SOUNDING OFF:

On May 7-15, the UCI Muslim Students’ Union Assn. staged a weeklong “Nakba” event that, under the guise of commemorating the “catastrophe” of the founding of the Jewish state, brought to campus the genocidal philosophy promoted by leaders and movements throughout the Middle East.

It is one thing for such toxic ideas to be conceived in the clandestine meeting places of international terror organizations, but quite another for them to be promoted in the campus offices of recognized student groups.

How destructive is the agenda of “Nakba” week? Consider the roster of speakers the MSU assembled:

•Norman Finkelstein, who demeans the Holocaust as an “industry” and is so extreme in his hatred of Israel that he is scorned by true scholars and denied tenure by his university department.

•Mohammed al Asi, who spreads the lunatic notion that 9/11 was caused by Mossad and CIA agents who infiltrated “Islamic combatant groups.”

•Amir Abdel Malik Ali, who believes that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is “a pretty good guy” and has praised Palestinian mothers whose children become suicide bombers.

How else to understand an organization whose members commonly wear green armbands to signal their allegiance to the terrorist group Hamas?

An organization that has displayed posters on the UCI campus that equate the Star of David with the Nazi Swastika. An organization that in March 2006 led more than 1,000 Muslim students in an anti-free-speech protest against the “offensive” Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that had recently set off massive demonstrations and riots throughout the Muslim world. An organization that asked UCI’s graduating Muslim students to wear green sashes bearing the word “shahada,” the Arabic word for the “martyrdom” of a suicide bomber, to their graduations.

These are the actions of an organization that is overtly political, and hard-core political at that. But then what else can be expected of a chapter of the nationwide network of Muslim Student Assn.’s created years ago by operatives of the Muslim Brotherhood, godfather to Al Qaeda and Hamas, as part of a “stealth jihad” directed at American institutions?

The Muslim Student Assn. tells students U.S. foreign policy is driven by militaristic imperialism; follows the Arab propaganda line in the Middle East conflict; and denounces virtually every national security initiative implemented by the U.S. government since the 9/11 attacks.

Front-groups for jihad have no place on our campuses. It is time for members of the UCI community to speak out against such agitation and against the hate and the incitement to genocide at the heart of “Nakba” events. These sentiments degrade our institutions of higher education and our world.

DAVID HOROWITZ is president of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.