proud to be Jewish, and when they come over here and spit on us and call us “baby killers,” I think it’s pretty obvious who’s in the right.
