by Aaron Elias
I never thought that being a Jew at a school like UCI would affect my college experience, but there it is. By now I’ve learned that people all over the world – some of them very important people - watch UCI for what happens on its campus every Spring.
The tensions between the Jewish and Muslim organizations on campus have annoyed students for years, including me. We all just want to be able to get to class without being harassed or shouted at or hearing angry yelling at the flagpoles on the way; it’s upsetting.
The Muslim clubs on campus in no way speak for all the Muslim students on campus, so when they begin to march on Ring Road shouting slogans supporting terrorist organizations or propagating the destruction of an entire country, it bugs me. On several different levels. I’ve talked to and made friends with non-affiliated Muslims; they are completely lacking in the anger and hostility we see in events put on by the campus Muslim organizations. Their company is a lot more enjoyable, their behavior a lot more appealing.
There are a lot of people – all over the world – who say that UCI is a ’vile cesspool of anti-Semitism.’ Then there are the people who say that Jewish students at UCI face no harassment at all. None of those people have ever actually set foot on UCI’s campus. They have no idea what they’re talking about.
To be honest, I wish the Jewish organizations could host Israel events - public or private – without worrying whether or not they’ll be antagonized by the Muslim organizations. I wish the students of these organizations would be willing to shake our hands instead of giving them a fleeting look of distaste.
Yet this isn’t as bad as it gets on college campuses.
I look at the other cultural clubs, and sometimes I get a little jealous. It would be silly to suggest that there exists an ethnicity that is not subject to some kind of racism. I do wish, though, that the Jewish clubs, like most other cultural clubs on campus, could wave their homeland’s flag on Ring Road or host a public/private event about Israel without having to endure hostility, protesters, or anger from the Muslim organizations. Talking about one’s own homeland should not have to be controversial enough to attract hostility and thereby warrant media coverage.
Still, this isn’t as bad as it gets on campuses.
I wish I didn’t have to know each school year that later in the Spring, I could look forward to seeing the national flag of my people’s homeland torn-up, burned, splashed with red paint, and scuffed with shoe marks. I wish I didn’t have to listen to speakers at the flagpoles try and describe, with bigotry and vitriol veiled so thinly behind political terms and concepts, my people’s homeland as the “Fourth Reich”, my people as those who control the world’s media, money, banks, US foreign policy, and other such garbage. I wish that people who have admitted in front of an outdoors public audience that they hate my friends and I for loving our homeland weren’t given a soapbox to stand on by the school. And I wish it wasn’t these people who champion the Palestinian cause and incorrectly infer, from their rhetoric and attitude, that the Palestinians are just as spiteful and hate-filled as they are.
It gets still worse on college campuses.
It would be great if UCI’s Jewish clubs could host an ambassador or political representative from their homeland and not have to endure another club executing an organized interruption, and subsequently be told by the interrupters’ community they were stifling the interrupters’ free speech when the police removed them. I’d like nothing more than to cease hearing stories about how one of these people approached an Israeli soldier at a US college campus and told him, “If I had a gun, I’d shoot you.” And I’d really like it if news articles about Jewish students at a Toronto college being chased and forced to take refuge in the local Jewish community center by a sign-and-weapon-wielding mob of such students chanting death threats and anti-Semitic slurs was a thing of imagination.
This is about as bad it gets on college campuses.
People 40 years older than me tell me I’m facing Nazi-esque anti-Semitism on campus, and the Chancellor constantly asserts that there is no anti-Semitism on campus just to avoid trouble. One group has been forced to deal with true Nazi anti-Semitism, the other is bogged down with political and legal concerns. Somewhere between those two erroneous statements lies the truth.
So no. Things at UCI for Jewish students are not as bad as some people are making it out to be. They can get bad, but it’s not the whole year round.
I would be overjoyed if these people who hated us so much and create so much divisiveness in the world’s communities would be willing to sit down over a cup of coffee with us and at the very least calmly discuss the Mid-East conflict without yelling at us. I wish they could see that like everyone else, we are more than just one opinion. Most of all, I wish these people, so filled with malice and blind hate, ambitious only for destruction, hadn’t defined my college experience.
