Coming just days after Columbia University’s public capitulation to the Trump administration’s witch hunt against anti-genocide protests, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) announced early Tuesday, July 29, that it had agreed to pay $6 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Zionist faculty and students.

The lawsuit accused the university of failing to adequately protect Jewish and pro-Israel students during the wave of anti-genocide encampments in 2024, claiming this alleged inaction stemmed from antisemitic bias. Under the terms of the consent agreement, UCLA will pay the multimillion-dollar sum to the plaintiffs, a number of pro-Zionist advocacy groups and, without doubt, the legal team that orchestrated the suit.

The joint statement issued by UCLA and the plaintiffs declared they were “pleased with the terms of today’s settlement,” and added that the university “has agreed to demonstrate real progress in the fight against antisemitism.” In reality, this is a politically motivated capitulation that lends state legitimacy to a false narrative, while covering up a campaign of brutal violence and state repression directed against peaceful student protesters.

Despite the lawsuit’s baseless assertions, the actual victims of violence and discrimination at UCLA were not the Zionist plaintiffs, but the students and faculty who participated in the anti-genocide encampment. The pivotal event was the fascistic mob attack that took place during the night of April 30 to May 1, 2024, when pro-Israel vigilantes, some masked and armed, descended on the UCLA encampment and viciously beat the students inside.

Zionist assailants used wooden two-by-fours, metal rods, caustic chemicals, and incendiary devices. Students reported broken bones, chemical burns, torn flesh and even incidents of sexual assault. These attacks occurred in full view of campus security and multiple police agencies, who stood by and did nothing. The students and faculty assaulted that night filed their own anti-discrimination lawsuit earlier this year.

After the pro-Israel mob dispersed, it was not the perpetrators of this violence who were arrested, but their victims. Police stormed the encampment with flashbang grenades, “less-than-lethal” rounds aimed at students’ heads and mass arrests. Videos widely shared at the time showed injured students being thrown to the ground and brutalized. Not a single member of the Zionist mob was arrested that night.

The lawsuit prominently cited a viral video from 2024 in which a Jewish freshman, Eli Tsives, claimed he was prevented from accessing a class due to the protest encampment. Tsives is a well-known leading Zionist activist at UCLA with appearances on Fox News and NBC. He has been affiliated with pro-Israel campus organizations such as Bruins for Israel and has run as a delegate for the World Zionist Congress.

On May 2, 2024, while the encampment was being forcefully removed, WSWS reporters observed Tsives and his collaborators stripping Palestinian solidarity signs and stickers from university property under police supervision, with no interference from law enforcement.

Only one of the attackers, Malachi Marlan-Librett, faced any legal consequences. Marlan-Librett, who was charged with assault with a deadly weapon, battery and a hate crime, accepted a plea deal last week that will allow him to walk free and clear his criminal record after completing a diversionary program. His participation in a coordinated attack on a peaceful protest would in any other context be treated as a felony riot. Instead, he has been let off with impunity.

On the one-year anniversary of the attack, April 30, 2025, police once again intervened violently to suppress pro-Palestinian speech at UCLA. Officers raided a film screening hosted by Students for Justice in Palestine of The Encampments, a documentary about the nationwide student protests against Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. Police seized equipment and arrested multiple students.

This repression is not limited to UCLA. It is part of a coordinated national campaign orchestrated by the Trump administration, working hand in glove with university administrators and the Democratic Party. The day after the UCLA settlement was announced, Trump’s Department of Justice declared that the university had violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by “creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi, a far-right operative elevated by Trump, called the student protests “systemic anti-Semitism” and a “disgusting breach of civil rights.” The DOJ now claims that UCLA, and potentially the entire University of California system, is under investigation for failing to suppress pro-Palestinian activism.

This witch hunt follows the government’s successful blackmail of Columbia University earlier this month. On July 25, Columbia agreed to implement sweeping restrictions on protest activity, impose new rules against “discrimination” and work more closely with the NYPD and federal law enforcement. The capitulation came just days after congressional Republicans, led by Trump allies, demanded the university be punished for failing to clamp down on pro-Palestine speech.

Already the effects of this campaign are being felt across the UC system. At UC Santa Cruz, more than 110 students and faculty were suspended or banned from campus for their participation in anti-genocide encampments. Laaila Irshad, one of the protesters, had her phone seized by police in a case that reveals the coordination between university administrators and state authorities. Although a judge ultimately quashed the search warrant, it was so sweeping that it amounted to political surveillance.

The goal of this nationwide campaign is not the protection of “Jewish students”—a claim made in bad faith by the right-wing forces leading the attack—but the criminalization of antiwar, anti-imperialist and socialist opposition among students and faculty. In practice, it has served to embolden violent Zionist provocateurs, create a climate of fear and prepare the ground for further state repression.

The Democratic Party has played a central role in this process. At every stage, Democratic-run universities have coordinated with police to smash protests, silence dissent and side with Trump’s agenda. Biden, California Governor Gavin Newsom and other leading Democrats have laid the foundation for these attacks and refused to defend the students, choosing instead to parrot the slanders made by the right.

The student protesters demanded their universities divest from weapons manufacturers and institutions complicit in Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians. The response from the ruling class has been to double down on war, censorship and political repression.

What is needed now is the turn by students to the mobilization of the working class against the threat of fascism. The working class must come to the defense of the students and take up the fight to end genocide, imperialist war and dictatorship. The Democratic Party and the trade union bureaucracies are not allies in this fight—they are enemies of the working class, deeply implicated in the war abroad and repression at home.

The task before students and workers is not to appeal to the university administrations or the courts, instruments of the capitalist state. It is to build a mass political movement, rooted in the working class, against the entire capitalist system, which breeds fascism, war and genocide.