Anti-Israel student who interrupted law school dinner doubles down after sparking outrage
The anti-Israel protester who hijacked a dinner thrown by the Jewish dean of Berkeley Law School is doubling down against the outrage — wildly accusing the educator’s horrified wife of being a racist groper just for trying to get her to leave their home.
Malak Afaneh, who runs an anti-Israel group on campus, went viral for her antics at what was supposed to have been a celebratory dinner for graduates thrown Tuesday by their dean, Erwin Chemerinsky, who begged her: “Please leave! This is my house — you are my guest.”
His wife, Berkeley Professor Catherine Fisk, then attempts to grab the microphone out of Afaneh’s hand, telling her: “This is my house and I want you to leave.”
After the initial clip, seen more than 3.4 million times, sparked outrage, the student defended her antics in a social-media video — painting herself as a victim.
In the student’s eyes, the dean’s wife didn’t just try to grab the microphone from her but “put her arms around me, grasped at my hijab, grasped at my breast inappropriately [and] kept trying to grope my shirt,” Afaneh said.
The clearly horrified host “kept trying to grope my shirt,” Afaneh suggested wildly — claiming she would have been “justified” in striking back in self-defense.
Fisk “dragged” her up steps and “threatened to call the cops on a gathering of majority black and brown students,” she said, suggesting a hidden motive.
“Professor Fisk did not assault me because I was talking about Palestine — I didn’t even get the chance to talk about Palestine,” Afaneh said of the professor, who was heard on other footage from the dinner telling students that “We agree with you about what’s going on in Palestine.”
“She assaulted me because to her, a hijabi-wearing, keffiyeh-wearing Palestinian Muslim student that felt comfortable to speak in Arabic was enough of a threat to her that I was justified to be assaulted,” the student activist said, saying that she had “never in my life felt so traumatized and humiliated.”
“Professor Fisk embodied the Islamaphobia, the deep anti-Arab racism and the deep anti-Palestinian sentiment that these Zionist administrations are built on.”
Her latest claims met further backlash.
“She showed up at a dinner party to protest with a microphone and now she’s playing the victim and claiming Professor Fisk is a racist,” Steve McGuire, a Paul & Karen Levy Fellow in Campus Freedom at the American Council of Trustees, wrote while sharing her video.
“She’s lying about ‘genocide’ like she’s lying about what happened at that party,” added author Katya Sedgwick.
Chemerinsky later pointed out that he had never said anything in support of Israel’s actions, and that the law school has no investments in Israel itself.
“So it’s hard for me to see any reason why they are coming after me other than I was Jewish,” the dean told CNN.
Chemerinsky also said in a statement that he was “enormously sad that we have students who are so rude as to come into my home, in my backyard, and use this social occasion for their political agenda.”
“I have spent my career staunchly defending freedom of speech. I have spent my years as dean trying hard to create a warm, inclusive community,” he continued.
“I am deeply saddened by these events and take solace that it is just a small number of our students who would behave in such a clearly inappropriate manner.”
The dean has since held other dinners for the law school students on Wednesday and Thursday nights.
The Post has reached out to Fisk for comment.
