I am posting the below information called the Amcha Initiative. It features a documentary film about anti-Semitism on the University of California campuses. (Yours truly is also featured briefly as one of the interviewees. The interview actually took place about 5 years ago.) I personally know several of the people interviewed as well as those who produced the video.
This film shows some of the radical speakers who have given speeches on various UC campuses over the years. One, a despicable imam named Mohamed al Asi, previously stated at UCI that, "you can take the Jew out of the ghetto, but you can't take the ghetto out of the Jew". Amir Abdel Malik Ali has told Jewish audience members at UCI that they are Nazis and has glorified suicide bombers in Israel. Sadly, a couple of the speakers actually teach in the UC system. Also sadly, a couple of the speakers are also Jewish. Much of the footage was filmed on the UC Irvine campus, where I teach.
It is truly a sad situation when each May, Israel Apartheid Week comes to UC-Irvine. Tension rises. There have been cases of physical and verbal intimidation. Fortunately, there have been no real injuries as yet, but the potential is there. Nevertheless, university administrators blithely turn their heads and announce that it is all free speech even when reprehensible. UC faculty, with few exceptions, stand silent or side with the troublemakers. A year or so ago, I posted a report complete with photos and a video of a Berkeley professor heckling and giving the finger to a group of Jewish students holding a peaceful protest against swastikas scrawled on bathroom walls. And through it all, all students are subject to anti-Israel indoctrination on the part of their professors. This is education?
I urge you to watch the video and sign the petition to UC President Marc Yudof.
http://amchainitiative.org/
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5 comments:
I wonder how kids of African descent who haven't learned any history, and who think "ghetto" is a term for "where the black folks live, and proud of it" will related to statements like "You can take a Jew out of the ghetto, but you can't take the ghetto our of the Jew"?
A commedienne whose last name I can't recall had a routine about a pink-faced man who asked her "Leann, I know you're black [I don't know what clued him in to that] but why don't you talk like you're from the ghetto?"
"Because" she says she replied, "a ghetto is where the Nazis put Polish Jews during World War II, and the only Yiddish that comes to mind right now is sch---k." (Findalis would know its a dirty word, even though many English speakers don't realize it).
There are two different issues.
One if there is unreasonalbe treatment of kids who support Israel in the classrooms and the second is the MSU or other groups inviting nutjobs on the campus to give their slanted perspective on the conflict.
The first should not be tolerated. In the classroom, people should feel comfortable expressing any opinion or perspective if they can argue it well.
The second reflects poorly on the MSU or other groups. I don't see how anyone can take the MSU seriously when they repeatedly invite people like Malik Ali on the campus. Inviting people like him may make them feel like they rebels fighting for "justice" but no one who has spent any time studying the conflict will take someone like Malik Ali seriuosly and it makes the MSU a joke.
Correct. Bringing people like Ali and so many others to speak on their behalf and their disruption of the Oren event are huge mistakes on the MSU's part. They only solidifify the view that they are radical.
MSU may not mind being considered "radical." Advice to MSU on what would improve their public image should be directed to MSU. If they don't take it, and the advice was well founded, MSU should suffer a decline in public esteem, which will no doubt be painful to them.
The "Anti-Semitism Within the University" issue is whether the university administration should in some manner discourage, prohibit, or disassociate itself from the speakers, and the organizations that bring them.
Based on the First Amendment, which we all love and respect, MSU has as much right to bring these characters to campus as a hypothetical Gates of Vienna Students Organization, with Gary Fouse as faculty advisor, would have to bring Geert Wilders to campus. I would picket either one, if I thought it worth bothering.
University administrations should indeed monitor what speakers at public events say. Its a public event, anyone can listen. If a speaker crosses the line from advocacy of a viewpoint to initiating a criminal act, that would be a sound basis to blacklist them appearing on campus for the next twenty years or so. But the administration should be VERY careful to have its facts and its case in order.
Otherwise, there is already a distinction between "university-sponsored" events and a student organization inviting someone who reflects the interests of the organization. This could perhaps be played up a little more in the publicity for such speakers.
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