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.

Bigoted Professors and Palestinian Murderers, Hypocrisy

A Palestinian went on a rampage with a pickaxe and knife today through a West Bank settlement, ending in the murder of a 13 year-old Jewish teen and the murderer's escape. It seems killing Jewish teenagers with pickaxes is helping end the Israeli "occupation" or bring peace. This just shows that a Palestinian state alongside Israel will only create more problems for the Jewish state.

The hypocrisy of the Palestinian Authority (or any Palestinian authority) knows no bounds. The PA has now issued a death penalty for any Palestinians who sell land to Jews or Israelis, apparently oblivious of the fact that Israeli has given the Palestinians an immense amount of land over the past 60 years and gotten squat in return.

I had an interesting experience two days ago in a "Political Islam" class. The professor, last name Petrovic, which doesn't sound Arab in the least, opened the first lecture of the course with this line:

"Christianity is a religion most authentic in times of suffering. Islam, on the other hand, is a religion of success."

I ran that through my head for five minutes and couldn't find an explanation for it in which he was not trash-talking Christianity and asserting Islamic "superiority". What does Christianity- or any religion besides Islam- have to do with Political Islam? Nothing, certainly not enough to be mention as the first topic of discussion in the class.

Petrovic then went on to call Jesus a "failure" within the first half hour. I promptly packed my papers and left the class. I contacted the School of Social Sciences yesterday and they pointed me to Petrovic's right to free speech.

How many other teachers are spewing this hate speech in their classes, hiding behind the right to free speech the same way flag burners and anti-Westerners living in the US do? How many professors are poisoning the minds of their students with this irrelevant and entirely unnecessary filth, all the while hiding behind its title as "legitimate discourse"?

I expect better from academia. I guess my standards are too high.