UC-Irvine Anti-Israel Hate Week Wrap-up

Gary Fouse
fousesquawk




"One person's hate speech is another person's education."




Now that the 2011 edition of anti-Israel Hate Week is over, I thought I would write down a few thoughts.

First of all, for the first time in memory, Amir Abdel Malik Ali was not a speaker. It may be that given the fact that the Muslim Student Union is on probation and the fact that Ali finally caused the university chancellor to make some sort of rebuke last year over his hateful words, the MSU was showing a degree of prudence in not bringing him back. Smart move.

The MSU moderators read a preamble to each event stating that their opposition to Zionism and Israel did not represent anti-Semitism and that they rejected anti-Semitism. Smart move.

Several of their speakers were themselves Jewish though strong opponents of Israel.

The theme was constant. Many of the speakers basically read from the same lesson plan. It was a repetitious account of the Israel-Palestinian conflict from the Palestinian point of view.

What you didn't hear about was any discussion of the terrible events going on in one Middle Eastern country after another plus Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. If it's not one government massacring its people in the streets for protesting, it's Christian churches being burned down and Christians massacred in places like Egypt and Pakistan or horrific slaughters taking place in the disputed territories like the West Bank. Yet, the only subject for discussion was Israel. Hypocritical? You be the judge.

Once again, the MSU has called themselves into question by their choice of speakers like that madcap Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, who praised the Iranian government and schmoozes with a blood-thirsty tyrant like Ahmadinejad and a disillusioned young Iraqi war vet who has turned against his own country.

Once again, that pathetic OC Jewish Federation stood on the sidelines, their officials coming out to stand around and watch, while not making any challenge to the speakers and deriding or opposing those that do. Anteaters for Israel used two of the four days to erect David Horowitz's "Wall of Lies". Hillel set up a stand to sell cookies and lemonade or whatever it was. It was basically left to the community to make a stand, which they did on Wednesday when about 50 people showed up. As it was, some jerk made a call to the UCI Campus Police reporting that a mob was coming to shut the event down. Thus, the Campus Police and even Irvine PD turned out in force due to a false alarm. The "mob" consisted of about 50 greyhairs, mostly women with two young children leading the pack carrying flags. Rest assurred that when we confirm the identity of the caller(s), it will be revealed on this site and throughout Orange County.

Finally, this point: Just like every other year, the only people who turn out to listen to these speeches are those directly interested in the issue, while the other 99.9% of students pass by on their way to class or lunch. The only other ones who show up are those who are assigned to cover the events by their activist sociology or political science etc professors.