From the beginning of my American education I learned the rights afforded to me by the U.S. Constitution. The first in my family to have these rights by birth I consider myself Palestinian by blood and American by the First Amendment.
On Feb. 8 eight UC Irvine students and three UC Riverside students were arrested for disrupting a UCI-sponsored speech by Michael Oren the Israeli ambassador to the United States.
“Michael Oren propagating murder is not an expression of free speech the first protestor shouted, as quoted by the Los Angeles Times.
The others followed incrementally, standing up and shouting their predetermined phrases and exiting the room without any further resistance. The students, now notoriously referred to as The Eleven were held in another room until Oren finished his speech and left. After 10 of these individual outbursts, a large group of students stood up and exited the speech to convene a protest outside the building.
They were very cooperative they rose they spoke and they began to leave their seats … Because they had been told what would happen if they did this university spokeswoman Cathy Lawhon told the Los Angeles Times.
Why, then, has this demonstration been condemned by the media and UCI officials, rather than applauded for the fine example of student freedom of speech and nonviolent resistance that it is?
Although the results were less than desirable, the efforts of the students to voice their opposition to the University’s decision to host the ambassador of Israel— a country that is the subject of more U.N. Human Rights Council resolutions than any other country in the world — are admirable.
Though the press has framed UCI’s Muslim Student Association (MSU) with much of the blame for the demonstration, the protestors acted of their own accord and did not plan the event with MSU. Beside that point, the lot of the protestors were not exclusively Muslim or Arab, and that is obvious to anyone who was present or watched the numerous videos of the speech on YouTube.
It was never about Muslim or Jewish or Christian anyway. It’s about human lives under unceasing oppression. As for UCI students building an anti-Zionist reputation, since when is Zionism an acceptable norm? The building of an entirely Jewish state and the eradication of all Muslim within it sounds a lot like genocide to me. As a Christian, I like to believe that God does not play favorites and the innocent souls that suffered at Israel’s will are truly accounted for— not just numbers or statistics; not just filthy Arabs without a government to stand for them, without the guarantee of water or the houses they grew up in still belonging to them tomorrow. So much for civilized” ballroom presentations on issues that affect people in slums.
The children who burned under white phosphorus in Gaza are not terrorists and neither are American students who stand up and speak for the voiceless.
Well done UCI students. I apologize that your administration does not share my regards nor does it appear to recognize the value of the First Amendment. Respect is one thing but those students were not interrupting an elementary school assembly— they were adults who acted intelligently and with motive.
I don’t know what it’s like to be in a room with someone I believe to be manipulating others into supporting murder but I imagine I’d find it difficult to remain silent. I wish I were present so I could have been arrested alongside them.
As one faculty member dictated while scolding students at the speech this is in fact not Tehran. It’s not the slums. It’s not the ghetto. It’s not that bloody soil; no. Therein lies the problem. Go on and play politics in the conference rooms but that won’t balm the human suffering actually happening as you read this. To the UCI administration: Once you have witnessed your neighbors murdered lecture away. And Ambassador once you have watched a good man bleed to death in the streets I welcome your “humble opinion” of appropriate protest.
In Oren’s speech he cited that over 80 percent of churchgoers identify as “pro-Israel.” So fellow Christians I am kindly asking you to reevaluate. What would Jesus do? He would not succumb to grimy politicians or turn away the innocent.
Persian-American spoken word poet Anis Mojgani said it best: “This is for the ones who are forgotten. For the ones the amendments do not stand up for. For the ones who are told to speak only when they are spoken to and then are never spoken to. Speak every time you stand so you do not forget yourself.”