Gaza camp agitators attack journalist during occupation of UCLA building
While covering the occupation of Dodd Hall at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) on Thursday, Today is America journalist Cam Higby was shoved to the ground by a group of Gaza camp agitators.
The keffiyeh-clad assailants were seen on video pushing him after he tried to make his way through the entrance of the hall and cover what was going on inside.
Footage captured by Higby himself showed demonstrators chanting “neo-Nazi” as they slowly cornered him back down to the entrance.
“Stop pushing me down the stairs,” he pleaded, as they proceeded to do just that.
Higby backed up to evade them, but they refused to retreat and then shoved him out the door. As he fell onto his back, the demonstrators quickly closed the door, chanting the whole time.
The demonstrators joked about him slipping down the stairs and floated the idea of “push[ing] him to the cops” because he was white.
Despite being attacked the first time around, Higby entered Dodd Hall yet again, this time wearing a keffiyeh in an attempt to blend in.
“I was once again beaten, and pushed to the ground, this time into a desk behind me,” he wrote in a post on X. “These people are violent.”
In footage of the incident, one occupier told Higby, “You gotta get out of here, bro.”
After posting the clips to X, some on the right questioned why he hadn’t fought back against the occupiers.
“Would I have been justified? Sure, but they don’t care about justice,” he explained. “The mob would have just used it was (sic) a motive to further attack me. I go to these protests and document so that YOU can be aware of what’s going on. I knowingly place myself in harms way to ensure that YOU see the truth.”
“Defending myself against a mob achieves nothing,” he reiterated. “It would just cause more harm to myself, it’s not like I’m going to take them all on and win. There were over 200 people in that building, with no unbiased witnesses.”
Demonstrations continued through the evening, though occupiers were eventually cleared from Dodd Hall.