Anti-Israeli student 'activists' don't take risks – they just give smug interviews to Iranian TV

Stephanie Gutmann
Telegraph.co.uk
09 March '10

“Stand with the Irvine 11!” blared the email in my inbox this morning. “OK,” I thought groggily, “but which one of the dozens of activists sending me email are you and why are you appropriating the jargon of Sixties activism?”

As I read the bold type and caps-filled missive it turned out that the Irvine 11 are some of the students, the ones who were actually arrested, a few weeks ago at the University of California, Irvine campus when they refused to let an audience of nearly 500 hear Israeli ambassador Michael Oren deliver a speech.

The young activists used a tactic I’d never seen before, one that can superficially represent it self as “vocalizing dissent” in a “non-violent and non-threatening manner” (as their press release puts it) but actually works quite effectively to silence.

Oren had just began his lecture when a solitary student popped out of the crowd and began yelling (”killer”, “war criminal” etc.). Eventually an obsequious campus officials persuaded him to leave the room. Oren resumed, but then another howler sprung to his feet from a different part of the room. Calm was restored – for a second. And then, again: a man, popping throat veins, pumping fist, screaming, unintelligibly but very loud.

It was a particularly nerve-jangling tactic because one had no idea when and where the next screamer would pop up, if the disruption was really over or just on hiatus. This tension alone was enough to thoroughly shift the focus away from Oren even when the room seemed to be under control. The activists had, in effect, made themselves the subject. There was, of course (due process and all) no way to remove them en bloc, so the audience had to wait till each and every demonstrator had done his bit.

(Read full article)

Related: Muslim students disrupt Israel Amb. Michael Oren's talk
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The ADL Is Wrong: Boycotts Can Be Kosher

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
19 February '10

A long simmering dispute about the level of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement going on at the University of California at Irvine has prompted a debate between Jewish groups about the propriety of academic boycotts. After the latest incident in which heckler disrupted a speech being given by Michael Oren — Israel’s ambassador to the United States — at the school’s campus, the Zionist Organization of America has called for donors to cease making contributions to the institution and for students to stop applying to the school. But the Anti-Defamation League says this is a mistake, since such boycotts are a “double-edged sword that legitimizes a tactic so often used against Jews and Israel.”

The problem with UC Irvine goes deeper than just the bunch of loudmouths who interrupted Oren. For a number of years, the Irvine campus’s Muslim Student Union and its leftist allies have made the school a haven of Israel-and-Jew bashing without the university’s administration doing much or anything about it. The result has apparently been the creation of a hostile atmosphere for Jewish students. Repeated attempts to get the university to address the grievances of the Jewish community have failed. After years of talking about the problem, the ZOA has apparently concluded that the only thing the school will understand is a boycott that will bring home to them that their indulgence of radical anti-Israel and anti-Jewish elements has consequences. The ADL prefers to keep the lines of communications open with the university and, in its usual manner, spends as much time complimenting the administration for the little it has done as it does criticizing them for their obvious failures.

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Rights of the speaker versus "rights" of disruptors

Alan M. Dershowitz
Hudson New York
16 February '10

Recently Michael Oren, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, who is an academic historian and a political moderate, was invited to speak at the University of California at Irvine. I know Michael well and have heard him speak many times. He is one of Israel’s most effective advocates, particularly on university campuses. He speaks about peace, about the two-state solution and he brings a historical perspective to his analysis. Because he is so effective, anti-Israel zealots try to prevent him from speaking and his audience from hearing his views.

That’s exactly what happened at the University of California at Irvine when Oren began to speak. This tactic of censorship will be tried at other universities as well, if it is permitted to succeed.

Let there be no doubt about it, these radical anti-Israel zealots are trying to censor Michael Oren. After repeatedly disrupting his speech and making it impossible for him to continue, eleven of them were arrested and now face possible disciplinary action from the University of California, a public institution.

They and their supporters now claim that is the eleven disruptors whose right of free speech is being violated. They are threatening legal action to defend their right to prevent a speaker from expressing his views and an audience from hearing those views. This is a topsy turvy view of the First Amendment.

It is true that an individual heckler may have the right to shout in opposition to a speaker, so long as his shouted words are brief and non-recurrent. But any fair viewing of the videotape, available on YouTube, proves beyond any doubt that this was a concerted effort to silence Michael Oren and to prevent his audience from hearing his point of view. The university was correctly embarrassed at this attempt at censorship.

(Read full article)
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What Is To Be Done About Nuclear Iran?

Roger L Simon
Pajamamedia.com
11 February '10

Click here to watch the second part of Roger’s interview with Israeli ambassador to the United States. (View Part One here.)

A transcript of the entire interview appears below:

MR. SIMON: Ambassador Oren, thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule for PJTV. And before we get into the real subject of this discussion on Iran, I can’t resist asking you to comment on the events yesterday at UC Irvine. Was it really as bad as Judean Ramallah or not as bad?

AMBASSADOR OREN: First of all, pleasure to be here, Roger. As to what happened yesterday in UC Irvine, I was giving a presentation on the state of US Israel and Israel-Middle Eastern relations, and a group of several hundred students kept on disturbing me, calling out rather, you know, various curses and expletives, none of them deleted, and basically, violating the most fundamental law on an American campus, indeed, outside of American campus in this country, and that’s the right of free speech. And from my perspective, it was a great squandered opportunity for them. Here, they had an opportunity to hear a different perspective, perhaps not a perspective they agreed with or like, but — and a chance to exchange ideas, and that, I think, is what universities are about, but they’ve blocked this. And unfortunately, this has happened at several campuses to several Israeli speakers, but not only to Israeli speakers. Last week, down at Georgetown campus, General Petraeus was subject to the same type of interference. So I think it’s the beginning of a trend that we have to watch very, very carefully, a trend to sort of bring the Middle East, where there is no freedom of expression, onto American campuses. And I think we have to be very vigilant, indeed, to prevent that from happening.

MR. SIMON: It’s not just American campuses, though, unfortunately. My nephew is a student at the London School of Economics, and the same thing happened there. And he wrote about it for Pajamas Media. But let’s move on to Iran, here.

(Read full transcript)
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Muslim students disrupt Israel Amb. Michael Oren's talk

Democast
09 February '10

Israel's U.S. Ambassador Oren withstands 10 antagonistic disruptions by Univ Calif Irvine Muslim Students Union to deliver speech about middle-east relations to capacity audience. Police Chief comments on arrest of 12 Muslim agitators. Palestinian and Zionist attendees comment on audacious conduct of alleged Muslim Brotherhood-linked, M.S.U. Full speech and interviews - 48 min.

(Quite a circus, but Amb. Oren handled it well. A very interesting interview at 39:44 of Ghazi Brighith, formerly of Beit Lechem, who now has refugee status in the U.S. and attended Oren's presentation. Very outspoken and well spoken. Y.)



Related article: Another wild night on campus reminds college adminstrators why they daren't displease their Islamist students
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The Middle East Comes to Irvine

Jeffrey Goldberg
The Atlantic
09 February '10

Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., tried to give a speech at UC Irvine but was shouted down by Muslim protesters, who apparently weren't equipped to argue with Oren, just drive him from the stage. All this is par for the course, but I did find this one bit of information amusing:

The Muslim Student Union said in its statement: "We strongly condemn the university for cosponsoring, and therefore, inadvertently supporting the ambassador of a state that is condemned by more UN Human Rights Council resolutions than all other countries in the world combined."

To the Muslim Student Union, the fact that the UN Human Rights Council has condemned Israel more than all the other countries of the world combined means that Israel is worse than all the other countries of the world combined. To more rational, less prejudiced people, this fact means that the UN Human Rights Council is not a serious organization, but one under the control of dictators and despots. (See: Banned Speech: The UN Council That Created the Goldstone Report)

Related Article/Video: 12 arrested for disrupting Israeli ambassador
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12 arrested for disrupting Israeli ambassador

Orange County Register
Gary Robbins
08 February '10

Twelve people were arrested this evening during a raucous lecture at UC Irvine where Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren came to talk about U.S.-Israel relations. Oren was interrupted 10 times while trying to give his speech before 500 people at the UCI Student Center, where there was heavy security. Oren took a 20 minute break after the fourth protest, asked for hospitality and resumed his speech, only to be interrupted again by young men yelling at him every few minutes. Many members of the audience also applauded Oren.



After the 10th interruption, several dozens students who opposed Oren’s talk got up and walked out and staged a protest outside. It is not clear whether they were members of the UCI Muslim Student Union, which issued an email earlier in the day condemning Oren’s appearance on campus.

(Read full article)

Hours earlier, UCI’s Muslim Student Union said in an email today that its members “condemn and oppose the presence of Michael Oren, the ambassador of Israel to the United States, on our campus today. We resent that the Law School and the Political Science Department on our campus have agreed to cosponsor a public figure who represents a state that continues to break international and humanitarian law and is condemned by more UN Human Rights Council resolutions than all other countries in the world combined.”

Related viewing: Obsessive and Compulsive, The Obsession with Israel
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