‘Me and a bunch of the other kids were crying and shaking when it happened,’ one student said

Pro-Palestinian activists on Wednesday barged into a memorial at Pomona College hosted by Claremont Hillel and featuring a talk by Yoni Viloga, who survived the Oct. 7 Hamas attack while his neighbors were slaughtered.

A one-and-a-half minute video published Thursday by the Claremont Independent student newspaper shows four keffiyeh-masked activists interrupt the event yelling things such as “Zionism is still a colonial ideology” and “you’re all complicit in genocide.”

“The fact that they burst into the room mere minutes after we had watched graphic and disturbing video footage of similarly dressed Hamas terrorists committing horrific atrocities made the moment incredibly frightening and all the more shocking,” a leader of Haverim, a Jewish student union that had promoted the event, told the Independent.

Another student attendee told the outlet: “Me and a bunch of the other kids were crying and shaking when it happened.”

After the disruption, “the event continued with a candlelighting ceremony, student speeches and poetry readings,” the Independent reported.

The disruptors identities are unknown. Pomona President Gabrielle Starr released a statement Thursday asking the campus community to send in photos, videos, and any other evidence to identify the culprits.

“Last night, a memorial on our campus to honor the victims of Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on Israel was disrupted by four masked and disguised individuals who burst through a locked fire door, shouting,” Starr wrote.

“…It is both outrageous and cruel to interrupt a space where members of our community come together to mourn. Antisemitic hate cannot be tolerated here. Our community is better than this.”

The Independent reported that individuals familiar with the matter said the stairway through which the protesters accessed the fire door was supposed to be blocked by a locked door.

What’s more, it added: “Attendees of Wednesday’s event told the Independent that the disruptors carried a video recorder with them, possibly opting not to carry their phones to avoid identification through their devices’ connection to the school’s wifi. Wifi connections were used by Pomona to identify students who were present during the occupation of Carnegie Hall.”

As The College Fix previously reported, pro-Palestinian demonstrators disrupted Pomona’s convocation ceremony in August 2024 by blocking the entrance and preventing people from attending the event.

In October 2024, a large contingent of anti-Israel protesters took over Carnegie Hall at Pomona, forcing some classes to shut down or relocate, and prompting some students to flee through open windows. One employee was injured, and the “occupied” building was thrashed with graffiti and destruction of property.

Those responsible were eventually suspended.

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