Anteaters' Voice

Last week, May 24-28, Ring Road hosted Anteaters for Israel’s third annual iFest celebration, “iFest 3.0.” Purposely situated around Israel’s Independence Day, iFest is a weeklong, apolitical celebration of Israeli culture and society, as well as what the Jewish state has accomplished in its now 62 years of existence.

As I often do when events occur that breach our university's commitment to values and civility, I feel a necessity to speak out. I'm speaking today of the offensive remarks supporting terrorism made during the question period following a noontime lecture at the flagpole on Thursday.

We, faculty at the University of California--Irvine, are deeply disturbed about activities on campus that foment hatred against Jews and Israelis. The troubling events over the past few years include the painting of swastikas in university buildings, the Star of David depicted as akin to a swastika, a statement (by a speaker repeatedly invited by the Muslim Student Union) that the Zionist Jew is a party of satan, a statement by another MSU speaker that the Holocaust was God's will, the tearing down of posters placed by the student group Anteaters for Israel, and the hacking of their web site. Some community members, students, and faculty indeed feel intimidated, and at times even unsafe.

The Muslim Student Union (MSU) typically receives approximately $6,500 from student fees to host their annual Anti-Semitism Week on the UC Irvine campus, while students face yearly increases in tuition and fees. Especially shocking is that the university administration does not allow pro-Israel groups to reserve meaningful space on campus to confront MSU’s politically-driven Islamist ideology.