In Pursuit of Justice

This OC Register article does an excellent job at suming up and clarifying the lies and propaganda surrounding the Muslim-Jewish “tensions” at UCI.

Excerpts:

IRVINE – A young man in a turban, his face covered, marches around UC Irvine with signs saying “Death to Infidels. Death to Israel” during a week of campus demonstrations by Muslim students.

Here’s the catch: He’s not Muslim. In fact, he’s not even a student at UCI.

Instead, he’s one of many outsiders who have become embroiled in a campus war of words between a small number of Jewish and Muslim students.

Was he aware that passers-by might actually think he was a terrorist?

“Of course,” said Max Gibson, 27, a self-proclaimed Zionist who lives in San Diego and is affiliated with a college Republican group. “It was to make people think.”

Gibson’s masquerade, authentic enough to spur campus police to disarm him of fake bombs strapped to his body, is an example of how real events at UC Irvine have spun off into their own sometimes fictional existence, spawning street theater and reverberating worldwide on dozens of blogs.

Events at UC Irvine are no different than at many other schools. A recent University of California study found 85 percent of UCI students agreed there was respect for all students, regardless of race or religion – roughly the same percentage as at other UC campuses.

Yet UCI has achieved a blog-inspired reputation for anti-Semitism – a notoriety that many campus observers say is unfair and unwarranted.

“A lot of the blogs distort facts and take things out of context,” said Alex Chazen, president of Hillel: The Jewish Student Union at UC Irvine. “Many of the bloggers aren’t on our campus and don’t even know what’s going on.”

…

UCI Professor Mark LeVine, a Middle East scholar who once wanted to become a rabbi, said he tried to mediate between the two student groups, but gave the task up as hopeless.

“The only thing that would satisfy the critics now would be if they expelled every Muslim student and painted stars of David on all the buildings,” said LeVine, whose criticism of Israeli policies has caused some critics to dub him as a “self-hating Jew.”

Outside groups get involved

Jewish students are also supported and encouraged by outside advocacy groups such as the Zionist Organization of America and Stand With Us, “an international education organization that ensures that Israel’s side of the story is told,” according to its Web site.

On a typical day during the Muslim students’ protest week, paid staff members from several advocacy organizations visit the campus to observe the events.

“It’s not just student groups initiating things, but students responding to outside groups,” Bollens said. “That’s why there’s energy on this conflict. I think, left to their own accord, left to be students in a university interacting in their own classes or public forums without outside groups, they would over time agree to disagree, or be more moderate and civil about things.”

Bollens, whose academic expertise is studying polarized religious groups around the world, said “UCI is not an anti-Semitic place” and added that he thinks community groups should be welcome on campus, along with everyone else.

Sometimes, officials said, the stories of anti-Semitism are simply fiction.

A young man reported to his father in 2004 that he was being harassed and assaulted for being a Jewish UCI student, leading the infuriated dad to e-mail campus authorities and castigate them for doing nothing.

“My son has been assaulted both physically and verbally on campus,” the father wrote in an e-mail, adding that “it appears campus security takes no action.”

On further investigation, concerned UCI officials had to report to the boy’s father that he wasn’t a harassed student, in fact, he wasn’t a UCI student at all. He was not then, nor had he ever been, enrolled at UCI. Campus officials were surprised, however, to learn that the young man has now applied to enroll at the campus for fall 2007.