UCI Students Continue Israel Protests

Tensions flared again on March 2 on the University of California, Irvine (UCI) campus as pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel students staged simultaneous demonstrations outside the administration building.

Shouting slogans like “Anti-genocide, anti-Israel” and waving signs equating Zionism with terrorism, several hundred anti-Israel demonstrators expressed solidarity with the “Irvine 11,” the group of UCI and University of California, Riverside students arrested last month after disturbing a speech by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren on campus.

The group also protested disciplinary hearings currently being conducted against the eight UCI students by university officials.

The “Irvine 11 Speakout” was sponsored by the university’s Black Student Union and Students Fighting Against Tuition Hikes and Worker Layoffs, according to promotional fliers.

A YouTube video of the March 2 gathering shows an address to students by Russell Curry, a 2009 UCI graduate who says he was a member of a Viva Palestina USA convoy to Gaza last July and speaks in solidarity with the students arrested for protesting Oren’s speech. On the trip to Gaza, Curry says, “I have seen with my own two eyes the atrocities that happened there, and those are the reasons that Michael Oren was being protested.” UCI’s Muslim Student Union (MSU) is currently the subject of an
FBI investigation for allegedly collecting money on campus in May for that convoy; the money is alleged to have been delivered to Hamas.

A counter-protest by pro-Israel students took place nearby, with students waving Israeli flags and singing songs of peace. There to show support for Israel in the face of the boisterous anti-Israel rhetoric, several Jewish students nevertheless said the scene made them feel uncomfortable.

“I felt very different yesterday than at other times,” said Moran Cohen, president of Anteaters for Israel, a student group named for the school’s mascot, speaking to a group of two dozen Jewish students on March 3.

“I found myself trying to justify why Israel has a right to exist. We’re here at the university to learn and teach each other. You don’t need to justify why we have a right to live.”

Also on March 3, Israel Defense Forces reservists Lior and Inon spoke at UCI, sharing personal experiences of participation in Israel’s recent incursions into Gaza and Lebanon with two dozen Jewish students. (The soldiers requested that only first names be used for security reasons.) They spoke of Israel’s efforts to protect Palestinian civilians despite heavy fighting on the ground and encouraged students to form their own fact-based opinion about support for Israel. 

The speaking engagement was sponsored by StandWithUs.

All this followed a Feb. 26 statement issued by University of California President Mark Yudof and chancellors of the 10 UC campuses condemning “all acts of racism, intolerance and incivility.” 

“Regardless of how such offenses are rationalized, or what free speech rights they purport to express, the acts we have witnessed are unacceptable,” the group said. 

In a period that has witnessed numerous protests on UC campuses on a variety of student grievances as well as racist incidents at UC San Diego and UC Davis, the statement failed to name any individual episodes.