I’ve had a few responses to last night’s post about the identity of the maurauding pro-Israel demonstrators/thugs who attacked the Gaza encampment on Tuesday night. There are clearly a lot of rumors circulating about it. The most interesting article I’ve seen so far is one that came out yesterday afternoon from the Los Angeles Times. It doesn’t include identities but reports on the team of online sleuths trying to identify them. Think of it as broadly similar to the “Sedition Hunters” group which has identified probably hundreds of people involved in the January 6th insurrection. The article doesn’t include any identities though it does seem like the sleuths have already identified or contingently identified some people.

This is a brief follow up on my post earlier that touched on the violence on Tuesday night at UCLA. As I noted, and has been widely reported, on Tuesday night a small contingent pro-Israel counter-protesters attacked the Gaza encampment on campus. This group appears to have been willfully violent and focused on tearing down the barricades of the encampment, throwing various projectiles at pro-Gaza demonstrators, throwing anywhere from one to four firecrackers into the encampment and using something like pepper spray or other similarly noxious spray on people in the encampment. In short, a group of vigilantes or thugs who went in to break up the encampment and terrorize the protestors.

But as far as I can tell there’s no clear information on who these people were. And I’ve seen no evidence that any of them were or have been arrested.

I wanted to do an update to my post on Monday about the situation in Israel-Palestine as well as on campuses on the United States.

A few of you asked, what was the response to the post? It was, I think, overwhelmingly positive. I did have one longtime reader say he was quitting the site and ending his subscription over it. If I interpreted his message and what I’ve known about his viewpoints generally, he thought I was being too critical of Israel. But people are entitled to their opinions and viewpoints and feelings. And I say that not as a throwaway line but as a statement of fact and a recognition of the right way to live in the world. But the overwhelming and almost universal response was positive.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh discuss the Trump immunity case, the latest in the hush money trial and a well-timed announcement from the Biden administration about a major drug policy change.

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