'You are a s**t bag'
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.
A Brandeis University police official said that the department does not speak to the media on the weekend and recommended a reporter call back later.Read the whole thing.
J Street tried to turn the tables, self-righteously accusing Mael of harassing J Street's leadership by fabricating stories.
It is one thing to engage in a strong and vibrant argument over the difficult issues at stake in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We are deeply committed to an open and engaging dialogue when it is grounded in the substance of our disagreements.
It is another to conduct a campaign of personal intimidation and harassment, which is the pattern of behavior that Daniel Mael, a student blogger at Brandeis, has established in relating to J Street U student leaders.
In a new episode this weekend, a story was fabricated concerning one of the leaders of J Street U Brandeis. That student has now filed a report with the campus police over the incident that Mael invented and his ongoing pattern of harassment at Brandeis. The matter is now in the hands of campus police and we hope the authorities will take action to address our serious concerns.
In the meantime, we ask that others in the Jewish community and media - even those who don't agree with us politically - will distance themselves from this blogger and others with a history of conduct driven by malice and deceit.That's pretty Orwellian. We don't agree with Mael and therefore you should distance yourself from him and not hear his point of view because we would never be uncivil. Really?
In the meantime, another student has backed Mael's version of the story.
But I'm sure that if they were part of the Conference of Presidents, J Streeters would not be involved in incidents like this. /sarc
Labels: Brandeis University, J Street, pro-Israel pro-peace, pro-Israel students
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:13 PM
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