 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Please take a moment to
visit and log in at the subscriber
area,
and submit your city & country location. We will use this information in
future to invite you to any events that we organize in your area.
MEF Special Report, UCI Under Siege: Amir Abdel Malik Ali Among Anti-Israel Speakers at University of California-Irvine May 7-10
by
Winfield Myers • May 7, 2012 at 2:33 pm
  Be
the first of your friends to like this.
Supporters of Hamas, Hezbollah, Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement to Speak at Muslim Student Union-Sponsored "Palestine Liberation Week"
Contact
information for the administration of the University of California, Irvine:
Mark G.
Yudof, president, University of California: President@ucop.edu
Michael
Drake, chancellor, University of California, Irvine: chancellor@uci.edu
On
Tuesday, May 8, anti-Semitic Oakland imam Amir Abdel Malik Ali
will speak. In 2010, Malik Ali answered "yes" when
asked if he supported the terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic
Jihad.
A small
sampling of his anti-Semitic remarks reveals the tenor of this year's events:
· Malik
Ali advised against meeting with "Zionists," because:
It gives
the impression that Zionism is like, it's okay, that it's okay. Now, you
Jews, in all due respect, you wouldn't sit down with Nazis for tea and cake.
No you wouldn't!
· Boasts
that, "The enemies of Islam know that when we come back to power we're
gonna check 'em."
· Claims
that, "[T]he Israelis were in control of 9-11," which "was
staged to give an excuse to wage war against Muslims around the world."
·
Insists that Israelis ought to return, "to Germany, to Poland, to
Russia. The Germans should hook y'all up. You [Israelis] should go back to
Germany."
·
Predicts that, "When it's all over, the only one standing is gonna be us
[Muslims]."
This
week's other scheduled speakers further confirm the event as an anti-Israel
propaganda fest. We will be filing daily reports on the events.
Monday,
May 7: Ben White, an ardent
supporter of the Boycott/Divestment/Sanction (BDS) movement who regularly
contributes to such radical-left publications as the Electronic Intifada,
the Guardian's Comment Is Free blog, and the New Statesman,
offers a "Beginner's Guide" to Israeli "apartheid" and on
"Shattering Israel's Image of Democracy."
Wednesday,
May 9: Hatem Bazian speaks Wednesday
evening. The UC Berkeley senior lecturer is an endorser of the Israel Divestment Campaign, a signatory to the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and
Cultural Boycott of Israel, and a committed anti-Israel propagandist and activist. In 2011, Bazian participated in the
"Never Again for Anyone" campaign, which coincided with International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Its purpose: to draw a connection between the Holocaust
and the Arab-Israeli conflict, with Israelis cast as the new Nazis and
"Never Again" transformed into the Palestinian rallying cry.
Thursday,
May 10: Osama Shabaik, one of the "Irvine 11," speaks at noon;
that evening, other members of the group convicted of conspiracy to disturb a
lawful meeting and the disturbance of the meeting are featured. Eleven of the
radical group's members or friends were convicted in 2011 for
disrupting Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren's lecture. As a result, UCI banned the MSU for a quarter and placed
on probation for two years.
This text may be reposted or forwarded so
long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete information
provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.
Related Items
MEF Special Report: Day One of the University of California, Irvine's, "Palestine Liberation Week"
by
Winfield Myers • May 8, 2012 at 7:22 pm
Be
the first of your friends to like this.
[Ed.
note: the following report was submitted by Irvine resident and MEF
correspondent Gary Fouse.]
On March
7, the UC Irvine Muslim Student Union kicked off its week-long "Palestine
Liberation Week." The first speaker was British
freelance journalist Ben White, author of two
books condemning Israel for its "maltreatment " of Palestinians
(both received rave reviews from Iran's Press TV).
A small
crowd of about fifty people were on hand. Even White's supporters in the
audience looked bored. He spoke again Monday evening--double punishment for
the MSU members who feel obligated to come out and support the event.
White
delivered an off-the-shelf speech about the "injustices" Israel
commits against the Palestinians. He complained of the controls on the
movement of Palestinians but did not, of course, dwell on the possible
reasons for such restrictions: Palestinian terrorism, suicide bombers,
rockets lobbed into Southern Israel from Gaza. Rather, he attacked Israel's
control of goods allowed into Gaza and complained of the "illegal
settlements" in the West Bank, but never mentioned the murders of
Israeli settlers by Palestinians, including the slaughter of the Fogel family in 2011.
In the
question and answer session, I reminded White of his previous speaking appearance
at UCI in 2010, when a female audience member questioned him about the
then-recent murder of an Israeli family living in one of the West Bank
settlements. At the time, White dismissed the murdered Israelis as
"illegal settlers." The woman responded that they were "Jewish
human beings," at which point, White said, "OK. They were illegal
Jewish human being settlers." I then told him that since he had been at
UCI, there had been another murder of an Israeli family, the Fogels in
Itimar. I described the murder of five people, three of whom were
children--including a months-old infant in its crib whose throat was slashed.
I noted that many Palestinians to handed out candy in the streets in
celebration.
In
response, White drew a moral equivalence between the deliberate murder of
innocents and inadvertent killing during war, stating, "I condemn all
murder of innocents," but comparing the murders to the death of
innocents killed in Gaza by Israeli airstrikes. He didn't condemn the
Palestinian militants' use of civilians as human shields.
White is
a typical anti-Israel activist, speaking endlessly of Israel's so–called
"crimes," but never mentioning the atrocities committed by
Palestinians or Arab states.
************************************************************************
Monday
evening, British journalist Ben White made his second speaking appearance at
UC Irvine on behalf of the Muslim Student Union. Intending to discredit
Israel as a democracy, claimed that the Israelis have a long history of
denying basic rights to Palestinians living inside Israel. To accomplish
this, he took out of context statements by Ariel Sharon, Shimon Peres, and
others who defended Israel's identity as a Jewish state, complained about
Palestinian housing in the Negev, and gave a one-sided presentation of
Palestinians who landed in refugee camps after the 1948 war. White's comments
amounted to a one-sided, simplistic presentation of a complicated conflict.
As he
did in the afternoon session, White engaged in a selective reading of
history. He neglected to mention the terrorist threat the Israelis faced from
the Palestinians during and after the 1948 war or the plight of Jewish
refugees, some 600-800,000 of whom were driven out of Arab lands.
In the
question and answer session, I pointed out this omission and called attention
to the plight of religious minorities in the countries surrounding Israel. I
also asked him to acknowledge that Jews driven out of Arab lands in '48. He
responded that it was irrelevant to the subject of Israel's transgressions,
but did state that everyone on both sides who lost their homes and
possessions should be given compensation.
This text may be reposted or forwarded so
long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete information
provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.
Related ItemsMEF Special Report: Amir Abdel Malik Ali Speaks at UCI's 'Palestine Liberation Week'
by
Winfield Myers • May 9, 2012 at 7:05 pm
Be
the first of your friends to like this.
[Ed.
note: the following report was submitted by Irvine resident and MEF
corresondent Gary Fouse.]
On
Tuesday, May 8, Amir Abdel Malik Ali
returned to the UC Irvine campus, courtesy of the Muslim Student Association,
to spew his message of hate. On his previous visit in 2010, he acknowledged
that he was a supporter of Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad. He then closed
by telling the Jewish audience members, "You Jews. Y'all the new Nazis!"
This
day, Ali delivered a rambling, invective-filled speech. Although Ali is a
dynamic and fiery speaker, his lectures are unstructured, with no
introduction, body, or conclusion. He also accepts countless conspiracy
theories.
Today,
he tried to cover all the world's ills in forty minutes. Early on he referred
to University of California president Mark Yudof as a "Zionist
Jew," as he railed against Yudof for a recent letter he made public on a series of racially and
religiously tainted incidents on UC campuses. Yudof"s sin was that he
didn't mention any Islamophobic incidents. (Here's a secret; there weren't
any.)
Of
course, Ali railed against Israel and all the "oppression" committed
against the Palestinians. (Oppression is one of Ali's favorite words.) He
also railed against his own country, America, with mocking references to
Uncle Sam. In one of his many newly-discovered conspiracies, Ali said the
next military battlefield is going to be Africa. After mentioning Libya,
Sudan and Uganda, he made this incredible claim: President Obama is already
"in" as far as re-election is concerned. Why? Because there is no
way America would start bombing Africa with a white man as president.
The fix
is in, folks.
There
were fleeting references to other issues of the day, including the Trayvon
Martin case (it's all connected, you see) and the obligatory Irvine 11, who
"did the right thing" by disrupting the 2010 UCI speech of Israeli
ambassador Michael Oren.
Somewhere
after the halfway point, Ali indicated he was into his conclusion. I learned
years ago that means nothing. Ali proceeded to wander into other subjects
until the moderator brought him the "hook" note that he was running
out of time.
In my
question to Ali during the Q & A session, I noted how ironic it was that
the Muslim Student Union always begins their events a with preamble in which
they disclaim any racial or religious bias, specifically against members of
the Jewish faith, only to invite a speaker like Ali who has a long history of
inflammatory statements on the UCI campus. I noted that in previous years, he
had referred to Rahm "Israel" Emanuel, David Axelrod, and Rupert
Murdoch as "Zionist Jews." His exact words about Murdoch, I noted,
were, "Rupert Murdoch-straight up Zionist Jew."
Today he
called Mark Yudof a "Zionist Jew." I told Ali that he had done
nothing to bring Christians, Jews, and Muslims together, nor blacks and
whites. I then told him that he was an anti-Semite who hated his own country.
Directing my words to the MSU members in the audience, I told them that they
"owned" Ali when they sponsored him as a speaker, as "he is
your speaker." So, how can they disclaim anti-Semitism when they bring
Ali to campus?
Ali's
response was predictable: he claimed to always make a distinction between
Jews and Zionist Jews. "Not all Jews are Zionists, and not all Zionists
are Jews," he said.
So much for the moderation of the UCI-MSU, and so much for the
hollow assurances of the misguided Olive Tree
Initiative crowd that the OTI has made
the campus situation better.
***************************************************************************************
On May 8, law student and activist Omar Shakir spoke at
UC Irvine as part of the Muslim Student Union's "Palestine Liberation
Week." He attempted to discover similarities between apartheid South
Africa and Israel.
Shakir cited Desmond Tutu, a harsh critic of
Israel given to claims that Israel resembles pre-Mandela South Africa. From
there, he claimed that Palestinians living in the West Bank under Israeli
laws have no legal protection, complained that they don't control their air
space as a sovereign nation would, and decried their inability to travel
freely due to the numerous checkpoints.
Of the Israeli evacuation of Gaza, Shakir said
pulled their settlers in order to "optimize their control." As for
East Jerusalem, he told the audience that Palestinians there hold not Israeli
citizenship, but a form of temporary residence. He insisted that the Israel
situation is apartheid (his emphasis) and claimed that the Jewish
state systematically discriminates against non-Jews.
Other claims from Shakir:
He tried to draw parallels between the formation
of South Africa by the racist Boers and the birth of modern Israel. Both
settlers, he said, considered themselves as threatened by other peoples; no
mention was made of the Jews' ancient ties to Israel as compared to the
Boers' non-African lineage.
In his closing remarks, Shakir asked what those
of us in the U.S. can do to address what he sees as a dire situation for the
Palestinians. The answer: support the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS)
movement.
Shakir is a good speaker and comes across as
reasonable. He lecture was one-sided and all but ignored legitimate Israeli
justifications for check-points and walls. No mention was made of Hamas or
Hezbollah. He claimed that it is not for other peoples to decide on the
solution (one state or two) to the region's problems, but for the Israelis
and the Palestinians. How that squares with his support for BDS he didn't
say.
This
text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral
whole with complete information provided about its author, date, place of
publication, and original URL.
Related ItemsMEF Special Report: Hatem Bazian at UCI's 'Palestine Liberation Week'
by Winfield Myers • May 11, 2012
at 9:07 pm
Be the first of your
friends to like this.
[Ed. note: the following report was submitted by
Irvine resident and MEF correspondent Gary Fouse.]
On May 9, Hatem Bazian, a senior
lecturer in Near Eastern and ethnic studies at the University of California,
Berkeley and anti-Israel activist, brought his power point presentation back
to UCI. If you read my posting about Omar
Shakir's presentation earlier in the week, you know what Bazian's
presentation was all about: yet another recitation of Israel's
"oppression" of the Palestinians. Bazian stood at the podium with
his laptop and the slides appeared on the screen with all the stats. It was
all there: the number of Palestinians killed by the Israelis; the number of
arrests; the check points; the settlements; the wall.
Of course, no data was given on the number of
suicide attacks by Palestinians against Israelis, which have been drastically
reduced in recent years by the wall that Bazian and other anti-Israel
activists demonize. Similarly, he mentioned neither the massacre of the Fogel
family in the settlement of Itimar in 2011, nor the number of rockets lobbed
into southern Israel from Gaza.
Predictably, Bazian (as is his wont) took a
couple of slaps at Congress and George W Bush. (Bazian doesn't like
Republicans).
During the Q & A, I asked him if he
presented his students with similar information in the classroom. Bazian
replied that when he was giving the Palestinian narrative, he gives the
Palestinian narrative. When he gives the Israeli narrative, he invites the Israeli
consul to deliver it. I told him that, if this is how he teaches, his
students receive a one-sided view.
The last "question" was from local
activist Shaheel Syed, who
apparently arrived with Bazian and asked him to comment on the amount of
American aid given to the "Zionist Apartheid state of Israel."
Bazian obviously knew the question was coming because he had his answer
prepared in the form of a six-point response.
Hatem Bazian is a propagandist who takes his
personal politics onto the UC Berkeley classrooms. He and his supporters
cannot abide that America supports Israel.
This
text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral
whole with complete information provided about its author, date, place of
publication, and original URL.
Related Items
MEF Special Report: Members of the 'Irvine 11' Speak at UCI's 'Palestine Liberation Week'
by Winfield Myers • May 12, 2012
at 3:53 pm
Be
the first of your friends to like this.
[Ed.
note: the following report was submitted by Irvine resident and MEF
correspondent Gary Fouse.]
On
Thursday evening, the Muslim Student Union at the University of California,
Irvine (UCI) wrapped up their week long anti-Israel extravaganza,
"Palestine Liberation Week," with a panel featuring four former UCI
students who were part of the so-called "Irvine 11." These and
others repeatedly disrupted a speech by Israeli ambassador to America Michael
Oren in 2010, for which they were convicted last year.
The four
took turns describing their memories of the event, their arrest, and
subsequent prosecution. Contrary to the claims of their supporters, these
four young men have hardly been victims. They have continued with their
studies at other institutions and enjoyed a celebrity status among their
fellow activists. Case in point: Osama Shabaik, one of the "11" who
spoke Thursday evening, is now a law student at Harvard and implied that his
record was a plus in his acceptance.
All four
are intelligent and articulate. Each spoke in a self-congratulatory manner,
expressing no remorse for his actions and saying he would do it again. They
claimed that shouting down an invited speaker was a legitimate form of
protest, perfectly acceptable on an American college campus, and something
that should not be criminalized. The audience of about fifty, mostly MSU
members, applauded them as were heroes.
The
former students bragged that their action was felt everywhere--even Israel.
They described Michael Oren as a war criminal and boasted that he will
remember that night for the rest of his life. They mocked his expressed
desire to return to UCI and promised, to much applause, that if Oren returns,
he'll receive the same treatment. It would appear that a successful prosecution
taught these people nothing.
Unsurprisingly,
the Q & A was designed to limit debate or discussion. Step to the
microphone, ask your question, and return to your seat before the question
would be answered. By the time I got to the microphone, I knew that I would
never be able to get all of my words out.
I told
them they were hardly victims since, by their own descriptions, they are
moving on quite well in life, and that they live in the greatest and freest
country in the world. Yet, I said, I doubted that they understood America's
concept of freedom of speech, since they seemed to care only about their own
right of free speech and not that of their opponents. When I told them that
they and their organization had, over the years, given a black eye to the
university, I was cut short by the moderator, who recognized that I wasn't so
much asking a question as making a statement, and I was politely asked to
return to my seat. I then repeated the same question I had asked Shabaik in
the afternoon--why they could not extend the same courtesy to their opponents
of not being interrupted that they had enjoyed all week.
One of
them replied that he had been disrupted at other events, and that that was
fine with him. If anyone in this audience wanted to disrupt and leave, he
said, they're welcome to go ahead. He claimed that MSU events at UCI had been
disrupted. (The only one I am aware of occurred eleven years ago, in 2001,
when the speaker was Amir Abdel Malik Ali.) Others answered that the
"fact" that Oren was a "war criminal" meant he should not
be allowed to present his country's propaganda (I am paraphrasing this.) They
rejected the idea of a polite discourse with Oren.
It is
clear that the speakers and the MSU have learned little from the fallout of
their denial of Oren's right to speak at UCI. They care not a whit that their
university's reputation has suffered from their antics. Rather, their
attitude remains self-righteousness, arrogant, and self-congratulatory.
This text may be reposted or forwarded so
long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete information
provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.
Related Items |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
To subscribe to the CW list, go to http://www.campus-watch.org/list_subscribe.php |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment