Jewish Groups Call Upon UC Irvine “To Respond Promptly, and At The Highest Levels of the University…When Intolerant and/or Discriminatory Acts Occur”

Letter to UC Irvine Chancellor Gillman Regarding Implementation of the Regents Statement

May 25, 2016

Dear Chancellor Gillman,

We are 36 Jewish and civil rights organizations representing hundreds of thousands of supporters who are deeply concerned about the long-standing and pervasive problem of anti-Semitic anti-Zionism that has incited hatred of Jews and acts of aggression and violence against Jewish and pro-Israel students on your campus.

As you know, in March the UC Regents unanimously approved a Statement Against Intolerance, which acknowledges that anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic forms of anti-Zionism are no less discriminatory than racism, homophobia or sexism, and “have no place at the University of California.”

Recent events on your campus demonstrate the critical importance of promptly and comprehensively implementing the Regents statement at UC Irvine.

Last Wednesday evening, UCI Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) carried out a pre-meditated and violent disruption of an event hosted by Jewish and pro-Israel student groups.  According to eyewitness accounts and video footage, an angry mob of more than 40 members of SJP and other affiliated organizations attempted to forcibly enter the room where 10 students were watching a documentary film about the Israeli Defense Forces. Understandably terrified and fearing for their safety, Jewish and pro-Israel students who were at the film screening held the door shut to prevent aggressive protesters from entering the room, whereupon protesters pounded on the room’s door and windows and, for about an hour, screamed slogans that demonized and delegitimized Israel and called for and condoned terrorism against Jews, such as “Fuck Israel!”, “Intifada, Intifada, long live the Intifada!” and “When people are occupied, resistance is justified.”  Event attendees were effectively held hostage for more than 45 minutes after their event had ended, until they could be safely escorted from the room by police.

UC Irvine Student: “I Was Terrified. There Is No Other Word to Describe How I Felt”

At UC Irvine, Jews believe wrong students were escorted out of anti-Israel mob

By Paul Miller/JNS.org

Posted on May 23, 2016 by JNS.org and filed under Israel, News, U.S..

The night of May 18 was supposed to be an evening of learning and conversation for Eliana Kopley. The University of California, Irvine (UC Irvine) sophomore, who had just attended a lecture about the Holocaust and was walking a short distance to another campus building that was hosting a film screening about Israeli soldiers, found herself confronted by an angry mob.

“I was terrified. There is no other word to describe how I felt,” Kopley told the Haym Salomon Center.”

Kopley had intended to join 10 classmates and guests of the private event hosted by Students Supporting Israel. When she arrived, approximately 50 anti-Israel activists convened by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) were pounding on the doors and windows, and shouting violent chants targeting Israel, Jews, and the police.

As the mob tried to gain entrance to the event, one protestor yelled, “If we’re not allowed in, you’re not allowed in!”

With the angry mob physically barricading the entrance, the 20-year-old Kopley, who stands less than five feet tall, was forced to leave the scene amid taunts of “intifada, intifada—long live the intifada! F**k Israel and f**k the police.”

But Kopley was not alone. A group of female students accompanied her as she escaped to safety in a nearby building.

“When I turned back, at that moment, I looked at one of the girls and wanted to hide and cry,” Kopley said.

While the UC Irvine sophomore was hiding in darkness, the scene inside the movie screening was equally frightening.

Veteran Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier Eran Izak moved to the United States three years ago. The recently married construction worker was on hand May 18 to answer questions from the audience about his life in the IDF and the film “Beneath the Helmet.” What he experienced was something he never thought he’d see in America.

“As the film was playing we began hearing a lot of shouting outside,” said Izak. “It was immediately clear what was happening. The woman in charge of the event was literally holding the door closed with her hands as the mob tried to break into the classroom. As the shouting grew louder, it became apparent that we would not be allowed to leave, so we called campus security and the police.”

Meanwhile, the film was still playing even though nobody was paying attention by that point, as a sense of fear gripped the room.

“They were banging on the glass and the door and we could hear screaming outside,” Izak said. “The students had a look of panic on their faces—they were terrified. Finally the police arrived, pushed the protesters back a little, and escorted us to our cars.”

Are you still being told that things have gotten better for Jewish university Students? Have you been fooled!

New intifada on campuses abroad

They meet in small groups on campus; funded by foreign money. They understand that this method of operation gives them more influence than any act of physical violence would. They are young people who convince others; they are builders of public opinion. Step by step they take control of the leaderships of student unions and organizations; pro-Palestinian activists join extreme left-wingers in activism against Israeli elements.

This is the new intifada. You won’t hear about in the next news update; it is not an uprising within Israel’s borders, and it stopped being just about the settlements, occupation and peace treaties a long time ago. It is far away from us; it is influential, exhilarating; it speaks in a new, young language and has one goal: The annihilation of Israel as a Jewish state.

Campus Hatred

The battle for America / Tzipi Shmilovitz

Special: Israeli, Jewish students fighting back as hostility grows on leading campuses in America
Full Story

Anti-Israeli elements have reached the conclusion that burning an Israeli flag does not make for good photos. It is too extreme, too controversial, and too barbaric; it doesn’t do the job anymore; the world has changed. They found that burning the Zionist idea rather than the flag is much more effective.

Over the past few months this campaign has been taken to the next level. At the University of California public university system, at the University of California, San Diego, at Brooklyn College in New York, at Oxford University in Britain and on other campuses there are calls for boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, and activists also disrupt lectures of Israeli representatives – it is all part of a broad campaign to delegitimize Israel.

It is not coincidental that a significant part of the delegitimization campaign against Israel is talking place on campuses. The arena was carefully selected. Campuses have always been fertile ground for exchanging ideas, for activity aimed at fomenting social change and for calls for universal ideals because it is easier to plant the seeds of unruliness in the minds of 18 year olds, who are more open to innovative and revolutionary ideas. Within a decade millions of young, influential people within government, the economy, the arts, culture, the judicial system and research – those who have been inculcated with the anti-Israel idea – may adopt the notion that Israel does not have the right to exist as a Jewish state. ‘Why do the Jews need a state of their own?’ They will wonder.

Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You. Anti-Israel and Anti-Semitic Cancer Now Appears On Most University of California Campuses

Jewish at U.C. — the real report, by the students themselves

Thursday, October 18, 2012 | by dan pine– Jewish Weekly

They called Tammuz Dubnov a liar. Right to his face.

The 17-year-old sophomore was standing in U.C. Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza alongside other students defending Israel.

Therefore, reasoned the pro-Palestinian protestors, Dubnov, who was born in Israel, must be a liar. “I stayed calm,” he recalled of the incident last spring. “They don’t actually know what they’re talking about.”

U.C. Berkeley, like any university, is a bastion of free speech, a testament to the power of the First Amendment and fundamental American values. At the same time, U.C. campuses have long been the sites of verbal attacks against Israel and, occasionally, Jews.

Divestment resolutions, heckling of Israeli speakers, “Israel Apartheid Week,” calls for academic boycotts of Israel and ethnic slurs — as well as an occasional swastika scrawled here or carved there — have become part of university life.

“Hateful and offensive” display at UC Irvine Student Center?

Note: The following anonymous opinion was posted on the myUCIrvine web page.  In recent years, Jewish students who have spoken out about their experiences at UCI, have complained about being ridiculed and ostracised.  For this reason a number of students have left the campus or graduated early.  To view the photographs click the link below.

Scandal at UCI: Faculty fuels conflict as students look for peace 

“Pictures of blood stained flags and a memorial to hate speech has recently been put up in the Student Center… by a professor.”

Fri Apr 27, 2012 1:12pm By AnonymousOpinion  myUCIrvine

 http://www.myucirvine.com/news/opinion/scandle-at-uci-faculty-fuels-conflict-as-students-look-for-peace-20120427

If there is anything UC Irvine utterly despises, it must be freedom, equality, and democracy. I say this in full confidence because the only country that the administration at UCI allows to be slandered, libeled, and publicly desecrated is anything pertaining to Israel or the Jewish people.

UC Irvine prides itself on being a campus where all views and opinions can be heard, shared, as well as respected. I am sorry to say that this just isn’t the case. Take the Cross Culture Center (CCC), what should be the hub of diversity on campus, as an example. The CCC  “is dedicated to creating and maintaining a socially just campus, fostering the cultural identities within our community, and providing opportunities for intellectual exchange, leadership development, and community engagement” but clearly, they do not accomplish that. A demonstration of everything wrong with the CCC is the mural in the center proudly depicting the infamous El- Hajj Malik El- Shabazz. For those of you who are not familiar with Shabazz, he was a preacher of anti-Semitism, black supremacy and encouraged violence amongst his supporters.  Before his days as a member of the Nation of Islam, Shabazz told the US Draft Board that he, as well as his black supremacist supporters, wanted to “steal us some guns, and kill us [some] crackers.” This is a wonderful example of what the Cross Culture Center stands for because the university not only allows, but rewards this type of behavior.

The most hateful, disgusting, and narrow minded display of intolerance on campus every year is the Muslim Student Union and Students for Justice in Palestine’s week aimed at showing their baseless and unjustified hatred of the Jewish people. Every year for one week, UCI students are bothered with a public display of abhorrence towards one national ethnicity, the Jews. This is not surprising since the MSU has connections to the terrorist group Hamas, the group responsible for launching over 8000 rockets into Israel and kidnapping Israeli soldiers as well as the Muslim Brotherhood. This disgusting act has not only never been condemned, it occurs every year, much to the students in SJP’s pleasure. To make things even worse, in the Student Center, a place where students go to study throughout the day, there is a wall of pictures honoring these detestable acts and the bigoted speakers SJP brings to campus.

Rumors and Nonsense?

An interesting  article entitled Just some food for thought  was linked today on the OC Task Force Facebook page by the president of UC Irvine Hillel.  The article appears on the U C Irvine Hillel Blog .  Here is some additional food for thought:

1. The article stands in stark contradiction to a previous article written in 2009 by the same author describing  Vicious Jew-Hatred   at UC Irvine. 
2.  In an article published in the May 2009 Jewish Journal entitled Protecting Hate at UC Irvine  a former UC Irvine student wrote: ” I have been told to censor myself so that potential students are not afraid to come to UCI, but I have had enough censorship”. 
3. In March 2008, 20 “current and former” students issued a Press Release expressing deep concern about the anti-Semitism at UC Irvine and Hillels “response” to it. That story was covered in JTA and the Jerusalem Post”.
4. In January 2009 an email sent to the Jewish community by the former president of Anteaters for Israel described U C Irvine as a ” a hotbed for anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activism over the past seven years”.
5.  In March 2010, Jewish student leaders appeared before the UCI student council describing the situation on campus and asked “when will the student government stand up for me?”
6.  May 2010 over 63 UC Irvine  faculty members issued a public statement saying in part: “Some community members, students, and faculty indeed feel intimidated, and at times even unsafe.”
7. On February 12, 2008, the Orange County Independent Task Force on anti-Semitism completed its year-long investigation at UCI.  Over 80 hours of interviews, as well as, documents, written complaints and numerous visits to the campus were used in the compilation of the subsequent Report and Recommendations.  The complete 34 page report can be found here . The Task Force has continued to monitor and report on events on the UC Irvine campus.

Note: to read the articles click on the underlined phrases above.

SEE ALSO: Why Did Hillel Co-Sponsor Speaker Who Supported Goldstone Report?

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin’s response to Dr. Daniel Wehrenfennig, Director of the UCI Olive Tree Initiative

Dear Dr. Daniel Wehrenfennig,

You did not write to me directly, though you did blind-copy me on your recent widely-circulated letter (forwarded below), in which you mentioned my name 18 times and attacked a letter I had sent to the heads of the Orange County Jewish Federation and Hillel.  My letter urged these Jewish communal organizations to withdraw their funding and promotion of the Olive Tree Initiative (OTI) because at least 15 of the OTI’s speakers are affiliated with organizations that have ties to terrorist groups that have murdered Jews, advocate the elimination of the Jewish state, and support boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaigns against Israel.  I also pointed out to the OC Federation and Hillel that it is wrong for Jewish communal resources to be used for a trip that engages Jewish students in activities that desecrate Jewish holy days, such as the OTI trip in 2010, during which students spent the two days of Rosh Hashanah and the following Sabbath (and other Sabbaths) engaged in non-Jewish activity in Jordan and the disputed territories.

You fiercely criticized my letter, stating that I “made up facts” and that my analysis was “incomplete and misleading,” “completely inaccurate,” and filled with “wrong information and missing facts,” “a pattern of misinformation,” “erroneous statements,” and “distortion.”  I would like to reply to your charges, which I believe are wholly baseless, extremely disingenuous, and highly offense to the Jewish community in general, and to me personally as a UC faculty member, and as a Jew.

Congressman Klein’s letter: Congressional meeting addresses “anti-Semitic and anti-Israel harassment against students”

The following was emailed to the OCITF this morning from Congressman Klein’s office

Dear friends,

Earlier this week, I invited several speakers to come to Capitol Hill to brief Congressional offices on reports of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel harassment against students on college campuses in the United States, an unacceptable and alarming problem that persists in various regions of the country. According to Jewish community officials, students at various universities around the country have reported repeated intimidation, harassment and even violent attacks on their college campuses by other students and non-students alike, causing emotional distress and prompting some students to go so far as to transfer schools.

Daily Pilot: Arrested UCI students face possible DA Prosecution

Published Wednesday, February 10, 2010 7:12 PM PST

Education

Students arrested during Israeli ambassador’s visit to UCI could face disciplinary measures and possible D.A. prosecution.

Eight UC Irvine students and three UC Riverside students were arrested and detained Monday by campus police.

By Tom Ragan

Daily Pilot

Student protesters who were arrested by campus police for disrupting a speech at UC Irvine by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren could face a host of academic repercussions — from simple warnings, suspensions or all out expulsions, a spokeswoman for the university said Wednesday.

The university, which released the names of the 11 protesters, said that Monday night’s incident, in which the protesters repeatedly interrupted Oren at the UCI Student Center, will now be forwarded to the Orange County district attorney’s office for possible prosecution.

The protesters were cited for “disturbing a public meeting,” said Cathy Lawhon, UCI’s director of media relations.

Campus police ended up detaining them for about an hour before releasing them. No bond had to be posted, Lawhon added.

“I think everybody is entitled to free speech, but this was not that,” said Lawhon of the incident. “In the end, they were preventing him (Oren) from exercising his right to free speech.”

JPOST Editiorial: “In trying to silence Oren, they made a mockery of the university’s commitment to freedom of speech and treated its dedication to respectful dialogue with downright disdain”

Away with campus timidity

JPOST EDITORIAL 09/02/2010

In trying to silence Oren, Muslim campaigners made a mockery of UC-Irvine’s commitment to freedom of speech.

In the Name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful… The members of the Muslim Student Union at the University of California, Irvine, condemn and strongly oppose the presence of Michael Oren on our campus… Oren personally participated in the Israeli Defense Force in wars that took place in Lebanon and Palestine…Oren and his partners should only be granted a speakers platform in the International Criminal Court…

In the name of demonizing the Jewish state, intimidating its supporters and making it ever more difficult to present Israel’s case, Muslim campaigners and their allies at the UC-Irvine campus on Monday repeatedly disrupted a talk by Israel’s Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren. Eleven of the louts were detained, issued summonses and released.

In trying to silence Oren, they made a mockery of the university’s commitment to freedom of speech and treated its dedication to respectful dialogue with downright disdain. Yes, they probably discomfited our ambassador, but they shamed UC-Irvine and its alumni.

ZOA letter to UC Irvine: MSU/Galloway May ’09 campus event may have illegally raised funds for Hamas

On September 22, 2009, the Orange County Independent Task Force on anti-Semitism (OCITF) received a carbon copy of a letter from the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) to UC Irvine General Counsel Diane Giocaris. The letter describes “…very disturbing information concerning the Muslim Student Union (MSU) and a program it conducted during its anti-Israel and anti-Semitic event at UCI last May.”

On May 21, 2009, as part of “Israel: the Politics of Genocide,” the MSU featured George Galloway, a member of the British Parliament, whose topic was “Viva Palestina, Galloway’s convoy to Gaza…”.  ZOA’s letter alleges that: “Prior to the program, MSU specifically affirmed in writing that this was not going to be a fundraiser. Yet, according to the ZOA, at the program,  both MSU and Mr Galloway  solicited funds for Viva Palestina from the over 850 people in attendance and we are concerned that the funds may have been delivered to Hamas in Gaza in July 2009.”  Hamas has been designated by the US State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) and providing material support and resources to an FTO is a violation of federal law.   The letter states that several University policies were violated during this event and that at least four campus administrators were present, but did nothing to stop the unauthorized and “potentially illegal” fund raising activities.

Earlier this year, Galloway was refused entry into Canada for allegedly providing material support to Hamas.

The OCITF urges community members to contact UCI Chancellor Michael Drake and urge him to immediately investigate these very serious allegations.

Chancellor Michael Drake
University of California, Irvine
Office of the Chancellor
Irvine, CA 92697-5125
(949)-824-5111
chancellor@uci.edu

to read the entire ZOA letter click here:

Olive Trees at UC Irvine? Someone didn’t get the Message

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA POLICIES APPLYING TO
CAMPUS ACTIVITIES, ORGANIZATIONS, AND STUDENTS

40.00 POLICY ON USE OF UNIVERSITY PROPERTIES

A. Use by University-Related Persons and Groups “….Whenever an event is sponsored by a registered campus organization, it must be reviewed by the Office of the Dean of Students, as appropriate, for compliance with University policies and procedures.”

In addition to the “apartheid wall”, displays like these lined Ring Road on 5/14/09, courtesy of MSU and their co-sponsors.

During Malik Ali’s traditional noontime bash of “Zionist Jews”, Israel and America, he renewed his call for “civil disobedience”.  He also blamed Somali piracy on  “fishing Rights”and the  West’s “dumping of nuclear waste ” in Somali Waters.

Additional photos click on:

UCI Continues to Allow MSU Supporters as Security Personel

It is incumbent upon the University to provide adequate security and police protection for all of its students, especially when organizations such as the Muslim Student Union at UCI bring incendiary and hate speakers to the campus. The UCI administration has allowed untrained MSU members to act as “security guards” for their own events. This should not be tolerated as it creates an unsafe and potentially hazardous environment for students, faculty and visitors to the campus. If the university does not have the resources to provide adequate police protection, then perhaps they should require those groups to pay for additional qualified uniformed campus police.From top: MSU supporters “guard” Cynthia McKinney. Middle:  Audience  member approaches Ms. McKinney’s podium to ask a question and is immediately met by several MSU supporters. Bottom: Dean of  Students Sally Peterson escorts audience member away from the podium.

“Israel Apartheid week”: Annual hate ritual featuring classical anti-Semitic themes

Israel Apartheid Week kicks off

By Ben Harris · March 2, 2009

With the annual Israel-bashing ritual known as Israel Apartheid Week kicking off at campuses around North America, Canada’s National Post takes a look at the mounting tension that is making some students feel uncomfortable.