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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.”
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