Mideast Debate Takes Root at UC Irvine
UC Irvine has emerged as an unlikely flashpoint in the national Israeli-Arab debate.
The campus' Muslim Student Union has drawn harsh criticism for last week's "Holocaust in the Holy Land" programs. Events included a speech titled "Israel: the 4th Reich" and the construction of a mock Israeli security wall with students dressed as Israeli army officers conducting aggressive checkpoint searches.
The events at the public quad prompted a strong reaction from members of Jewish groups, who called it highly offensive to equate Israel with Nazi Germany.
These clashes have been the latest in years of tension, mistrust and back-and-forth accusations between activist Muslim and Jewish students at UC Irvine.
In 2003, a memorial to Holocaust victims was vandalized. The next year, an antiZionism mural erected by the Society of Arab Students was burned down. No arrests were made in either case.
Then, a group of Muslim students made headlines with their plan to wear graduation stoles of green -- a traditional color of Islamic identity -- as a show of Islamic unity. Jewish groups on and off campus decried them as a show of support for Hamas, a militant Palestinian group responsible for dozens of suicide bombings in Israel, which also uses green as its signature color.
At the heart of the UC Irvine issue is a fundamental question: Can one be aggressively opposed to the policies and even the existence of Israel without being anti-Semitic?
Muslim Student Union leaders say yes; Jewish activists on and off campus say they aren't so sure.
"Being against the existence of Israel does begin to push that line," said Alex Chazen, president of Anteaters for Israel, a Jewish student group that takes its name from the university's mascot.
If so, it's a line that the Muslim Student Union seems determined to cross -- to the continuing outrage of Jewish groups.
"The apartheid state of Israel is on the way down. They are living in fear
UC Irvine is not the only campus in the nation dealing with the issue, but some leaders on both sides of the debate say the mood on the Orange County campus has been particularly intense.
"Irvine sticks out as one of the most radical campuses in the country," said Roz Rothstein, national director of Stand With Us, a pro-Israel group that protested last week's events at UC Irvine.
