Wall splits students

Students walking through the middle of UCI’s campus this week will witness free speech at work. Various groups — pro-Israel, pro-Zionist, pro-Palestinian and others — are inviting speakers and staging rallies to portray their own version of truth, their opinion on the conflict happening within Israel as two cultures continue to clash.

And standing at the middle of these protests is a wall, a replica of the one that borders Israel and Palestine. The wall, built by the Muslim Student Union, depicts violence against Palestine, anti-Zionist sentiments and the flag of Israel, blood-stained, soaring above.

“This is not a matter of our dead are more important than your dead,” said Muslim Student Union spokeswoman Nida Chowdhry, who said the stained flag was in protest of a government, not a people. “We are trying to draw attention to the causes of this oppression.”

Both the Muslim Student Union and Jewish groups on campus host events and speakers this week dedicated to differing opinions on the issues between Israel and Palestine, anti-Semitism, and UCI’s role in both.

The groups claim that the events raise awareness and provide information for the student body, but the question on some people’s minds is whether their efforts serve to antagonize each other more than they promote the peaceful exchange of ideas.

“The deterioration in discourse nationally and what we see in some of these speakers is not conducive,” said UCI Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Manuel Gomez. “It is just rhetoric coming back and forth at each other. My hope would be to get authentic dialogues going with discussion revolving around differences, not to agreement, but to understand different perspectives.”

Gomez added that UCI does not support, endorse, or sponsor the events taking place on campus between the groups.

The university has been called into question for allowing some of the politically themed events on campus, as some groups have called the Muslim Student Union’s message one of hate and some of its speakers and actions anti-Semitic.

Gomez said the university is following state and national policies for freedom of expression, but added that if someone’s rights were violated, the school would intervene.

The Muslim Student Union called its week of events “Never Again? The Palestinian Holocaust.” Some students have spoken out against the name, calling it an insult to the Jewish Holocaust.

Chowdhry said the name is in reference to a quote from Israeli Deputy Minister of Defense Matan Vilnai and isn’t trying to imply a holocaust is happening. Rather, she said, the title presents the concern that the region is moving in that direction.

“Life is being made intolerable for these people,” Chowdhry said.

Jewish community leaders, like Kevin Schmelzlen of the Zionist Organization of America at UCI, believe the Muslim Student Union has overstepped its freedom of speech boundaries with protests and speakers because its anti-Zionism sentiment is anti-Semitic, he said.

“Most of the reasons people say they oppose the state of Israel, it has anti-Semitic reasons behind it,” the 19-year-old Schmelzlen said.

While Schmelzlen said the idea of the events this week is to offer differing opinions, he rejected the idea of hosting events with the Muslim Student Union to foster debate.

“We shouldn’t want to speak with terrorist supporters,” he said. “I am not going to co-host an event with speakers who want to destroy our people.”

But other Jewish students and groups, such as Jason Weingarten a member of Anteaters for Israel, believe that while actions by the Muslim Student Union represent hateful sentiments, other actions by the Zionist Organization of America can be construed just as poorly.

“I think everyone is wrong,” Weingarten said. “People are more concerned about promoting speakers than education.”

Weingarten added that most students on campus don’t notice the problems between the groups and that he has never felt unsafe or his rights infringed.

While he believes the administration has been weak on the issue, he agrees administrators can’t suspend anyone’s right to free speech or fall into a slippery slope of condemning one group’s speech over another’s.

“The more organizations on the outside that come here are just more hands stirring the pot,” he said. “You would think our campus is on the verge of World War III, but 95% of the campus just walks by.”

Do you feel the wall bordering Israel and Palestine is oppressive against the Palestinian people or a necessary precaution to protect both Israelis and Palestinians? Send us an e-mail at [email protected] or leave a comment on our website.

DANIEL TEDFORD may be reached at (714) 966-4632 or at [email protected].