Jew hatred at UC Irvine...

I'm so happy I am not a student these days...

To see a firsthand example of Islamic fundamentalist anti-Semitism, you need look no further than the University of California, Irvine.

The campus’ Muslim Student Union is nationally infamous for their annual anti-Israel week (which they unsuccessfully christen “Palestine Awareness” week) and for the vitriolic anti-Semitic language of some of their speakers. The MSU is the type of organization proud to invite the soft-core porn-drawing, scholar-wannabe Norman Finkelstein, which it did in 2008.

This past May, the MSU’s anti-Israel week was perhaps more gorged with controversy than ever before. A number of campus groups organized in order to petition the co-sponsors of the week-long carnival of misinformation of the nature of the event they had agreed to co-sponsor. As it turned out, many of these campus groups were unaware of the controversial nature of anti-Israel week, as the MSU delegates who pitched it to them failed to objectively and accurately describe it. As a result of the petition, five co-sponsors reneged their participation. In addition, one of the MSU’s scheduled speakers — Gideon Levy, a Jerusalem Post journalist — also canceled his attendance.

The anti-Israel event this year was dispersed over three weeks rather than one, with the second week serving as the main course. The wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing cast of speakers the MSU invited this year featured Reem Salahi, a National Lawyers Guild delegate; Anna Baltzer , a so-called “renowned” humanitarian voice on the Israeli-Arab conflict who has colored Zionism as a “racist movement”; Cynthia McKinney, a Green Party candidate and former member of Congress who was nearly arrested in 2006 for punching an officer at Capitol Hill; and the coup de grace of every anti-Israel week across the Western U.S., Amir Abdel Malik Ali — an Oakland imam who has repeatedly accused Jews of controlling U.S. media, the economy, and perpetrating 9/11.

Reem Salahi hosted an event during the first week exploring Israeli “war crimes” during the Gaza offensive in the beginning of the year, broken down into six sections designed to systematically refute pro-Israel claims (Israel does not target civilians, Israel alerted Palestinian civilians before airstrikes). Salahi force-fed the audience a warped, hobbled logic to reject these claims (civilians died in Gaza as a result of collateral damage, so Israel is targeting them. Salahi only saw one flyer during her trip to Gaza, so Israel didn’t warn civilians about airstrikes).

Anna Baltzer and Cynthia McKinney gave speeches of no notable interest during the second week, aside from the usual “Israel is a criminal state” and “Israel is unjustly perpetuating a holocaust.” McKinney did recount her experience of attempting to sail to Gaza during Operation Cast Lead and expressed outrage as she said her boat was “rammed” by an Israeli warship — an action she for some reason did not predict before she tried to illegally cross a military naval blockade meant to block weapons smuggling.