Being a Jew at UCI

This is a little old, but I wrote a piece for a UCI blog a few months ago. Just some of my thoughts on being Jewish at UCI.

Every day now, we're hearing how extreme right-wing pro-Israel organizations like the Zionist Organization of America are attacking Jewish students at UCI for being involved with the Olive Tree Initiative. They're also adamant in trying to convince us that we're victim of a Nazi-like environment. A lot of these people have experienced such aggression firsthand, so I can see where they're coming from. But these people also only bother to visit our campus when on its worst week of the year, when the Muslim Student Union is out in force. They don't pay attention to the rest of the year, when the campus is relatively quiet. Yet they have the nerve to demand people to cut funding to the UCI Hillel and Jewish Federation because UCI Jewish students are engaging in moderate organizations like OTI. I heard they actually called one of our former shaliachs "anti-Israel." The guy served in the IDF and was probably as Zionist as you can get without forfeiting reason and logic like these people.

It's starting to piss me off because it's revealing more and more how, outside of Israel, it's the extremist camps fueling the controversy over Israel and the Palestinians. If we stick up for Israel at all, the MSU and liberals feels obligated to go out of its way to tell people we're racists supporting apartheid and all that happy shit. If we engage with people who are critical of Israel, not even to the point of anti-Zionism but just genuinely critical, then the more conservative people in the pro-Israel/Jewish community feel obligated to tell everyone we're anti-Israel terrorist sympathizers and all that stupendous tripe.

If both camps would just hold their tongues and respect the fact that not everyone has to think the same way they do, things around here would be a helluva lot more peaceful.