Pro-Palestinian protesters rallied outside the Brentwood home of UC Regent Jonathan “Jay” Sures on Wednesday morning, hanging banners on his hedges and leaving handprints smeared in red on his walls, according to local reports and photos shared on social media.
The protest lasted from 6 to 8 a.m. and was organized by Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA, according to reporting from the Daily Bruin. The student group shared video of the protest on its Instagram account as well as a post of Sures’ face, calling him an “opp,” slang for an enemy, and “one of the unelected officials responsible for protecting UC investments in genocide and weapons manufacturing.”
L.A. police responded to a call regarding pro-Palestinian protesters on a residential street in Brentwood around 6:15 a.m. Wednesday, according to an LAPD spokesperson. Upon arriving, officers found a group of 50 to 100 protesters blocking the street and driveway and remained to monitor the situation. The UCLA Police Department took a report of vandalism, the spokesperson said.
Sures, who is Jewish, told Deadline he believes he was targeted because of his outspoken support for the state of Israel and for protecting Jewish students. He said this was the first time protesters had come to his home, and he thought they had crossed a line.
“It’s one thing to peacefully protest, but to go to an administrator or a regent’s house to violate the hundred-foot rule, which is what it is in Los Angeles, to disturb the entire neighborhood by pounding on drums, to surround my wife’s car and prevent her from free movement, and to put up signs, threatening my family and my life and vandalize the house, that is a big escalation,” he told Deadline.
Videos and photos shared on social media showed LAPD officers at the protest, where a crowd gathered wearing masks, chanting and beating drums. The banner attached to Sures’ hedge read, “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest,” a popular rallying cry for those who believe in divesting from companies that do business with the state of Israel.
Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, described the morning’s protest as “boldfaced bigotry” and called on law enforcement to investigate and prosecutors to charge those responsible, in a statement shared on X.
“Once again, a public servant is targeted for harassment and intimidation, and once again, it is a Jewish regent being targeted,” said Greenblatt. “Protestors calling for the elimination of the state of Israel in front of the home of UC Regent Jay Sures is unacceptable.”
Sures is the vice chairman of United Talent Agency and one of the 18 members appointed to the University of California Board of Regents by the governor.
Sures also told Deadline he believes the recent protests directed toward him are connected to a letter he wrote to the UC Board of Regents in 2023, condemning a letter the UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council had written to the board accusing UCLA of biased communications after the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.
The faculty council wrote that UCLA’s administrative communications “distort and misrepresent the unfolding genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and thereby contribute to the racist and dehumanizing erasure of Palestinian daily reality.”
In response, Sures wrote that the letter was “rife with falsehoods about Israel and seeks to legitimize and defend the horrific savagery of the Hamas massacre of October 7.”
On Wednesday, Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine wrote on Instagram that Sures is “the embodiment of how the Regents profit off genocide and police dissent on our campuses.”
Members of the student group have long demanded that the regents support their call for the university system to boycott and divest from all companies that do business with Israel — a demand the UC system opposes.
“The University of California has consistently opposed calls for boycott against and divestment from Israel,” the office of the UC president said in an April 2024 statement. “While the University affirms the right of our community members to express diverse viewpoints, a boycott of this sort impinges on the academic freedom of our students and faculty and the unfettered exchange of ideas on our campuses.
