AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS: A wave of outrage has sparked online after a video journalist with Fox News was accosted by pro-Palestine Massachusetts University protesters, who allegedly harassed her for covering their protests and demanded to know her ethnicity.
Kassy Dillon, who previously worked for GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley, claimed that she was subjected to harassment after leaving an anti-Israel protest at the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus.
“Just left the anti-Israel protest at UMass Amherst. As I was leaving, two guys kept asking me my ethnicity. When I got into my car, I was approached by a group of the protesters demanding to know my address and phone number,” Dillon tweeted on October 13.
She later posted a video of the aftermath of the alleged confrontation, in which campus activists can be seen demanding her phone number.
“You cannot have my number,” Dillon can be heard saying in the video. One of the protestors then asked her if she could contact the reporter for |legal reasons," to which the journalist replied: “There are no legal reasons to do it... I gave you my name, you can go look it up.”
The exchange heated further after a second activist jumped in, demanding the reporter to repeat her name as she appeared to record the aggressive altercation.
“I'll have my lawyers contact you that way, okay?” the protestor stated, adding, “Have a terrible night.”
Dillon later stated in a tweet that she "had two security guards" with her at the protest and she "didn't even speak to anyone who followed me to the garage," as she showed her followers what she was covering and claimed that she was "just filming."
Internet demands identity of protestors who accosted Kassy Dillon
After the video of the alleged altercation surfaced on social media, some furious users demanded that the identity of the protestors be revealed.
“What are their names for legal reasons? Asking for a friend…” one user stated. “Let’s find out who the arrogant Karen is?? No,” a second user said.
“Get her name out there. Any one that does business with her or anyone around her should know. Many would not like to benefit her in any way, directly or indirectly,” a third user wrote.
““I'll have my lawyers contact you" who are these rich girls with lawyer(S!!) to contact people over frivolous lawsuits,” another user asserted.
““Have a terrible night” that person is so full of rage and hate. She’s going to hurt people. I’d imagine she had a pretty loveless childhood,” slammed a fifth
"When their names are made public and they are unemployable they will cry like the Harvard Hamas,” another user wrote.
“Name these people. Make them famous. Call the police if you see them,” one more wrote.
Pro-Palestine protests in the United States
Dillon’s alleged furious exchange came as supporters of Israel and Palestine began rallying across the United States following an all-out war, which was sparked by Hamas’ surprise attack that killed nearly 1,300 Israelis and left another 2,600 residents gravely injured.
Following the attacks, the Israeli Defence force retaliated by bombarding the Gaza Strip, where they killed more than 1,500 Palestinians. The military also asked some 1 million people to evacuate to the southern part of the besieged territory ahead of an expected ground invasion.
Amid the escalating violence, students from Georgetown University and the University of Washington were among those who gathered to demonstrate solidarity with Palestine, with a Harvard group inciting public indignation by blaming Israel for the Hamas attack.
California State University's La Fuerza Student Association has also drawn criticism for a “sickening” pro-Palestine billboard that shows a paraglider, a method that Hamas terrorists used on Saturday to enter a music event before killing at least 260 people.
