Students Fighting Genocide Reject Israel's Representative Oren at UCI

No patience for criticism of genocide and war crimes at UCI.

Irvine police remove an anti-genocide protester from a speech at UC Irvine, the undergraduate spoke out while Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren addressed about 500 in attendance.

(IRVINE, Calif.) - Twelve people were arrested this week at what is described as a "raucous lecture" at UC Irvine during a scheduled appearance of Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren. School officials say he came to talk about U.S.-Israel relations.

But Oren was interrupted 10 times while trying to give his speech before 500 people at the UCI Student Center, where heavy police security was in place. Each time he would start to make a point, a student would stand up and shout at him, with questions about genocide and the elimination of the Palestinian people.

This heavy security factor is status quo in the land "Behind the Orange Curtain" as we often say about this part of Orange County. I've had a big Irvine cop try to intimidate me during an Irvine City Council meeting, when I first exposed the city's dirty plans to turn the deadly toxic former Marine air base, El Toro, into a subdivision and park for kids.

Too bad Israeli police don't do that for the people of Palestine. Instead, Israeli troops shoot at Palestinians every Friday at places like Bil'in, for staging peaceful, non-violent protests on their own land, against Israeli oppression. The Israelis actually enter Palestine in order to shoot at the protesters. The world is becoming increasingly aware of these actions. Israel responds to the unarmed protesters with with tear gas, rubber bullets, and real bullets.

That is the world stage, the stage Oren attempted to speak from at Irvine had no dangers, as the Palestinians face when they attempt to exhibit freedom of speech.

I find it interesting and extremely hypocritical that the faculty at UC Irvine would be happy to host a representative like Oren, while discouraging the voices of the students they are paid with public funds to teach.

Sadly, it underscores the habit of humans to ignore war atrocities, the way they did in the 1930's as Hitler ramped up his forces to eventually slaughter several million Jews, Gypsy's, academics, journalists, artists, musicians, etc., and also gay people.

Today the sides have traded places, but like England and France and the USA in the early years of the Third Reich, UC Irvine ignores genocide completely when considering speakers. It is truly is outrageous, not that surprising.

There is no world threat toward Jewish people, the threatened ones are Palestinians, and it is the Iranians in the most danger... Israel continually lies about Iran having a nuclear weapons program, which the international agency regulating nuclear and atomic affairs says is not taking place there at all.

The call to attack Iran is part of Israeli paranoia, and Israel's proposed expansion. They want it all, they possess several hundred illegal undeclared nuclear weapons, the very same thing they accuse Iran of considering having "at some point in the future" and don't think Israel doesn't want to take military action against Iran...they do.

Back to the speech at UC Irvine; Oren took a 20 minute break after the fourth protest, asked for hospitality and resumed his speech, only to be interrupted again by young men yelling at him every few minutes. Many members of the audience also applauded Oren.

After the 10th interruption, several dozen students who opposed Oren's talk got up and walked out and staged a protest outside. As they left, a Jewish professor told each of the students supporting the right of Muslims to exist in peace, that they had "failed the exam" as they walked out the door.

Video by Eugene Garcia, OCRegister.com/video: