Last month, a group of students at the University of California, Irvine gathered to protest a screening of the film Beneath the Helmet, a documentary about the lives of recruits in the Israeli Defense Forces. Upset about the screening of a film they viewed as propaganda for a foreign military, the students were also protesting the presence of several IDF representatives who were holding a panel discussion at the screening.
That student protest has since become the subject of intense controversy. The school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine is now facing the possibility of being banned from the campus. In addition, a legal representative for some of the students involved in the protest, Tarek Shawky, told The Intercept that the students were informed by the university that their cases have been referred to the district attorney for criminal investigation.
The day after the event, the school’s chancellor released a statement accusing student protestors of “crossing the line of civility.” In his statement, posted on the school website, Chancellor Howard Gillman said that “while this university will protect freedom of speech, that right is not absolute,” adding that the school would examine possible legal and administrative charges against the protestors. News reports cited claims that attendees at the film had been intimidated and blocked from exiting the event.
The protestors at the event represented a wide range of student groups, including Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, and the Black Student Union. Students who spoke with The Intercept denied that anyone had intimidated attendees at the event or blocked access. “We held our protest in a way that reflected university guidelines; we didn’t use amplified sound and we didn’t restrict anyone’s freedom of access to the event,” says Daniel Carnie, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace who took part in the protest.
Contacted for comment, a media relations representative at UC Irvine said that it was normal practice for cases like this to be referred to the district attorney. “It is routine for UC Irvine Police Department, when called upon to investigate an incident on campus, to forward the investigation to the district attorney’s office,” said Cathy Lawhon. “It’s then up to the DA’s office to determine if any charges are warranted.” Lawhon added that the school investigation into banning Students for Justice in Palestine was proceeding separately.
Reached for comment, the Orange County District Attorney stated that they have yet to receive a referral on the case from the school.
The incident is only the latest in which officials at UC Irvine and other major universities around the country have taken harsh measures against pro-Palestinian activists. “There is a really ugly history of targeting student groups advocating for Palestinian issues,” says Liz Jackson, a staff attorney with Palestine Legal, a group that provides legal advice and advocacy to individuals in the U.S. advocating for Palestinian rights. “It suppresses the really important debates about U.S. foreign policy that young people need to be having. Instead of being able to engage freely and voice opinions that challenge the status quo, one side of the debate is just being crushed.”
A report issued last year by Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights documented 152 incidents of free-speech suppression on U.S. campuses in 2014. These incidents have included acts of censorship, threats of legal action, and even accusations of support for terrorism. Citing the threat posed to the First Amendment by such acts, the report added that they were “undermin[ing] the traditional role of universities in promoting the free expression of unpopular ideas and encouraging challenges to the orthodoxies prevalent in official political discourse.”
Threats, punishment, and intimidation are all being routinely used to stifle dissenting viewpoints on Israel-Palestine, says Omar Shakir, a fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights and a co-author of the report. “University officials are erecting bureaucratic actions to make it harder to hold certain events, imposing administrative sanctions and even firing and denying tenure to professors for their views on Israel-Palestine, efforts that collectively represent a grave threat to the First Amendment.”
For instance, Native American studies professor Steven Salaita lost his tenured faculty position at the University of Illinois in 2014 after being accused of incivility in his online comments on Israel-Palestine. After a public legal battle, last year the school settled a lawsuit filed by Salaita for financial compensation.
In the case of UC Irvine, Shakir adds that the university’s charge of “incivility” on the part of protestors is a particularly egregious attempt to stifle protected speech. “Accusations of incivility have always been used by those in power to justify attempts to suppress changes to the status quo,” Shakir says. “The term itself, ‘civility,’ represents coded language that in the past has been used to try and suppress groups deemed ‘uncivilized,’ like Native Americans and African-Americans in the United States. It has no place being used as a basis to silence student activists today.”
Those views were partly echoed by Ari Cohn, a lawyer with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a campus free-speech organization. “If allegations that protestors at UC Irvine disrupted the event are substantiated, that would not be protected speech, as it would impinge on the speech of others attending the event,” Cohn said. He added, however, that “civility in itself cannot be mandated by schools. Incivility plays a fundamental role in much of the social activism on campuses.”
Threats to speech have come not only from university administrations but from law enforcement as well. In 2010, Osama Shabaik was among a group of 11 students at UC Irvine who were arrested after protesting an appearance by then-Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren at the school. Oren’s speaking event came roughly a year after Operation Cast Lead, a three-week Israeli military campaign against the Gaza Strip that killed hundreds of civilians. Intent on making a point about the inappropriate nature of Oren’s appearance following the attack, Shabaik and others organized a protest to disrupt the event.
In an incident that was captured on video, Shabaik and several other students repeatedly stood up in the crowd to interrupt Oren’s speech, chanting slogans against Israeli military abuses during Cast Lead. The students were detained and ejected from the event, something Shabaik says they had expected. But what came next was stunning. The school administration referred the students to the police, filing misdemeanor criminal charges against them for disrupting the event. The charges carried a maximum of one year in prison for each of those who protested.
The following year the case went to court, where Shabaik and nine other students were convicted and sentenced to three years probation.
“The administration was definitely sending a message and implicitly threatening our futures by having us charged as criminals for protesting,” reflects Shabaik today. “A lot of those who were charged were students planning to go on to medical school or law school, and they were worried that having a criminal record would prevent that from happening.”
Shabaik has since gone on to graduate from Harvard Law School, but he is concerned about how his criminal record could affect his future employment prospects. Looking back at the incident, he believes it helped inaugurate a high-level campaign to silence dissent on Israel-Palestine in the United States, which has extended to state legislatures.
Earlier this month, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order that would force public institutions in New York to divest funds from groups supporting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The executive order has been criticized as a form of political blacklisting. Shabaik believes Cuomo’s proposal echoes his own experience, where powerful institutions and public figures have sought to quash dissent on this issue.
“It’s important to understand duality of responses when it comes to free speech. The whole essence of free speech is to challenge power and push back against government repression,” says Shabaik. “The move to stop debate on this issue is now leading to crackdowns at state-funded colleges and universities and even at the state legislature level. People are facing serious threats to their future for speaking out against the status quo.”
In recent years, a movement has grown, mostly on the political right, that charges that free speech is being endangered on American college campuses. The most prominent voices on this issue have been conservative activists like Breitbart journalist Milo Yiannopoulos and Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro. But liberal writers such as Jonathan Chait have also relentlessly fixated on the idea that “political correctness” is stifling free expression among a new generation of students.
Most of these protestations have focused on a specific type of speech: the right to “offend” by speaking against perceived left-wing orthodoxies on race, feminism, and cultural issues. The charges of speech suppression in such cases have generally not been leveled at university administrators or law enforcement, but rather at students who view such speech as offensive. This differs markedly from the Israel-Palestine controversies, where state-funded bureaucracies and government officials have been involved in stifling speech on an issue directly related to American foreign policy.
“It’s important to distinguish between the idea that certain views are not popular on campuses, something that may be worthy of discussion separately, and the phenomenon of public institutions and officials taking direct action to restrict speech about vital aspects of government policy,” says Shakir of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “The core of the First Amendment defends the right to free speech on campuses, and we should all be concerned when McCarthy-esque tactics are being used by those in positions of power to silence debate on issues of global importance.”
Shows you who our true masters are. This is why I call it the US/Zionist empire.
Hacks like Milo won’t recognize this type of blatant censorship and attack on free speech because it goes against his insane narrative that the west is “coddling muslims.” It’s more like coddling Israel. What other country has the US proposed 40 billion dollars of aid to? What other country does every major presidential candidate pledged their loyalty and commitment to? I swear it’s like most politicians in this country care more about Israel than they do the United States.
“I swear it’s like most politicians in this country care more about Israel than they do the United States.”
Based on their voting records, most do.
And once again an arab shows that he is kinda behind the times forgetting that everything is recorded. http://thetab.com/us/uc-irvine/2016/05/19/police-called-anti-israel-protest-campus-last-night-558
Note the signs that fuck… and the ones that want to get rid of the state of israel. Which of course remains part of the stated intent of Palistinians in their declaration of incorporation. Murtza, if you like Palistine so much then move there.
Here’s a video of the protest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9n8Pn0x8iaM
From the video, and other recent protesting events that these groups have participated in, I can imagine it’s possible that the protestors “crossed the line of civility” and that people felt intimidated from participating in the event. And I don’t think the word “civility” here has anything to do with coded the language of ‘being uncivilized.’ It means protest, but don’t block people and intimidate them from going where they want.
Furthermore, I think it interesting the author tied conservatives Milo Yiannopoulos and Ben Shapiro in with these groups – like they are fighting the same fight. The protestors aren’t being discriminated against because of their ideas – it’s their methods that are being rejected. Yiannopoulos and Shapiro, on the other hand, are discriminated against because of their unpopular and offensive ideas. Since both of these men have dealt with the same methods of protesting at their events e.g. blocking access to their events(CSU-LA), protestors occupying the event stage(DePaul), and shouting down the event speakers(most events); I’m pretty sure neither of them are going to identify with the protestors’ cause.
I watched your video. What was uncivilized about it? They were standing still and chanting. Stop trolling.
So according to an article in the Jewish magazine called Forward,
“A new website is publicizing the identities of pro-Palestinian student activists to prevent them from getting jobs after they graduate from college. But the website is keeping its own backers’ identity a secret.
“It is your duty to ensure that today’s radicals are not tomorrow’s employees,” a female narrator intones in a slick video posted to the website’s YouTube account.”
Oh, forgive me…,I must have missed the clause in either our Constitution or Bill of Rights which stated Jewish sensitivities and/or Israeli expediency automatically trumps ‘Free Speech,’ the right to ‘Peaceful Assembly,’ to ‘Petition our Government’ for grievances, et al.
Wow, I’m glad that I’m not studying at UC Irvine! Once upon a time, while in the last stage of high school, I’d hold up potential colleges to study at to criteria like location, costs of living, entertainment, etc., but now I’d add a new criterion, namely “does this college support Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton or the suppression of free expression?”
One thing that this whole fiasco shows us: that an increasing amount of Americans from different walks of life are rebelling against the capitalist establishment in the name of democracy, freedom and inequality. It really bolsters my faith in the American people and in the rest of the world, that’s also waking up.
One has to be careful not to cross paths with the far right-wingers who think that freedom of speech means freedom of hate-speech, and demand to be free to promote ignorance, sexism, racism, obscenity and other lies and bigotry. The constitution doesn’t protect people who encourage violence, disseminate libel and slander, or else try to encourage people to discriminate others based on physical appearance, nationality, religion, etc.
There is a difference between preventing a social-democrat, a liberalist or a conservative from expressing their opinion, and preventing a fascist, neo-nazi or bigot from voicing theirs. The first case involves political censorship, because it deliberately censors people because their opinions do not fit the state agenda — and this is obviously anti-democratic; the second involves moral censorship, because it suppresses dangerous hate-speech because it hurts society — and this obviously democratic, because it is in the best interest of society to put a muzzle on bigots and nazis.
Right now, we are living in a society that allows or even officially exerts political censorship, while moral censorship falls onto the wayside. Case in point:
A film promoting the IDF, telling blatant lies about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is endorsed without restriction, even though it is decidedly pro-war and encourages discrimination based on nationality and religion. This is because Israel is important in the grand scheme of global capitalism.
But students who criticize the IDF are threatened, intimidated and vilified because they stand on human rights and are decidedly against war and discrimination, and in the grand scheme of global capitalism, democrats and human rights activitists, as well as pacifists and anti-bigots, are not only unprofitable, but hurt the grand agenda.
Happy will be the day when students won’t have to form such groups and take the time and effort to stage such rallies because propaganda films like this one simply won’t be shown anymore and the US government stops listening to bankers and investors and stops endorsing glorified criminals and war-mongers.
This is just insane …
Wondering if you could take a look at this,
Sent chills down spine
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-lawfare-group-plans-massive-punishments-activists
“Why are we using the word Palestinian? There’s no such thing as a Palestinian person,” Brooke Goldstein declared to enthusiastic applause at a meeting of key Israel lobby operatives in New York earlier this month.
Goldstein is the director of the Lawfare Project, a legal group that aims, in her words, to “make the enemy pay” – that “enemy” being mainly comprised of Palestine solidarity activists and students.
The Lawfare Project was founded with the support of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, an important forum for anti-Palestinian organizing in the US.
The clip of Goldstein denying outright the existence of Palestinians can be seen above.
At the event, she and other Israel lobby leaders revealed their latest strategies to try to defeat the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.
A 58-minute edited video of the event was originally published on YouTube by the Jewish Broadcasting Service on 16 June, but was hidden a day after supporters of Palestinian rights began to circulate it on social media, drawing attention to Goldstein’s negation of Palestinian existence.
The Electronic Intifada is republishing the whole video under the Fair Use doctrine of the US Copyright Act:
In her presentation, Goldstein acknowledged that efforts to promote Israel as a democracy with “great beaches” had failed to stem the support for Palestinian rights, so “we have to focus on the offense, on Islamists and how they violate the basic civil rights that liberals hold very, very dear.”
Efforts to exploit and promote Islamophobiaas a way to build support for Israel are not new, but the New York meeting heralded a renewed push in that direction.
Following the advice of pro-Israel pollster Frank Luntz to appropriate leftist and human rights language, Goldstein said the anti-Muslim message would appeal to the sensibilities of liberal and progressive college students.
She argued that pro-Israel advocates had to speak about the BDS movement “in the terminology that Millennials will understand, which is the civil rights terminology.”
“[Students] want to be against apartheid? Let’s give them what to be against,” she said, “Let’s give them [sic] to be against Islamist gender, race and religious apartheid that is occurring in every single Muslim-majority country on the planet.”
As its contribution, Goldstein explained that her organization would be launching what she called “Islamist Apartheid Week” on campuses across the US, an apparent effort to counter Israeli Apartheid Week.
And while Goldstein markets herself as a “human rights attorney,” she proudly touts her friendship with Geert Wilders, the anti-Muslim Dutch politician who has been fundedby a key player in the US Islamophobia industry.
Wilders’ anti-Muslim agenda is so extreme it has even been condemned by the Anti-Defamation League, a major pro-Israel group.
“Cancer”
Goldstein was speaking at an event on 2 June titled “BDS: The new anti-Semitism?”
Organized by the World Zionist Organization, the American Zionist Movement and the UJA-Federation of New York, it was addressed by Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon.
It came just days after Israel’s major anti-BDS conference held at UN headquarters.
Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice-president of the Conference of Presidents, told the meeting that the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement was like a deadly disease.
“We let this cancer metastasize until now on campuses across the United States,” Hoenlein said.
He claimed that the BDS movement for Palestinian freedom, justice and equality was indistinguishable from the persecutions Jews had faced throughout history.
“This started when the Romans changed the name of Judea to Philistia,” Hoenlein asserted in a bizarre appeal to ancient history and myth, “that was the beginning of BDS.”
But he was clear that the purpose of the New York gathering was to create a movement “that uses all of our resources, all of our energies” in order to “put an end to this threat.”
Hoenlein said that pro-Israel activists need to reach youth who “communicate in 140 letters,” an apparent reference to the social media site Twitter.
Overlooking the fact that this is the most diverse and integrated generation of American college students ever, Hoenlein went on to insult the intelligence of the very youth he wants Israel to connect with. “This is an ignorant generation, a superficial generation,” Hoenlein said.
Attacking students
The Lawfare Project’s Brooke Goldstein also indicated that her legal group was preparing another Title VI challenge against US universities, naming San Francisco State University and the University of California, Irvine, as likely targets.
In recent years, pro-Israel groups lodged complaints against several universities under Title VI of the US Civil Rights Act, alleging that administrators were failing to protect Jewish students from a hostile environment created by Palestine solidarity activists.
But these complaints were thrown out by investigators from the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.
Goldstein’s revelation casts the latest attacks by pro-Israel groups on Palestine solidarity activists at UC Irvine and San Francisco State University in a new light.
Goldstein said her group was encouraging Jewish students on those campuses to file police complaints against Palestine solidarity activists, “so we can pressure the [district attorney] to bring criminal charges against those students, just like was done with Michael Oren’s speech.”
She was referring to the Irvine 11 case, in which 10 students faced criminal charges for protesting a 2010 speech at UC Irvine by Orenwhen he was the Israeli ambassador to the US.
These cases would also presumably be used as the pretext for the Title VI complaints.
Goldstein also used the New York gathering to argue that contrary to the unanimous opinion of the international community, Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are not illegal and that the EU was violating international law by requiring that products manufactured in Israeli settlements have accurate labels indicating their origin.
In warlike language, Israeli ambassador Danon told the gathering that their efforts to suppress support for Palestinian rights had the full support of the Israeli state.
“We will stand against our enemies. We will stand against the people who are going to boycott Israel, and we will win,” Danon said.
The violent and dehumanizing language was echoed by Yuval Abrams, a student and activist against the Palestine solidarity movement at the CUNY Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
“We need to raise the stakes for those who engage in this sort of behavior, let them know their nose is going to bleed,” Abrams said in reference to fellow students who had advocated for a boycott of Israeli institutions complicit in military occupation and violations of Palestinian rights.
While speakers asserted several times that advocates should share positive messages about Israel and Zionism, Goldstein was frank that only repression of protest and BDS would shore up Israel’s eroding base of support.
“The goal is to make the enemy pay,” Goldstein said, “and to send a message, a deterrent message, that similar actions such as those that they engage in will result in massive punishments.”
“Incivility” = “Uppity”.
Not even code
Nothing unusual here, just the expected Jewish attempt to suppress any criticism of Israel. There is very little freedom of speech left in the U.S. since all the major print and electronic media are ardent supporters of Israel. I don’t know anything about chancellor Howard Gillman, but it would be a good thing if he were put under the spotlight. He is quite evidently intimidated by by the numerous organizations and groups supportive of Israel and its brutalization and murder of Palestinians. The Israeli army is well trained, but their only opponent is disorganized groups of Palestinian protested armed only with rocks and occasionally knives. Their dominance is so overwhelming that many Israeli soldiers have come to believe their own propaganda. From my point of view (I am neither Jewish nor Arab nor Moslem), which I think and hope is objective, the Israeli army consists of both loyal Israeli soldiers as well as brutish, cruel, bullies like the one that put a child with a broken arm in a choke hold. I wrote at the time that I was sure that his family was extremely proud of his courage in confronting children and rock throwers. How brave they must think he is! Did he receive a medal for his lone defeat of a child with a broken arm? Well, I want to assure him that his actions on that day are not forgotten and will not be forgotten. He may be incapable of having a conscience, but perhaps someday he will come face to face with an adult, with no broken limbs. I pray so.
Nothing unusual here, just the expected pro-Palestinian attempt to suppress any support of Israel. There is very little freedom of speech left in the U.S. since any group can harass, disrupt and assault a peaceful gathering of another group. I don’t know anything about the leaders of SJP at UC Irvine, but it would be a good thing if they were put under the spotlight. They are quite evidently intimidating the numerous organizations and groups supportive of Israel and support the brutalization and murder of Israelis. The Israeli army is well trained, but their only opponent is disorganized groups of terrorists armed only with rocks and, knives, axes, vehicles and occasionally guns and bombs. Their dominance is so overwhelming that many Israeli soldiers have come to believe they actually deserve their own homeland, after 2000 years of persecution. From my point of view (as someone who lives in the region, has served in the IDF, goes to peace rallies and activities and actually has a basic understanding of the conflict), which I think and hope is objective, the Israeli army consists of both loyal Israeli soldiers as well as brutish, cruel, bullies, just like any large conscript army, and no child should be made to confront soldiers, especially not with a broken arm. I wrote at the time that I was sure that his family was extremely proud of his courage in throwing stones at soldiers. How brave they must think he is! Did they receive a medal for his lone defeat of Israeli soldiers, using nothing but stones and a battalion of photographers? Well, I want to assure them that their actions on that day are not forgotten and will not be forgotten. They may be incapable of having a conscience, but perhaps someday they will learn to love their children as much as they hate the Israelis.
” and no child should be made to confront soldiers,”
“They may be incapable of having a conscience, but perhaps someday they will learn to love their children as much as they hate the Israelis.”
You’re just parroting Golda Meir.
I understand the goal of hasbara is to indoctrinate people to believe the IDF is only defending itself …
When the IDF head Rabbi states, “1000 Arabs are not worth a Jew’s fingernail”, we understand that to mean killing all Arabs is probably OK with him.
now, about that idea of genocide the Israelis seem to want to practice …
I’m transferring there in a couple months. welp
So, imagine if you were a university student, Westboro Baptist was invited to give a speech, and you were:
Not permitted to attend and ‘disrupt’ the presentation by talking about Turing and other persecuted or murdered LGBTQ people.
Not permitted to fly the rainbow flag outside your window.
Attempts to get your university to not give money, directly or indirectly, to Westboro were called discrimination, vetoed if approved by the student council, and criminalized.
Would you feel that there was free speech on campus?
Free speech advocates are only objecting to your first action and would vigorously defend your right to perform the other two.
Seconded.
The people objecting to the interruption of propaganda and hate mongering with truth are ‘free speech activists’ the way the NRA are concerned about preventing crime. Or Donald Trump is a truth teller. In other words, only the ignorant or the paid think they are, everyone else sees them as the equivalent of con artists pretending to be trustworthy folks who care.
Free speech is about nothing but letting the ideas you disagree with be heard. It means nothing else. No one is going to disrupt or silence speech they agree with, so what else could it mean? Your fallacies (“propaganda and hate mongering”) are another person’s truths. That’s why we debate. That’s why we have free speech, so everyone can participate in the public debate. We either allow all speech to be heard, regardless of content – with a very few narrow exceptions such as inciting immediate violence – or we do not have freedom of speech. It’s really that simple.
Actually, free speech is about giving people the ability to challenge ‘official truths’ and ‘what everybody knows’ with facts, reason, and logic RIGHT IN THE PLACES where those lies are being peddled. Insisting that the well funded, the well connected, propagandists (or PR presentations) must be allowed to go unchallenged, except for in the tiny spaces on the fringe, isn’t free speech, it’s managed speech. The sort of managed speech that says banning protesters/opposition from the area around a Presidential motorcade and appearance, or from all the Olympic venues and area, but letting them have a ‘democracy/protest zone’ that no one can see is free speech.
If you’ve paid to see a movie, a concert, a show or a lecture & you are prevented by doing so by a protester, not only should that protester be arrested, but that protester should have to reimburse you for the money you spent.
“but that protester should have to reimburse you for the money you spent.”
OK, we get that you deserve your pound of flesh, at the expense of our constitution.
Freedom of speech means they have just as much of a right to say and do what they want as you do. If they go somewhere to see a perfectly legal movie or attend a perfectly legal gathering and you decide your viewpoints run counter to theirs why do you have the right to give THEM no right to congregate and express their viewpoints among themselves? They’re not foisting theirs upon you in the case of Jack Green’s example — you’re foisting YOURS upon them when all they wanted to do was exercise THEIR rights to free speech and freedom to congregate. I’m not sure I agree about arresting but you ARE depriving those people of something and some sort of reparation seems in order.
Interrupting a propaganda session on a public campus is the very definition of free speech. That a bunch of murdering storm-troopers received a less than friendly response speaks to the humanity of the protesters.
Only Israel gets the ultra-special exemption to ban specific speech critical of Israeli crimes against humanity.
“Interrupting a propaganda session on a public campus is the very definition of free speech.”
No, it is the very definition of the suppression of free speech.
If there is a Q & A opportunity, then yes, get up and speak. If not, shut up and don’t disrupt. If however, you choose to attend, with an eye to speaking against the “propaganda” — that is, what you consider to be propaganda — then do so civilly — a sign or T-shirt unveiled, a silent protest, standing w/back turned, etc — and expect to be escorted out. No one has the right to shout over, shout down, or otherwise diminish another person’s exercise of free speech (not even “hate speech”, a bogus concept in my view). If one wishes to vigorously protest, the way to do it is outside the venue, where a group of any size may gather and be as noisy and demonstrative as they wish.
Shutting down someone else’s event,…. no, that’s not right.
YMMV.
“No, it is the very definition of the suppression of free speech.
… Shutting down someone else’s event, …”
You do not understand the concept of Civil Disobedience.
The event was not shut down.
You are an apologist for IDF butchers.
Why do you side with a murderous theological state?
Hasbara often?
I’ve always found it incredibly curious that much CIA recruiting occurs on campus (often via professors). Equally odd is that almost all speech on campuses can be seen as espousing some viewpoint or another. I’d personally prefer NO religious organizations or NO political organizations sponsored by university/college but given how everybody brings their biases with them to everything, that’s just not possible because everything is potentially in favor of one thing or another thing. So basically it becomes ‘I want to accept this as free speech but not that’ which I find quite disturbing. Heck, our own history books, textbooks and classes are propaganda also. I’d very happily be willing to ouster those as being propagandist crap. But do you see where I’m going with this? At some point the only subjects we’d be able to teach or learn at any school is…. mathematics, maybe. And even that could be said to be political (look at the origins of ‘algebra’…). It’s all about what people want to see or think. So we have to permit all speech that’s not directly libelous to an individual, or else we have to permit none. I can’t see how one can have either. So we need all free speech. Period. Even if you don’t agree with it. In this case I personally don’t but that’s my right. Just like that’s theirs.
I’d posit holding an OPPOSING gathering, contacting the press, and protesting OUTSIDE of that gathering and via methods such as leafletting, direct community action and interaction with the school administration, petitions, are all free speech. Violating someone else’s free speech so you can have yours is not. Just like blocking someone from getting an abortion, bombing an abortion clinic, threatening employees at a Planned Parenthood, or whatever, is violating their legal rights. Having an opinion is your right. But so is it other peoples’ rights to have their own. It’s important to try to find a way for EVERYBODY to be able to express their views and partake of their constitutional rights while not VIOLATING other peoples’. And very very difficult.
“It’s important to try to find a way for EVERYBODY to be able to express their views and partake of their constitutional rights while not VIOLATING other peoples’. ”
You still do not understand Civil Disobedience.
Israel is asserting itself in America and American’s are right to disrupt meetings held to glorify Foreign Troops who shoot prostrate Palestinians as a matter of course.
Your hasbara “can’t we all get along by not picking on us” wears thin every time.
The IDF is the muscle for on-going Israeli land theft and routine civilian butchery. Why do you defend that?
IMHO, you’re not talking about Civil Disobedience though. You’re talking about Free Speech, which EVERYBODY has a right to under the First Amendment. Whether you like it or not. Civil disobedience — like protesting police — is something completely different. There was nothing ‘official’ about this. And that’s an important distinction. By all means if you dislike the stance of American politics when it comes to Israel/Palestine or whatever else, march the hell on Washington, get out there and say so, do something about it. But don’t shut down other peoples’ rights in the process.
I wasn’t saying people should get along and I absolutely wasn’t taking one side over another, but that’s what free speech *is*: I may not like what someone has to say, but I will fight to the death for someone’s right to express it in a non-violent manner. Just like I’d fight to the death for your right to protest OUTSIDE of their gathering or even go inside in an orderly fashion wearing tshirts, or asking questions at a q&a. Notably, by the way, it’s illegal to wear a political tshirt inside of a polling station. Which to me is (ironically) civil disobedience. So I wouldn’t say we have the rights we think we have, even there.
The definition of free speech is EVERYBODY gets to have it. That doesn’t mean people also have the right to beat people up, shout over people, kill them, or harass them.
I respect your opinions here. Because here you are indeed practicing free speech. But so am I — and yet you’re trying to shut me down without even listening to my (nor Jeffrey Davis’s) thoughts on free speech. Kind of ironic. I wish you peace.
Oops. Mucked up this: “So we have to permit all speech that’s not directly libelous to an individual, or else we have to permit none. I can’t see how one can have it any other way. Either we all get free speech or nobody does. So we all need free speech. Period.”
(In this particular case I’d be more concerned about it being on campus and thus semi-subsidized but to try to prevent that would be to obliterate most on-campus activities. Biased? Yes. But you can’t force people to have diverse views — just like they aren’t forcing anybody to attend or listen).
Welcome to the prism of our new American society. If its what Israel wants their activists and agents declare it legal. If Israel doesn’t like it, it is illegal and objectors will be threatened, intimidated, blacklisted, and (hopefully)imprisoned. Its so simple there will no longer be a need to interpret the burdensome American Constitution. Just repeat after me: Ask not what you’re country can do for you, ask what you can do for the country of Israel.
The approximately 10 people in the audience at the screening…felt threatened enough by the protest to call police…The police arrived and, at the conclusion of the event, escorted attendees to their cars.
http://www.jewishjournal.com/los_angeles/article/a_re_screening_of_beneath_the_helmet_at_uc_irvine_in_wake_of_protests
An angry anti-Israel mob at the University of California at Irvine chased a Jewish student into a building while chanting anti-Semitic epithets after she tried to attend a campus screening of an Israeli documentary last Wednesday, the Observer reported.
Second-year Eliana Kopley was attempting to enter the showing of the Israeli documentary “Beneath the Helmet” about the IDF when a crowd of protesters physically obstructed her and chased her into an adjacent building.
The angry mob proceeded to pound intimidatingly on the windows and doors while shouting “Long live the Intifada!” and “F**k Israel!”
Kopley called the police, who escorted her safely into the film screening amidst the angry rhetoric of the activists. In spite of arriving safely to the event, Kopley was overwhelmed by the trauma of the incident and became emotional.
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2016/05/university-of-california-irvine-angry-mob-screaming-fk-israel-long-live-the-intifada-chases-jewish-student
“www.jihadwatch.org” lol! I can’t wait for the Sunday edition of “jihadwatch,” hopefully they have coupons for hasbara hamburgers and freedom fries.
We Americans are all too familiar with your hasbara fear mongering. I mean its how Israel got us to fight perpetual wars in the Middle East on its behalf, its why we will have over $40 billion dollars, to fund genocide, confiscated, through forced taxation, from our paychecks, which we desperately need for our roads and schools. Its why run up huge federal deficits to fund military operation that threaten to destroy the dollar, or bankrupt our country. Its why Israeli loyalists in America are buying out our politicians so they can commit treason against the United States of America by trashing our constitution. Next time you can you can just post links to the talking points written by your Prime Minister, that is if he isn’t busy with AIPAC, undermining the President of our country.
This is awful. They have a constitutional right to block the movement of people into or out of an event they don’t like. See First Amendment, U.S. Constitution.
Jonah and his hasbara shtick …
Which side respects the golden rule?
He who has the gold, rules.
If one sends money to Palestine, you are sent to jail.
If one sends medical supplies to Palestine, you are murdered by IDF storm-troopers.
If one sends money to Israel, one receives a federal tax deduction.
Yes, federal tax dollars are diverted at every chance; diverted to Israel.
AIPAC was started by Haim Saban, Hillary’s Israel-First! billionaire.
It’s game over.
Every American (and possible everyone in the so-called “free” world) should know by now that they are permitted to critise or condemn any other nation, even the US – EXCEPT ISRAEL.
It is not a surprise that the University of California system suppresses anti-Zionist protests. DiFi’s hubby, Richard Blum, sits as a director on the Board of Regents, making sure that Israel comes first.
But, if the individuals are engaging in criminal conduct – that is, blocking the movement of other individuals, or preventing the screening of a movie – isn’t the failure to keep this from happening an infringement of the freedom of speech. C’mon? It’s okay that you have a political point of view, but it seems like it is clouding your ability to objectively report on this incident. I so wish the Intercept would raise their journalistic standards, as the topics they pursue are vital to our democracy, but too often the “journalists” bring a very biased point-of-view that makes it difficult to discern actual facts
blocking in this situation is not criminal, under the defense of “necessity”. Any means necessary to cut off Israel propaganda is legal.
Maybe if they’d called it “Under the Miznefet” – the helmet cover that makes IDF troopers look like friendly muffins – (and harder targets for the Palestinian ‘army’ to snipe) the whole thing would have gone over better.
Fuck Israel and fuck all the Jews. Now that I said that what the fuck is anyone going to do about it? Nothing…that’s what. Fuck Israel,Fuck Israel, Fuck Israel. See how nicely it just rolls off the tongue?
Welcome to Occupied America. Had enuff of these handful of people loyal to a foreign nation taking away our rights as Americans? About time we did something?
And what is a foreign army doing on US campuses anyway?? Why do administrators allow such a thing? These brave IDF guys should stay home and beat up children which is what they are trained for. What a nightmare Israel is for this country! Let’s get them out of this country for good. Let’s register AIPAC as a foreign agent finally. No more of this foreign country writing legislation for America! Run these liars and cons out of the US for good.
The interesting thing is that all this blowback from the well-funded Zionist gangsters is actually creating a lot of publicity for Palestine, making more people aware of the reality of Israel both in the ME and in our country.
Free speech is not qualified by good manners, no matter what the UC officials think. It is protected. There is nothing about “civility” in the Bill of Rights.
This is so horrifying.
And it seems like a test case for further suppression.
Worry.
free speech is ok unless you criticize Israel. and I would suspect that the biggest downers came from the Jewish community.
I can’t read this story. But with Bill Maher complaining about the PC police’s vigor on college campuses, it’s depressing to hear that the establishment is behind a PC kind of push also.
This is SHOCKING – in 2016. (Hey, TI – thank you for crossing your zeros.)
Yep, sure as shit, a nation run by a criminal class…
These accusations about intimidation or blocking access are never accompanied by evidence.
If it had happened, in the age of cell phones, someone would have recorded it.
Perhaps that is why no referral to the DA has been made?
Now, isn’t making false accusations a crime?
I should clarify…
Knowingly making a false referral or filing false charges… not false accusations generally.
At the very least, it calls the integrity of Chancellor Gillman into question.
Of course, if they’d been rapists, their crime would have been quietly handled and erased. Protesting Zionism is NOT a crime.
Speaking of free speech, this would likely have also been the legal result in the U.S., and not just because of the UK’s speech-chilling defamation laws: Michael Fallon pays damages to imam at centre of Sadiq Khan storm
I wonder how Chancellor Howard Gillman would respond to a group of neo-Nazi student activists screening “Triumph of the Will” (the 1935 Nazi propaganda film by Leni Riefenstahl?
Would he have Jewish students protesting the film arrested and given misdemeanor criminal charges for disrupting the event? If not, why not?
Because they are Jewish and because AIPAC and their ilk will not stop at smearing anyone who is Pro- Palestinian. They want to control the narrative of the world, idiots that they are.
Freedom of speech is most important when the “government” tries to suppress it. When there are no conflicts it doesn’t matter. Freedom of speech is for exactly those times when strong diagreement arises from powerful forces actions. However it is when issues involving war and death and corruption etc. appear they slam the door. The espionage act is the best evidence
about this. The dissent about the run up to WW1 and the draft for soldiers to fight it was ended as the dissenters were jailed. this included presidential candidates.
Hey everybody, remember who is the president of the whole UC system?
Janet Napolitano.
The one and the same, the former head of Homeland Security. That’s right, they made her the head of one of the most highly regarded university systems in America.
Besides enforcing creative new definitions of anti-semitism and sending former alums a lot of fundraising emails (ha!), Napolitano also is behind this little item, which might interest Intercept readers in particular:
http://utotherescue.blogspot.nl/2016/01/ucop-ordered-spyware-installed-on-uc.html
She controls Cuomo, too?
Did you mean “highly regarded” or highly retarded”?
I laughed.
I’ll go out on a limb and say the UCs are better regarded than The Department of Homeland Security.
crossing the line of civility. INCIVILITY?
Last i checked, committing murder genocide and land theft was entire uncivil. Adolf might not have thought so but certainly his victims did.
BDS. I guess that’s uncivil too. So would then contributing to the prosperity of those who murder. At least that’s what the anti-abortionists say.
BDS !
The right to speak and the right to be heard are very different things. No-one prevented Oren speaking. They just spoke too: a brief, symbolic interruption to his otherwise massive power to propagandize. Protesters, on the other hand, are not being drowned out or ignored, but actively gagged.
We have 5 kids, 3 of whom will be heading to college in the next 3 years. All of them have expressed a desire take part in the BDS campaign and instead of attending UC Irvine, will be boycotting the university and heading off to colleges elsewhere that believes in the 1st amendment. Further, they are all actively corresponding with their classmates and overwhelmingly, they are on the same page. That boils down to a net loss for UC Irving of $31,595 per year per student. With all three of our children boycotting UC Irving, that tallies up to total loss for all three for four years to $379,140 plus the loss of campus expenses. And then you can add in the many friends of theirs that will be boycotting UC Irving. Your loss, and well deserved, UC Irvine.
I highly doubt any of your children were actually gonna go there. Judging by you not even knowing the name of the school. UC Irving does not exist. I get what you’re saying though.
Apparently you didn’t read the second line in Jay’s post-eh?
@jay –
I applaud the commitment of your children, family, and your children’s classmates. That kind of commitment is what is needed to stand up for our rights.
Best of luck to the future college students.
I wonder if any DemocRATs read The Intercept. If so, are they aware that there presumptive fascist candidate, H. R. Clinton, is behind all of these fascistic moves to suppress Free Speech?
Clinton’s relationship with the Amendments is “complex”. She’ll come out as against the first to protect Israeli apartheid and genocide (I’m already boycotting Israeli products, including sesame tahini, which is painful as I like it so much). She’d like to tighten up the interpretation of the 2nd Amendment here in the US, and many of us would agree, but overseas, she pushed sales of the Remington M-16 onto foreign countries that use the ammunition on their student protesters and other PEOPLE who would like to live in democracies, but US arms are helping prevent that.
As she condemned Edward Snowden, she is no fan of the 4th Amendment, and maybe the 5th, except I expect her to be giving the 5th Amendment a workout in the next few months if the corrupt Obama tries to bury the FBI Clinton email findings, associated money laundering, influence peddling and corruption, as people expect he will. Oh, also mishandling classified information and other violations of the Espionage Act.
Remember Nixon, Obama? You too can take a last ride off the WH lawn in a helicopter, to political exile.
Are you aware that trump is just as servile a flunky for Israel as hillary?
JERUSALEM POST: Trump & Israel – closer than one might think
And as for trump respecting human rights, he manufactures his “clothing line” in those bastions of human rights, China and Mexico.
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Trump-and-Israel-Closer-than-one-might-think-454328
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/420443/donald-trumps-explanation-why-he-blasts-china-makes-his-ties-there-halfway-decent
ask ward churchill about academic freedom of speech,
In search of Ward Churchill from CP… a quote from the article
link here: http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/01/31/in-search-of-ward-churchill/
I know it’s not a proclamation of the Donald but it was effective:
As for those in the World Trade Center… Well, really, let’s get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America’s global financial empire – the “mighty engine of profit” to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved – and they did so both willingly and knowingly. Recourse to “ignorance” – a derivative, after all, of the word “ignore” – counts as less than an excuse among this relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in – and in many cases excelling at – it was because of their absolute refusal to see. More likely, it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I’d really be interested in hearing about it.[5]
JF: I notice you made no mention of public speaking. You used to do quite a lot of it, as I recall. Do you still?
WC: Nowhere near as much as I was doing prior to 2005. That, in part, is because I’ve been administratively blacklisted on campuses nationwide. There’ve been a fair number of instances in which I’ve been lined up by faculty and/or students to deliver a lecture and college or university presidents have directly intervened to prevent the event from happening. In a few cases, the organizers took such abridgments of their own intellectual rights seriously enough to force the issue and staged the events anyway, but usually not. The meekness with which tenured faculty members have typically submitted to administrative dictates in situations like this has been quite enlightening, and speaks volumes to the state of “academic freedom” in the contemporary U.S.
Jonah the Zionist zealot spews more inanity:
Except for Zionists. Who are crushing as if on steroids. McCarthyite blacklisting is a rather recent and odious Zionist weapon. In the U.S. perhaps the premier such project is “Canary Mission.” The Jewish magazine, Tablet, describes the project and it’s site thus:
Part of the purposes is to list pro-Palestinian activists so they can be harassed online. But the more worrisome purpose is that they intend to silence pro-Palestinian student activists and faculty with threats of destroying their careers.
As MintPressNews reported:
Please post that absurd claim again, Jonah. I can post endless examples of the anti-speech antics of Zionists, and will do so every time you do.
Who are you replying to, and to what comment or article or whatnot are you replying to? Who is Jonah?
Okay, never mind, I found the comment below by “Jonah” you were replying to. It’s out of sync or sequence though. Don’t know if the comments board did that, or if you, for whatever reason, did that.
Jonah is a rancid Zionist and anti-Muslim bigot. He actually had the gall to tell Sufi Muslim she was morally obligated to change her religion. Then, he thought he’d exhibited great generosity of spirit by allowing that her Sufism might be ok, and she didn’t have to change after all.
Some of us have taken to making certain replies stand-alone, new posts. And that’s what I did here. I don’t usually do that, tho, unless the sub-thread in which I’m participating is older. Guess it was just a whim this time.
Perhaps the IDF will now start shooting protesters. One may wonder if Hellery Clinton has sworn off doing her sworn duty to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America, her REDACTED VERSION.
I read the story and I was scrolling down wondering, “where are all the usual obfuscators?” And, then I saw Mona referring to Jonah!!
Usually they trash the site with their distortions regularly posted near the top of the comments. It did not take long to get to the part where the usual suspects’ spew their nonsense!
Please!!! Your nonsense and obfuscations does not work here. Go somewhere else, or get a better argument.
Possibly what’s happened is they’ve made the tactical decision that hasbara here is a mistake. All they do is give us fodder to post more documented facts that undermine the Zionist narrative.
One of their hasbara manuals that I’ve read has a separate section for how to handle the better-informed opponent. But I, Doug Salzmann and several others here are exceptionally well informed, and that level of knowledge is simply dangerous to their message.
So, I’ve seen it happen before that Zionists decide to leave us alone, and go do hasbara where we are not around.
I am not going anywhere. I am on the right side of history. You hold water for Islamic Supremacists and excuse the murder of innocent people
Suppression of free speech like this is not just creepy, but also cowardly. Because they can’t actually defend their actions, the conversation is simply not allowed to happen.
“Suppression of free speech like this”
exactly! the students were exercising their freedom of speech! just to make it clear consider this analogy: imagine you’re walking down the sidewalk and someone decides to block your path. you try to walk around him but he moves to remain in front of you. has your freedom of movement been violated? of course not! the other person is exercising his freedom of movement. it’s the same with freedom of speech. when someone uses their voice to prevent you from speaking your right hasn’t been violated theirs has been asserted
apologies if this is ridiculously obvious just making sure
Your analogy fails for two reasons:
First, and most crucially, the bulk of the piece is not about accusations that students interfered criminally with anyone’s ability to speak. Rather, it’s about the nation-wide suppression tactics directed at pro-Palestinian speech on campus.
Second, and as emphasized above, the interference with speech is, as I emphasized above, a mere accusation — one denied by multiple students and student groups who were involved. I can and will, if requested, document that Zionist students on campus have more than once made bad faith, absurd complaints about pro-Palestinian activists.
It is beyond reasonable dispute that the single greatest threat to free speech in Western nations at the moment, including in the United States, is the attacks on pro-Palestinian activists.
my analogy doesn’t depend on the article. it’s intended to establish the principle that using speech to disrupt speech is itself an exercise of free speech as the op suggested. i was agreeing with the op and just making an argument for those who might not though it’s hard to imagine how anyone could be so dumb. i suppose we agree below that it’s the right if not duty of every citizen to disrupt any speaker who expresses the wrong views. i’m glad because that’s what’s important
i quoted the part of the op’s comment i was addressing but sequitur or non i’m happy as long as we agree on the principle which apparently we do. btw @ 2:11 in the video the professor harshly reprimands the protesters declaring “this is not an exercise of free speech!” that’s the silliness i’ve been trying to debunk even though almost everyone who visits here probably just laughed when they heard that
The op absolutely does not suggest that using speech to disrupt speech is considered free speech; in fact it suggests exactly the opposite, and quite clearly.
The article includes a quote from only 1 legal expert on the issue, and that is as follows:
“If allegations that protestors at UC Irvine disrupted the event are substantiated that would not be protected speech, as it would impinge on the speech of others attending the event.”
Additionally, the article also makes clear the notion that the protest was indeed intended to DISRUPT the event, as indicated by the following portion of the article:
“Shabaik and others organized a protest to disrupt the event.”
As such, it is clear that disrupting somebody else’s speech is a crime and that such a disruption was the intent. They did the crime, now they should be held responsible. At this point, it’s just an argument about the extent of enforcing the law, there is no question the law was broken, at least according to the facts presented in this article.
“The op absolutely does not suggest that using speech to disrupt speech is considered free speech; in fact it suggests exactly the opposite, and quite clearly. ”
you’re definitely wrong about that. the op (original poster) in this case is ‘avelna2001′ and it’s s/he i quoted in my reply
Is this sarcasm?
sarcasm is disrespectful and i have nothing but the utmost respect for anyone who takes it upon his or herself to disrupt any speaker who expresses the wrong views. we should all do it. if that means no one gets to speak that’s ok because it’s infinitely more important that bad opinions get suppressed than good ones get expressed. bad opinions can lead directly to violence and death. good ones are generally ignored anyway
Often if people cannot say what they want to say with people who can commiserate with them they won’t stop thinking it, they’ll double-down on it, get angry, and feel stifled and censored. ‘The wrong views’ is a telling phrasing, btw. I think there are some things the majority of us would agree is more or less universally bad (serial killing, rape, etc) — does joking about those make the cut? Or just acting on it? Being able to have one’s own viewpoints, no matter HOW wrongminded (in our minds) and explore those viewpoints isn’t breaking the law. It may be violating what you believe to be your viewpoints but they may consider your viewpoints just as wrongheaded.
If nobody gets to speak, bad things happen. If everybody gets to speak, sometimes bad things happen. And yes, rhetoric (especially in the current always-on internet culture) can incite people — but I can guarantee you that feeling as though your rights are being infringed upon isn’t going to make people agree with you — it’s going to piss them off and be far more likely to ACT on things they probably would have previously just talked about amongst themselves. I suspect it extremizes a lot of people who would have otherwise been more or less satisfied with speaking their minds.
Anyway who gets to say who’s right in your universe? What’s a ‘bad opinion’? What’s a good one? Most of the *really* bad ones are already outlawed. And even those get abused by the powers that be (look at that case of the people who’d posted on twitter or facebook or whatever it was that they were going to NYC to ‘blow it up’ in a party sense and how that got taken out of context). Context matters.
If someone’s standing in the middle of Times Square with a bomb strapped to their chest screaming for you to listen to them… Yeah. Gonna say that’s not exactly first amendment rights. But noone forced anybody to stay or listen. And as far as I know nobody was there recruiting people to go off and shoot Palestinians for sport at the event in question and offering plane tickets.
Like it or not people have the right to have free speech, freedom of thought, even freedom of movement. Without being harassed.
Out of curiosity, do you believe people have the right to burn an American flag? An Israeli one? A Palestinian one? A British one? An Afghani one?
Do you believe that someone with power like a law enforcement officer or something with power like a governmental agency has the right to decide what’s a good opinion or a bad opinion? Was it right to treat MLK Jr the way he was treated? Was it right to treat the Black Panthers? Was it right to treat Trumbo? Would it have been right to treat Hitler this way solely for holding an opinion? Or did the act matter? Some or all of these questions may be trick questions.
“while this university will protect freedom of speech, that right is not absolute,”
Really! I’d be curious to hear what practical experience the chancellor has with protecting and testing the limits of free speech.
My question would be, “What are IDF soldiers doing on a USA college campus”? Are they spreading the word that they belong to the “most moral army” in the world??? Apparently, that is so…..
Published on Mar 27, 2016
Beneath the Helmet (Documentary Film 2014)
Beneath the Helmet: From High School to the Home Front is a coming of age story that highlights five young Israeli high school graduates, who are drafted into the army to defend their country. At the age of 18, away from their houses, family, and friends these young individuals undergo a demanding journey, revealing the core of who they are and who they want to be. From the creators of the PBS-featured documentary film Israel Inside: How a Small Nation Makes a Big Difference, the film Beneath the Helmet illustrates how these young men and women are protecting not only their homes, but the shared values of peace, equality, opportunity, democracy, religious tolerance and women’s rights. The lessons they learn along the way, are lessons that can be adapted, understood and appreciated by everyone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRJgWFFhuAU
Another question….
Would the chancellor have allowed a Chinese documentary or Russian documentary of similar nature to be shown and with soldiers of those countries on the campus?
Supporters of State of Israel and the Israeli govt used UN facilities for their anti-BDS campaign.
All one can say is, not only many of our elected officials but the UN and some university chiefs are gutless…. shame on them.
What’s next? Will I lose my social security benefits if I protest Israel’s treatment of Gazans? Will these student protesters be placed on the terrorist no-fly list and be deprived of their ability to travel and subject to broad surveillance? This is no way, Israel, to win friends and influence people.
Dale Carnegie as i recall. Great American. That book is an American Religion.
In the next couple of weeks, I’ll be standing where the incident that lead to BDS South Africa happened 40 years ago, and later on at a prison that held a notoriously extremist terrorist who would have never gone free if attempts to protest against the ‘Only Democratic state in Africa’ had been deemed racist because that ‘democracy’ was the only White state in Africa, and the only allowed narrative on the campuses of the US were that the incident was a violent act by extremists aimed at destroying the special relationship between the US and the admirable, eternal ally, Afrikaaner state. And, just like someone standing amongst the graves of those who died in the ‘war to end wars’, my tears will be just as much over the knowledge that too many didn’t learn the lesson as it will be for those who fell, or were crippled in the battles.
Why not just throw the students in prison and ruin their lives? How about calling up the police from Davis and they can volunteer their pepper spray techniques on them?
The fact is UC at Irvine is THE RACIST school in California. So if you are a Racist and bigot – just like the faculty, you will love US Irvine!
What does this have anything to do with race? “Palestinian” is a race now? Books, bud.
I think the Palestinians are Semites.
Wow this article sucked. Police say there was intimidation, the students denied it and it’s up to the DA to figure out if anything illegal happened. What is the problem? Why is that injustice?
Police and college-age hippies have been clashing for more than 100 years. This might be a valid piece for the college newspaper where the kids attend but this is by no means national news or news of injustice.
You’re being your usually moronic self. The headline is poor, because the article is not about the referral to the DA’s office per se.
The thrust of the piece is about this nation-wide attempt to “crush” pro-Palestinian speech on campus.
Nobody is crushing speech. You are, however, not allowed to disturb other people’s events. This is what anti-Israel activists do all the time. Both sides should be allowed to host their events without interference. Only one side respects this golden rule
Sure, because the other side prefers to buy US politicians to try and prevent the other’s events from taking place entirely.
free speech is overrated. i’ve never seen the value in allowing people with the wrong views to be heard. who decides which views are wrong? we do. who are we? any group that includes me. if that doesn’t include you fuck off
So are a free press and freedom of religion. We need to let the state have discretion to decide when these things should be allowed.
we want the government to follow the law. who’s we? see above. so it’s up to us to disrupt and shut down speakers who express the wrong views
“Earlier this month, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order that would force public institutions in New York to divest funds from groups supporting the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. ”
AIPAC. People dedicated to a foreign theological state have destroyed the Constitution.
Exhibiting one’s right of Freedom of Speech by shouting while a speaker is presenting in such a way that the speech cannot be delivered is preventing the Freedom of Speech of another.
So this example given in the article “Shabaik and several other students repeatedly stood up in the crowd to interrupt Oren’s speech” needs to be considered for what it is which was that the group did impede the speaker’s Freedom of Speech.
Now, you could argue that the Freedom of Speech does not apply to a foreign figure spouting out propaganda to the detriment of the American public.
Either way, it appears that men like Chancellor Howard Gillman disgracefully miss the point of what education is for, that being for the benefit of the students. How is he looking out for the students when he is putting foreign powers in front of them due to their monetary and political influence gained in a corrupting way to blast out foreign serving propaganda?
How is he benefiting the students by turning them into the police, intimidating them, and finding whatever works for him to punish them?
Men like him need to be retired with no golden parachute to hang out on the porch with the Mr. Wilson’s of the world so Dennis can deservedly drive them crazy.
The protesters expected to be removed for interrupting a propaganda session for jack-booted storm-troopers occupying land illegally.
Storm-troopers who butchered a couple thousand civilians who were considered, “not to be worth a Jew’s fingernail”, as the head Rabbi for the IDF puts it.
I have the right to yell fuck Israel and the protesters in CA do to.
Not in that specific time, place and manner, you don’t.
Then I suppose you agree for exposing the students to that kind of propaganda and then rating out the students that protest to the police we should see that Chancellor Howard Gillman hangs out with grumpy old Mr. Wilson and Dennis for the rest of his days?
Sure. Ok. And when you are trying to watch a screening about the plight of Palestinians, and it is interrupted and you are prevented from watching it by protesters, you’ll be ok with it, right?
No one was “prevented” from doing anything. The speakers were delayed from indoctrinating American students with fascist brutality dispensed by the IDF. The whole point of the event was to legitimize murder.
Actually, I think the point was to provide an inflammatory event, knowing there would be opposition, so the Board could legitimize their attempt to ban BDS in an utterly subversive and unconstitutional manner.
The IDF butchers woman and children with impunity.
It’s bad enough having military recruiters on campus but murderous storm-troopers from a FOREIGN country? Fuck that.
Interrupting a speech does not by itself prevent a speech from being delivered.
Then I suppose you too agree for exposing the students to that kind of propaganda and then rating out the students that protest to the police we should see that Chancellor Howard Gillman hangs out with grumpy old Mr. Wilson and Dennis for the rest of his days?
I only respond to comments written in English.
Thank you for publishing this article! And I hope for the best for those students!
Here’s a list of major companies doing business in Israel:
Notice that most of these corporations are also partners with the despotic regimes of Saudi Arabia and othe Gulf Arab dictatorships such as Bahrain and Qatar, who routinely pay bribes to U.S. politicians in order to facilitate deals with dictatorships. For example, Boeing donated $900,000 to the Clinton Foundation to facilitate a deal with Saudi Arabia (who donated $10 million) when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State:
http://www.ibtimes.com/clinton-foundation-donors-got-weapons-deals-hillary-clintons-state-department-1934187
Law enforcement, lawsuits, academic administrative staff having to navigate a tangled web of constitutional issues while pretending to act in the best interests of students and the public taxpayers who fund these public universities. What a mess! Can’t they just throw all these students on secret government black lists, so they will be banned from boarding planes, buying a gun, attending school to gain an education, ect.? That way when American citizens raises concerns or questions about rights, the people behind this can hide behind the cloak of “National Security” secrecy, while draining the tax payer pool of national security funding. Anyways, thanks American Zionists, y’all are like a gift that keeps on taking.
The managers of UC Irvine are following orders from the US capitol, Jerusalem.
‘To find out who rules you, find out whom you are not allowed to criticise’
-Voltaire, I think.
Land of the Free, my rear end!