3 May 2024

Many accounts tried to justify last night’s Jewish mob attack on UCLA protesters by citing a Jewish girl who was beaten unconscious. But did that really happen? Let’s do a deep dive & see what we discover!

Firstly, while several accounts have cited this as a precipitating event for the Jewish mob attack on the protest encampment, did the Jewish mob themselves cite this as a motivating factor? No, they cited a different lie, the claim that Jews are blocked from attending classes.

Now onto the claim about the Jewish girl who was beaten unconscious. This claim surfaced yesterday, April 30, with the publication of a video by instagram account “thatkoreanjew”, a self-described “Jewish Activist,” which should be a signal that we’re getting a biased account.

Here is the video that she posted. Note that despite the claim that she was knocked unconscious, we can see she is moving and cradling the back of her head with her hands, both of which are very clear signs that she was not unconscious in the video purporting to show that.

Now, despite many having claimed that the alleged “beating” of this girl happened yesterday, April 30, we can claim with a high level of certainty that the event in question occurred on April 28 between 12:00 and 1:00 PM. I now draw your attention to the shoes she was wearing.

On April 28, the account

@abulaith786 posted three videos which he said showed that the pro-Israel counter-protesters were acting aggressively towards the pro-Palestine protesters who he said were peaceful & trying to avoid conflict with the opposing side.

We are interested in the 1st video, which shows the allegedly beaten-unconscious Jewish girl from yesterday’s video wearing the exact same outfit and exact same shoes. We can therefore safely conclude thatkoreanjew’s video from yesterday was shot on April 28 between 12 and 1 PM.

We see this girl approach the pro-Palestine group somewhat aggressively. She crouches and while it’s unclear what she hoped to accomplish, she is forcefully pulled back by at least 2 members of her group and appears to then fall to the ground.

While we cannot rule out that she was hit over the head by a pro-Palestine protester, we do not see that on video. Likewise, we cannot rule out that she hit her head when she fell after her group forcefully pulled her away from the other group.

The picture of her wound at the end of the video posted by “thatkoreanjew” on Instagram appears to me to be consistent with an injury sustained when being pushed or pulled to the ground as opposed to being struck by a blunt object, but I cannot rule out either possibility here.

Here’s video of the same girl being tended to after sustaining her head wound. Since she was clearly not unconscious in thatkoreanjew’s video & she also appears to be fine here, it seems very unlikely she was ever unconscious or had to go to the hospital.

Most conspicuous about claims about the girl being beaten unconscious is they rely entirely on text in a video posted by a “Jewish Activist” and there are no independent media reports which confirm anything about the claim. There is also no “Dickerson Plaza,” it’s Dickson Plaza.

In conclusion, there is no evidence supporting claims that this girl was “beaten unconscious,” no media reports back up the claim, and while the claim was used to justify last night’s Jewish mob attack at UCLA, that Jewish mob themselves did not cite it as their motivation. Fin.

Update:

The girl, Elinor Hess, spoke to Times of Israel. She said, “I was shoved down to the ground and I fell back hitting my head.” https://timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/pro-israel-protester-in-la-says-she-was-shoved-to-ground-hit-her-head-and-was-kicked/

Based on the video, it seems this only could have happened when she was pulled by the people on her own side and fell in their midst. If she was kicked, it would have been accidentally by the Pro-Israeli people around her.

Update:

Another update: she was interviewed on an LA news station with her mother, who we now know was the woman with blue pants and sunglasses. “I bent down to try to pull her out of their feet, and they pushed her back and her head slammed the ground.”

Written on X by Trevor Sutcliffe @TrevorSutcliffe