A Novel on Campus Anti-Semitism

Hat tip Algemeiner





I came across this bit of news on Algemeiner. It is written by Nora Gold, a Jewish Canadian, who has penned a novel about campus anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism. One thing that caught my eye was the photo of the mock apartheid wall at the school where I teach part-time, UC Irvine. (In actuality, the photos is pretty much viral.)

http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/05/11/looking-at-anti-semitism-and-anti-zionism-from-a-literary-perspective/

It is no accident that stories about the anti-Israel movement on campus would feature a photo from UC Irvine. Sadly, UCI has acquired a reputation over the years as the worst example of a university's reputation being tarnished by the Muslim Student Union and a history of inviting anti-Semitic speakers to campus, a tradition that goes back over a decade. UCI's name reached its nadir when the MSU disrupted the speech of Israel's ambassador to the US in 2010.

The MSU has gone to some lengths to convince its audiences that their crusade against Israel is anti-Zionist and not anti-Semitic. They (and the Students for Justice in Palestine) now invite anti-Israel Jews like Norman Finkelstein, Miko Peled, Hedi Epstein, Jewish Voice for Peace, and others to come and bash the Jewish state. The MSU also leads off its events by making a disclaimer that they condemn all forms of hate including anti-Semitism. Then they turn the microphone over to people like Amir Abdel Malik Ali, their most oft-used speaker, who tells the Jews in the audience that it is they who are the new Nazis and accuses various individuals of being "Zionist Jews", a term he spits out.

Then there was this caricature of Ariel Sharon that was posted on the aforementioned apartheid wall in 2008, as observed and photographed by this writer.




And of course, who can forget the words of Washington-based, pro-Iranian imam Mohammed al Asi, who told his MSU audience in 2001 at UCI, You can take the Jew out of the ghetto, but you can't take the ghetto out of the Jew."

To be fair, students of today cannot be blamed for what one of their organization's members said at UCI 13 years ago, but the pattern continues. Last week, after having their own week of events the previous week, the MSU and SJP chose to disrupt the Anteaters for Israel's I-Fest, a positive, up-beat event, with yet another demonstration of their own (MSU-SJP) on Tuesday and Thursday. And guess where their staging area was. The university's Cross Cultural Center- the de facto clubhouse of the MSU. They marched out of the CCC at the start of their protest and right back into it when they were finished.

Given what had happened just recently at other universities like Brandeis (a Jewish-funded school, no less), Vassar, San Francisco State, and the University of Michigan, I was beginning to think that UCI was finally being overshadowed by other universities. Indeed, I even had to listen to a lecture by a high-ranking Hillel official ( not a student)  telling me how much better things had gotten at UCI in recent years-even as Hillel and their fellow travelers in the Jewish Federation of Orange County were putting the strong-arm on Anteaters for Israel to cancel a scheduled I-Fest speech by Nonie Darwish last Tuesday.

But things are so much better at UCI. A Jewish student is chased away from the apartheid wall by a campus cop, and the UCIPD once again enforces the MSU no-videotaping rule.That's why the photo of the apartheid wall is still going viral.