Shocking moment UC Berkeley law students who were invited to Jewish dean's house for dinner turn on him with pro-Palestine rant as his wife begs them to leave

Footage shows how what was meant to be a celebratory dinner at a dean's home for graduating students devolved into a physical fight over the Israel-Hamas war.

The viral video made rounds Wednesday, hours after UC Berkley law students were invited to the Oakland home of School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and his wife the evening before.

The first of three dinners they planned to host, the occasion turned into a confrontation when Malak Afaneh, co-president of Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine, rose to protest the school's investment in arms manufacturers for Israel.

Law school professor Catherine Fisk, Chemerinsky's wife, was filmed trying to snatch the woman's cellphone out of her hand as she filmed, pulling at her clothes, and putting her arm around her as she urged her to leave.

In a statement issued Thursday, Chemerinsky, who is Jewish, asserted that he was 'saddened' by the protest, but said he told the students his home was 'not a forum for free speech.' Others claim the duo violated the student's constitutional rights.

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'Please leave. No. Please leave. Please leave,' Chemerinsky can be heard telling Afaneh in the circulated footage.

The 70-year-old is seen moving toward the student with his arms folded while shouting at her.

At this point, his spouse, who teaches employment law at the Bay Area school, attempts to grab a microphone the student had produced in the professor's backyard seconds before.

After Afaneh denounced the school for having invested millions of dollars in weapons companies that supply Israel - and had just spoken the words 'as-salamu alaykum' - Fisk grabs her and tries to stop the speech in its tracks.

'It is not your house. It is my house! And I want you to leave,' she says, after being hit with the Arabic phrase that means peace and blessings to you.

At this point, Fisk's arm is on Afaneh's right shoulder and at times appearing to touch her neck.

The video then shows Fisk looking to another student who was with the demonstrator, telling her: 'Get her to leave my house!'

An argument between Afaneh, Chemerinsky, Fisk and the other woman, also a law student, ensues - one that led to statements from both Chemerinsky and Afaneh the following day.

'You are not welcome,' Fisk tells Afaneh, threatening call the police. 

Afaneh, in turn, tells her to do so - to which Fisk replies, 'I don't prefer to.' 

She then againt tries to take the microphone from Afaneh's hands, though the activist keeps her grip.

Because of this, she is pulled a up several steps of a stairwell in the couple's backyard, as Cherminsky repeatedly shouts: 'Please leave!'

At one point during the struggle, Afaneh says, 'Forty thousand people are dying,' to which Fisk shoots back, 'I can't stop that.'

The video then shows Chemerinsky speaking to a different student, still pleading for the group to leave.

 'There is a genocide going on,' one student says. 

'Then don't come here!' Chemerinsky shouts back.

'This is my house. You are my guest. You're my guest. Please leave my house.'

The nine activists that organized the protest, Afaneh included, left shortly thereafter, both sides have confirmed, 

In a separate video of the confrontation, Fink and Afaneh are seen speaking briefly about the school's spending, after a resolution passed by school last month stated it should divest itself of companies in which it owns stock that conduct business with Israel. 

The resolution targets over $130 million purportedly invested in two companies in particular, General Electric and United Technologies, both which supply jobs, military equipment, and electronics to the Middle Eastern country.

But the resolution is non-binding, and one only passed by students.

Chemerinsky, the school's boss, has been a vocal critic of pro-Palestinian activists at Berkeley since the October 7 Hamas attack - but his wife on Tuesday appeared to take a different stance.

'We agree with you about what's going on in Palestine,' she is heard telling the crowd toward the end of the blowuyp.

'Then what have you done about divestment? Nothing. Nothing,' a different student says, waling.

'We don't control the investment,' Fisk insists, before the three-minute video eventually concludes.

In an interview the next day, Afaneh said she felt assaulted by Fisk, and that she is considering pressing charges.

'The aggression with which she ran at me when I said 'as-salamu alaykum,'' the law student recalled to Fox Local.

'She saw my hijab and keffiyeh, and that was a risk for her.'

Chemerinsky issued a statement that same day, in which he denounced a poster that Berkeley LSJP had shared on April 1 as antiemetic.

The poster included a caricature of him with a knife and fork and the slogan 'No Dinner With Zionist Chem While Gaza Starves!'

'I never thought I would see such blatant antisemitism, with an image that invokes the horrible antisemitic trope of blood libel and that attacks me for no apparent reason other than I am Jewish,' he claimed.

The dean added that the dinners scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday would go on as scheduled, writing, 'I hope that there will be no disruptions.... But we will have security present.

'Any student who disrupts will be reported to student conduct and a violation of the student conduct code is reported to the bar.'

In another statement, the student group pointed out how there is a difference between anti-Zionist rhetoric critical of Israel from antisemitism.

They went on to accuse Chemerinsky, a top free speech scholar, of attempting to keep a clasp on such criticism.  

'Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. The Dean conflates the two concepts, using accusations of antisemitism to delegitimize anti-Israel speech,' they wrote 

'As Jewish anti-Zionists, we condemn antisemitism as we fight for the rights of Palestinian people, and simultaneously condemn attempts to weaponize the concept in service of Zionism.'   

Chemerinsky, meanwhile, conceded he disagreed with the student groups’ policies, but believed he has a right to invite only speakers who agreed with his and his wife's views.

It's not the first time the high-profile school has surfaced as a battleground for the ongoing Israel-Gaza debate. 

In February, pro-Palestine activists stretched a banner opposing the “Zionist Entity” over the south entrance of campus, preventing students from entering.

Later that month, protests comprised hundreds of students saw a speech by a right-wing Israeli lawyer called off, though he was able to return for an event March. 

In March, a political science professor who is also the chair of Israel studies at the school held a two-week sit-in that saw him eat and sleep in his office after work to get Berkley brass to take 'steps to prevent violence between students.”

Chemerinsky's spouse has yet to break her silence on the incident.