This week is Bash-Israel week at California State University at Long Beach (CSULB). According to reports, that infamous "Israel Wall", which has been used repeatedly at UC-Irvine, is currently being used this week at CSULB. Of more concern, however, is a report of what purportedly happened today at CSULB. The below e-mail (with names redacted) was sent via an intermediary to the Orange County Independent Task Force on Anti-Semitism, who forwarded it to me.
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From: ( Name redacted)
Date: Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 4:24 PM
Subject: What happened
To: ( Name redacted)
"I was over by the apartheid wall handing out Israel information, telling people that this wall only represents one side of a complicated issue and that there is another side, Israel's side, of the story. That unfortunately there is a war going on but that this is propaganda and Israel is a beautiful country that cares about humanitarianism, democracy, etc. A woman responded by telling me that she finds it ironic that I'm doing exactly what the Palestinians blame the Israelis for doing - coming over to the MSA's "territory" and making my side heard over theirs, just like "what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians." She then said she was on neither side. Then a man in a wheelchair came up and said that what the Israelis are doing is "just like what the white Europeans did to my people, Native Americans." He then said it was MY people who did that to the Native Americans. I said that my relatives had nothing to do with that and that they weren't even in this country then. At this point members of the MSA (Muslim Student Association), in their green "Free Palestine" shirts, came over and this group literally surrounded me, with more and more people chiming in. I started to feel very intimidated. The man in the wheelchair started saying that the Zionists are Nazis, and that the only reason I was over there handing out brochures was because I was ashamed of Israel, which made no sense to me. I said that I am a proud Israeli, proud of Israel, and he said that I am a Nazi committing genocide, that I am like Hitler. That I am responsible for genocide. I told him that the UN has stated that comparing the actions of Israel to the Holocaust is considered anti-Semitism. The MSA people responded with "How can it be anti-semitism when WE'RE semites?" And the man in the wheelchair called me a Nazi again. I then turned and left - i couldn't take it anymore. I got back to the Hillel area and burst into tears. ( Name redacted)i asked what was wrong, I told him, and he went over to talk to them. Apparently (I heard this later) the man in the wheelchair pushed (Name redacted), and (Name redacted) pushed off of him to get away, and the man's glasses hit him in the face or something and he left. That was the end of it."
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That's all I know at this point. Of course, I will continue to follow this story. The one thing I can safely say at this point is that this is just another warning to all university administrators of how this Israel/Palestinian-Jewish/Muslim situation is heading for disaster on our university campuses, which are the flash point for this issue. We are going to reach the point where somebody is going to get hurt.
If this account is accurate, it would represent another example of what I and others have been saying for a long time; namely that the atmosphere for Jewish students on many college campuses is progressively becoming more and more hostile.
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