Hate Fest at UCI-Day 4 (Final Day)

On the final day of the Muslim Student Union's "Palestinian Holocaust Week" at UC-Irvine, the highlight of today's program was the speech by Amir Abdel Malik Ali, a fiery Imam from Oakland, who comes to UCI every quarter. He is an open supporter of Hamas and Hizbollah and anti-American to boot.

Malik Ali is the classic example of the adage: "Show me a great speaker, and I will show you-a great speaker". He is a magnificent public speaker. It is what he says that is objectionable. In past appearances at UCI, he has described suicide bombers, as heroes and martyrs, and railed about "Zionist Jews". Today, he took pains to state that many Jews oppose Zionism. (Thanks a lot.) Yet, his hour-long speech was all vitriol toward Israel-and toward America. Imperialistic America. He referred to President Bush as "an idiot" on numerous occasions. He referred to an unnamed African-American general (head of US forces in Africa) as an "Uncle Tom".

A few of the Jewish students vocally expressed their disagreement with Ali on some occasions, but never tried to shut him down. At one point, an elderly professor wearing the MSU olive green T-shirt, (who is apparently from Columbia University) told the students to "Shut up".

Toward the end, Malik veered off course and talked about the drug epidemic that plagues black neighborhoods. He implied the old canard that the government planted crack into the black community. (As a retired DEA agent, I could have reminded him that no black crack addict gets his or her crack from any white dealer-only black crack dealers, but I had a more pertinent question in mind.)

At the conclusion of his speech, I raised my hand and got the first question:

I asked him simply-which he hated more, Israel- or America.

His answer: "I hate imperialism."

He went on to expound on that, but I wasn't really listening. I wanted to pin him down on my question. I followed up by asking if he loved his country, America.

Again, he started on a long answer that started out with why a rape victim should love her rapist. I then finished by concluding that he hated America-as the student moderator cut me off in order to move on to the next questioner.

Before the program started, I looked around to see if Cindy and Craig Corrie (whose daughter was killed in Israel trying to block an Israeli bulldozer from demolishing a house) were present since they had stayed around to watch yesterday's program-which was relatively tame. They were apparently not present. I had hoped that they would hear Malik Ali's words. It might have given them pause.