Question: The vast majority of the people in this photo are:
a Pittsburgh Steelers supporters
b Cleveland Browns supporters
c Olive Tree Initiative supporters
If you read this blog regularly, you know that there is a raging debate within the Orange County Jewish community over the question of funding UC Irvine's Olive Tree Initiative (OTI), in which selected Jewish, Muslim, Christian and other students are sent to the Middle East to hear various sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The travel for the Jewish students is funded by the Rose Project, which was established by the OC Jewish Federation. In addition, the UCI Hillel chapter, while not providing funding to the OTI, supports the program. Now, after revelations about many of the pro-Palestinian supporters/activists who are interacting with Jewish students on these annual trips, many members of the Jewish community in Orange County are questioning the wisdom of providing any funding to this program.
Now comes an article in the UCI campus newspaper, New University, which talks about the controversy within the Jewish community. The article has led to a stream of back and forth comments among readers including a long-winded soliloquy by what must be a professor who takes apart readers comments by referring to false suppositions, logical fallacies, and "determiners of the necessary topical relevance of opinion articles", etc.
(I'll spare you the comments.)
What is interesting, however, is that the editorial staff of New University saw fit to chime in with a clarification revision, correction, comment-whatever you want to call it. It is contained below (Courtesy of Orange County Independent Task Force on Anti-Semitism):
http://octaskforce.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/chutzpah
Excerpt:
"The editorial staff of the New University would like to clarify information presented in Nesma Tawil’s article “Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself” on Nov. 30.
As with any article in the Opinion section, the views presented represent the sole opinion of the writer, not the editorial board, the New University or any other organization or person at UCI.
It has been interpreted that the article overemphasizes the perceived conflict or disagreement between the Olive Tree Initiative and the Jewish community in Orange County. However, the article tries to make the distinction that only “a small group of members of the Jewish community” felt this way. It must be made clear that the vast majority of the Jewish community in Orange County, including the Jewish Federation of Orange County and the Rose Project, support OTI and its mission on campus. Minor edits have been made to the article to reflect this support."
Fousesquawk comment:
Really? How can the editorial board of New University say what the vast majority of the OC Jewish community think? As a Christian who has been heavily involved with Jewish people for the past several years (Hell, I grew up with Jewish people all around me), I have long given up trying to decide what the vast majority of Jews think about anything-including Israel. They are hardly as monolithic as their enemies make them out to be.
I can only conclude from that passage that the writer(s) got their information from the very people they mentioned; the Jewish Federation and the Rose Project. Naturally, they support OTI. The Rose Project-established by the Federation-pays for the travel of Jewish students. And since the Federation considers itself the authoritative voice of the Jewish people in Orange County, of course, they would maintain that "the vast majority of the OC Jewish community support OTI".)
Hell, the vast majority of the Jewish people in Orange County probably don't even know about OTI. So you tell me, what percentage of these folks (who know about it) support it? Is it 95% or 87% or 67%?
Who the Hell knows? All I know is that a lot of people-maybe not a majority- but a lot of people are asking questions about this. What matters is that people who have been making contributions through the Federation have a right to know what they are contributing to, that's all.
It is called transparency. In this case, transparency means an open and full discussion of who the players are in the Middle East who are involved in these trips. We already know about George S Rishmawi, who spoke last week at UCI-the event which unleashed the firestorm.
I will be the first to admit that I don't know what the vast majority of Jews think about anything. I don't think the folks at New University know either.
Oh yes, the answer to the above quiz. The correct answer is "b". If you guessed "a", you are a UC Santa Cruz Community Studies major. If you guessed "c", you are on the editorial staff of the New University.
It all sounds very silly. What business of "the Orange County Jewish community" is it if the Rose Foundation chooses to fund such a program, or various students choose to participate? Surely the Jewish population of Orange County is no more homogenous than any other ethnic or religious community in the United States?
ReplyDeleteIf students are going to "hear all sides" of the conflict, no doubt they will meet with people who are advocates of one or another of the "Palestinian" political factions. That's part of what they are there for, as well as hearing from various Israeli political factions, and various minorities like Christians and Druze, Arabic citizens of Israel, Jewish citizens of Egypt, etc.
The old story goes: "Ask 2 Jews their opinion on something and you will get 5 answers."
ReplyDeleteSays a lot about my people.
Siarlys,
ReplyDeleteIt is only the "business" of the community if they have been contributing their money to help fund it.
All too often the returning students who aren't Jewish say, "I now understand the plight of the poor Palestinians better." The returning Jewish students also say, " I now understand the plight of the poor Palestinians better."
ReplyDeleteThose in the Jewish community who know or sense this say, "Who needs this?" The program looks biased. Now one of the OTI speakers comes to speak at UCI and they see for themselves he is biased with a questionable background and they say, "We are paying for this on top of it?"
What makes it worse is that the students themselves aren't consistent. Some say one thing to one audience and something else to another audience. They change their minds. The Federation and Rose Foundation may not have any say in the OTI program and without their limited conntribution no Jewish students would go. That would be fine, there are a lot better programs for them to go on. We support them too, even more, say the Federation and Rose people. Add in some confusion over names, exaggerations, and over reactions and the underlying problem is exposed.... far too many in the community feel the Jewish leadership is soft on UCI.
They see increasing anti-Semitism at UCI every year with an unapologetic MSU imposing their values and worldview on the campus. That's the bottom-line and the UCI administration looks the other way and the Jewish leadership continues to claim that all that can be done is being done. Many say, looking at OTI, it sure doesn't look like it.
.
"The community" doesn't contribute to anything. Individuals within a community do. If some sort of communal funds, donated for one purpose, are then channelled to another, that is a different question, primarily for the donors who were misled.
ReplyDeleteMiggie is concerned that different individuals come back with different understandings, and then sometimes change their minds? Obviously someone forgot to lock in the Party Line with appropriate brainwashing. How careless of those OTI organizers.