I-Fest at UC Irvine

* Note: Since (as a part-time teacher at UCI) I try to avoid video-taping or photographing students, I chose not to capture any of the below events on film.


After the ugliness of the Muslim Student Union week of anti-Israeli events featuring dopey radical speakers at UC Irvine, followed by the sheer idiocy of the UC San Diego version with an incoherent Cynthia McKinney and her dance partner, Hatem Bazian, this week is the turn of the UC Irvine Jewish students, particularly Hillel, as they celebrate the birth of Israel with the annual I-Fest.

I-Fest is an upbeat event featuring dancing, food and song-something that is right in tune with the generally happy  upbeat nature of UCI. This year, however, the MSU at UC Irvine is not content with their own fizzled-out week; they have to try and ruin it for the pro-Israel folks.

Yesterday and today, MSU students showed up about a hundred yards from the I-Fest event. They spread out a banner across Ring Road with the message, "Death to Apartheid". Three or four speakers took turns reading the pro-Palestinian propaganda from papers while three other students lay on the ground pretending they were dead. Great theatre. "This is the reality of Israel, not what they want you to believe", they shouted at the disinterested and/or annoyed  students who were having to walk around them to get to lunch or class. Then, just after one o'clock, an MSU guy climbed onto the wall looking over Ring Road and recited the call to prayer-just as they do every day.

Great way to make friends and influence people.