The misdemeanor convictions of 10 Muslim students at U.C. Irvine for disrupting a speech by Israel’s U.S. ambassador is leading partisans on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to predict that the fight will play out differently now on college campuses.
“When you talk to students … now they are pondering what is legal and what is not,” said Kifah Shah, spokeswoman of a solidarity group for the convicted students, Stand With the Eleven. “This has a chilling effect.”
In February 2010 at U.C. Irvine, 11 Muslim students stood up one by one and interrupted a speech by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren. He twice walked off the stage as students shouted “Mass murderer!” and “War criminal!” before they were removed from the room by campus police. A planned question-and-answer session following the address was dropped.
Last week, an Orange County jury found 10 of the students guilty of two misdemeanor charges for conspiring to disrupt a meeting and then disrupting the speech. They were sentenced to community service and probation. Charges against the 11th student were dropped last month.
During the trial, prosecutor Dan Wagner described the students as “censors” who utilized the “heckler’s veto.”
Some supporters of Israel express hope that the verdict would make campus protesters think twice before disrupting Israeli speakers, which has become a common tactic of pro-Palestinian activists.
In 2009, hecklers at the University of Chicago repeatedly disrupted a speech by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Last November, activists from Jewish Voice for Peace shouted and unfurled banners during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly in New Orleans. Six months later, a Jewish pro-Palestinian activist yelled at Netanyahu from the visitors’ gallery during his address to Congress.
Most recently, a Sept. 1 performance by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra was interrupted repeatedly by protesters at London’s Royal Albert Hall, forcing the BBC to stop its broadcast of the concert.
At U.C. Irvine, the campus Muslim Student Union, which organized the disruption, was suspended for a year by the school for violating its code of conduct. Four months later the suspension was changed to probation on appeal. A year after Oren’s speech was interrupted, the Orange County district attorney’s office pressed charges against the students involved.
The Orange County Jewish Federation and Family Services issued a statement praising the jury’s verdict.
The protesters’ supporters, however, have accused the prosecutor of trying to suppress political speech.
“It’s a sad day for democracy when nonviolent protestors are criminalized by their government and are found guilty for exercising a constitutional right,” Salam Al-Marayati, president of the Los Angeles–based Muslim Public Affairs Council, said in a statement.
Many Jewish groups say, however, that it is Jewish students whose rights are being trampled on and pro-Israel speakers who have had their free speech curtailed.
“Students felt harassed and intimidated,” said Susan Tuchman, director of the Zionist Organization of America’s Center for Law and Justice. “The hostility was so severe that people feared for their physical safety on the campus.”
Pro-Israel groups responded with a string of new tactics. They pumped money into campus activism, urged university administrators to stand up against anti-Semitism and, in some instances, took legal action.
In May, a Jewish student at U.C. Berkeley, Jessica Felber, filed a lawsuit that accused the university of allowing “a dangerous anti-Semitic climate.”
The 10 convicted Irvine students were sentenced by Superior Court Judge Peter Wilson to 56 hours of community service and three years of probation, though the probation will be reduced to one year if they complete their community service by Jan. 31. Wilson said jail time was not warranted because the students were “motivated by their beliefs and did not disrupt for the sake of disrupting.”
Advocates for the students vow to appeal.
Shalom Elcott, CEO of the Orange County federation, said the campus suspension and now the jury’s conviction yielded only “short-term gains” in quelling a hostile campus atmosphere.
“The only way for long-term gains is through dialogue, as difficult as that is,” he said.
Meanwhile, according to local federation leaders and other Jewish activists, the environment at U.C. Irvine has changed for the better in recent years because of advocacy training for students and a more sympathetic administration willing to address their concerns.
“I’ve never felt any hostility on campus,” said Ryan Jenner, a third-year student and president of Anteaters for Israel, the campus pro-Israel group that co-sponsored Oren’s original appearance on campus. The group plans to bring a gay Israeli soldier to speak to students in October.
“Jewish life has never been better,” he said, “and the general climate has improved dramatically.”