Future Liz Warren campaign worker
Via WFB
A top J Street leader at Brandeis University harassed a pro-Israel student activist early Saturday morning, calling the student a “shit bag” and telling him that “Jews hate you,” according to those who witnessed the incident.
Daniel Mael was walking to his dorm room on the university’s campus late Friday night when he encountered Talia Lepson, a J Street U Brandeis board member, who purportedly referred to Mael as a “shit bag” and angrily told him “Jews hate you.”
“I don’t feel comfortable on campus knowing people will lob verbal insults at me simply because we disagree,” said Mael, who has filed an incident report with the Brandeis police over what he described at the “uncivil environment that is developing on campus and the attempts to isolate students with differing opinions.”
The incident is just one of several at Brandeis lately in which pro-Israel students have come under fire for their attempts to defend the Jewish state on campus from groups such as J Street.
Mael said that he and a friend were returning to their dorm rooms at around 12:45 a.m. on Saturday when he came across Lepson—who says she currently works as a political intern at the Democratic National Committee (DNC)—and a group of her friends.
“As they approached, Talia Lepson give me a really, really intense stare and then I turned to the students and said, ‘Shabbat shalom,’” said Mael, who is an observant Jew. “I was being serious. I thought that religion and politics are not necessarily intertwined. I thought you could still be nice.”
Lepson “responded by saying, ‘Jews hate you’,” Mael said. “As she continued to walk, she screamed, ‘You are a shit bag.’” Mael said an unidentified person to her right hurled a similar insult.
Students who witnessed the event say they were shocked to see the J Street leader verbally attack Mael.
“It is somewhat scary to witness malice in exchange for benevolence, especially in the context of religion, where we are supposed to set aside politics when embracing it,” said one student who witnessed the incident but was not comfortable speaking out publicly.
Mael said that he “proceeded immediately to the university police to file an incident report” following the run-in with Lepson, who has interned at the White House, according to her LinkedIn profile.