Media super agent Jay Sures has slammed a group of anti-Israel protesters who vandalized his California home and surrounded his wife’s car on Wednesday in what he said was a frightening ordeal for his family.
Sures, the vice chair of United Talent Agency and University of California (UC) Board of Regents member, told Fox News Digital that the group swarmed the outside of his Brentwood home and plastered his garage doors with red handprints along with banners he said contained death threats.
He and his wife were home at the time and when she tried to leave in her car, the group surrounded the vehicle, Sures recalled.
“When my wife tried to leave our house, they surrounded her car for 15 minutes, she was absolutely terrified,” said Sures, a staunch supporter of Israel who was influential in UC’s decision to ban political statements from the university homepages of its departments.
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Sures’ United Talent Agency represents many top on-air news personalities as well as big names in the world of entertainment like Heidi Klum, Ludacris and Seth Rogen, per the company’s Instagram account.
Dozens of masked protesters descended on his family home at around 6:15 a.m. local time, banging drums and carrying a large banner reading, “Jonathan Sures you will pay until you see your final day.”
The protesters also strung yellow caution tape on the property’s front garden hedge and stuck posters containing Sures’ picture to his garage doors. Some of the posters read, “Diverse now, or you will pay” while another large banner they erected on his front garden hedge had “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest” scribed across it.
The term is a popular rallying cry for those who want companies and third-level institutions to stop doing business with the state of Israel.
“It’s disappointing that this hateful and antisemitic organization targeted me and my wife,” said Sures, who is Jewish. “I am confident that LAPD and UCLA will find and prosecute those responsible for the vandalism and death threats and most importantly, those who surrounded my wife’s car for 15 minutes and prevented her free movement.”
Sures told Deadline it was the first time protesters had protested at his home and said he thought they had crossed a line by targeting his home.
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“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 the outlet.
He told the outlet he believes he was targeted because of his support of Israel and defending Jewish students on campus. He has served on the Board of Regents since 2019 and his term is set to expire in 2032.
The LAPD and UCLA PD officers responded to the scene, according to a police report cited by Deadline. No arrests were made.
The Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA said on Instagram they organized the protest.
“He has attempted to intimidate faculty and students who spoke out against the genocide in Gaza, but we refuse to stay silent,” the group wrote.
The protesters said in a statement that Sures was targeted for allegedly suppressing pro-Palestine speech and expression on campus. They said the regents have kicked them out of their meetings, canceled forums for public comment and “criminalized” attempts to protest investment policies.
“We have taken our issues straight to the regents because they have systematically militarized our campus in response. Over the last eight months, Jay Sures has led the UC’s efforts in suppressing pro-Palestine speech and expression on-campus, including through increased militarization and draconian time, place and manner (TPM) policies.”
In November 2023, Sures criticized a faculty council that defended Hamas’ attack on Israel in a letter and demanded UC administrators stop calling the attacks “terrorism.” The faculty council letter called on UC leadership to retract the “charges of terrorism, to uplift the Palestinian freedom struggle, and to stand against Israel’s war crimes against and ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people.”
Stett Holbrook, a spokesperson for the university’s president, condemned the protest.
“Yesterday, the private residence of UC Regent Jay Sures was vandalized, and his family and neighbors were harassed,” Holbrook told the Daily Bruin.
“The University strongly supports freedom of speech and the rights of our community members to participate in nonviolent protests, and we condemn all crimes and harassment committed against members of our UC community.”
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