The UC Berkeley Muslim Students Association staged a silent demonstration on Sproul Plaza Tuesday in support of the Irvine 11 — a group of UC Irvine and UC Riverside students arrested for disrupting the speech of Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren at the campus in February 2010.
The protest was part of a larger day of solidarity occurring across the University of California that was organized by the group Stand with the Eleven.
Demonstrators dressed in red and taped their mouths shut to show their support for the 11 students and to bring attention to the silencing of the Palestinian narrative, according to Zienab Abdelgany, president of the campus Muslim Students Association.
“Awareness is the beginning of the process of getting people involved to express their concerns of the silencing of dissent and student protest,” said Hatem Bazian, a lecturer in the campus Department of Near Eastern Studies, who was present at the demonstration.
Ten of the Irvine 11 were sentenced last month for conspiring to disrupt and proceeding to disrupt a public event. The students were sentenced to three years of probation without any jail time. Charges were dismissed against the 11th student pending completion of 40 hours of community service.
Bazian drew a parallel between the issue of the Irvine 11 and Mario Savio of Berkeley’s Free Speech movement.
“The speaker has the right to free speech, and the protester has the right to free speech as well,” Bazian said.
However, according to Jacob Lewis, co-president of Tikvah: Students for Israel, the free speech message of the Muslim Students Association’s protest is filled with “hypocrisy.”
“I think Cal students are smart enough to understand that the Irvine 11’s right to freely express themselves cannot come at the expense of another person’s right to express himself and that shouting down a speaker is not a constructive form of demonstration,” Lewis said.
Other demonstrators handed out fliers on the issue and tried to engage in dialogue with passers-by.
Husam El-Qoulaq, a junior peace and conflict studies major, said he tried to convey to the people he spoke with that the arrests of the Irvine 11 represent a “concentrated effort to quell the Palestinian narrative.”
The conversations taking place on the plaza went beyond surface issues and tried to look at the bigger picture, according to Ryan Esfahani, a junior and a society and environment major, who talked to a demonstrator.
“I got a greater appreciation for the issue — you just get a good reminder,” he said of his conversation.
The association also sold wristbands to raise funds for the legal fees of the Irvine 11, making nearly $200, according to Sahar Pirzada, a member of the association.
With the aim of continuing to spread awareness, the association will hold a teach-in conducted by Bazian on Oct. 17 at 5 p.m.
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wouldnt it be ironic if people interrupted Hatem’s talk about his inalienable right to interupt others speech? Want to be he’d call the police and have them arrested?
The underlying concept is not that the Irvine 11 were deprived of the same rights as everyone else, its that as Muslims, they feel entitled and privileged to more rights than others. It’s common that Muslims will insist that they are entitled to prevent others from speaking at public forums, while arrogantly demanding the right to speak at others’ private venues and special “Muslim only” privileges. Their righteous indignation that a person with whom they disagree, being permitted to speak was only heightened by the speaker being a Jew choosing not to be properly subservient to Islam. It is yet another expression of Muslim Supremacist thought not “free speech.”.
Did anyone else catch the irony of the photo above? The female Muslim protesters are wearing head scarves because their religion suppresses freedom of personal expression. The red tape over their mouths simply reinforces the idea that Muslim women are denied a voice by Muslim men, just as the head scarves denies them equality. Scarves and tapes work as matching accessories to illustrate the harsh dictatorial mindset of Muslims. The Irvine 11 were carrying out the teachings of their Muslim religion when they applied Islam’s violent and uncompromising rules to the Israeli ambassador, so it’s ironic that female victims of Islam are now brainwashed to demonstrate for their oppressors.
Utter hypocrisy. I don’t know how they were raised but I like many were taught that one’s rights ends where anothers’ rights begins. Their justification does not suffice at all. It wasn’t a rally nor out in the open. It was in a damn an enclosed area where people sacrificed their personal time to listen to ONE speaker, and the speaker spent his time (and I’m guessing the university’s money) to speak. I don’t always agree with Likud Party or even all of Israel’s politics and policy but no one who represents those views and values deserves to be shot down by a bunch of pseudo-intellectual and pseudo-liberal morons.
The students were wrong to prevent a speaker invited to the campus from speaking and being heard. And the Muslim Student Union acted inappropriately in coordinating this and in misrepresenting its involvement to University officials.
It is pure blather to say the Palestinian narative is forbidden on campus. The MSU have invited a number of speakers on the campus to share their perspective over the years – Abdul Malik Ali (who openly supports 3 groups the US State Dept recognizes as terrorist organizations) has been invited to speak by the MSU at UC Irvine at least once a year from 2001 to 2010, Norman Finkelstein, the parents of Rachel Corrie, Imam Mohammad al-Asi, Rabbi David Weiss, Cynthia McKinney ect.
If the students disagreed with the speaker, the remedy action they could have engaged and be heard would be to hand out leaflets outside the event or marched with picket signs sharing their viewpoint outside the event. They could have written a blog to refute the points of the speaker and shared their viewpoints to the school paper and local press or continued to invite their own speakers on a different date.
The right to free speech does not give you the right to silence anyone you disagree with by shouting them down.
The “Irvine 11″ are a bunch of intellectual terrorist thugs who deserve to be thrown in jail.
““concentrated effort to quell the Palestinian narrative.”
Dream on. UC has no interest in engaging in foreign policy.
…except for our Chancellor, who continually uses his position as a bully pulpit to stick his nose where it doesn’t belong, isn’t wanted and where he really doesn’t understand the issues. Sad that he claims to speak for the Cal community.
Really? What has Birgeneau said about foreign policy? It’s unlikely that anyone (even Birgeneau) thinks he speaks for the Cal community.
These MSU hypocrites don’t see the contradiction: they demonstrate in silence because their brethren at UC Irvine were rightfully prosecuted due to their disruption of Ambassador Oren’s right to freedom of speech. If the MSU at the Oren talk had, like the demonstrators yesterday at Cal, kept their mouths shut and not violated the right of free speech, they would not have been prosecuted.
A small gem of irony: the MSU at Cal, home of the Free Speech Movement, supports those Muslim students who kept Ambassador Oren from speaking. Mario Savio would be turning over in his grave at the specter of these frauds who believe that the only opinions they think should be openly aired are those which coincide with their own. But then this shouldn’t come as any surprise: they are simply reflecting the values seen in the Palestinian territories where dissent is often severely punished by both Fatah in the West Bank and under the thugocracy of pro-genocidal Hamas in Gaza.
Just try simply wearing a Star of David in either Gaza or the West Bank and see what happens…
I support this action, I support the Irvine 11, and I think the first two comment writers should probably revisit the actual happenings of the event, and take into consideration the continued silencing of marginalized voices due to the loud and obnoxious voices of colonizers….ahem, I mean, diplomats who sanction and participate in ethnic cleansing who align with the modernizing narrative that have produced countless moments of colonization, marginalization, apartheid, and the like.
[I support this action, I support the Irvine 11, and I think the first
two comment writers should probably revisit the actual happenings of the
event, and take into consideration the continued silencing of
marginalized voices due to the loud and obnoxious voices of colonizers.]
What a bunch of nonsensical blather. You whine about being “silenced” while defending a bunch of hooligans trying to silence someone else. Fortunately, people in Orange County don’t feel intimidated by left-wing agitators, and gave these people what they deserve.
If you support the Irvine 11 then you support silencing the free speech rights of anyone you disagree with, which makes you a fascist.
If you hate free speech so much why don’t you move to North Korea and get the fuck out of America.
Interesting. It’s always the special interest groups, not the “colonizers” (sheesh) who not only shout the loudest, but want to silence voices they disagree with.
“Free speech is great, as long as I’m the only one who has it.” (sheesh)
The students cannot claim free speech as a defense for the charges they commited.
An expert on the First Amendment and the dean of the UC Irvine School of Law, Erwin Chemerinksy, wrote:
“The First Amendment does not protect the right of people to go into an auditorium and try to shout down a speaker. No one has a First Amendment right to go into my class, or to a city council meeting, or to a court session, or into an auditorium on campus and keep a speaker from being heard. No court would find that the students were engaged in protected speech.”
The disrupting students violated: Penal codes 403 and 182.
Penal code 403 dictates that anyone who willfully disturbs or breaks up any assembly not unlawful in its character is guilty of a misdemeanor, that the offenders must have substantially impaired the conduct of the meeting, and do not have to engage in violent or dangerous behavior in order to be charged.
Penal code 182 deems it illegal for anyone to conspire to commit a crime, conspire being defined in the code as a specific intent crime requiring an intent to conspire or agree, and a further intent to commit the target crime.
Their emails clearly show they intended to substantially disrupt the event.
Their emails exposed that they did not think the invited speaker should be able to say whatever he wanted on the campus and were willing to take action to shut it down with disruptions.
They designed a game plan were not just the shouters were in on the plan. They also had plants who would cheer loudly after each statement was read.
The students were wrong. Now I hope they get on with their life. They aren’t martyrs. They are dopey kids who got lost in their cause and did not take into consideration that they were violating the rights of others.
This stunt did nothing for the Palestinian people.
[This stunt did nothing for the Palestinian people.]
Most of these stunts do NOTHING for the Palestinian people, who are as much held hostage and victimized by being pawns for the agendas of various pan-Arab, militant Muslim, and left-wing agendas as anything Israel has done for/against them.
It’s seems that “Jew of conscience”, you’ve manged to spout all of the empty buzz words, but without any basis. The reason that people disagree with your opinions is that there is no basis in fact in the Arab-Israeli Conflict where the phrases “apartheid”, “colonization” etc, apply as to Israel the conflict. If one were to read the detailed “Palestinian” position, the “two state” solution is a device that, in the long term, will aid them in eventually conquering all of Israel, Jordan, the “West Bank” and Gaza with the eventual additional goal of re-dispersing the Jewish people of Israel to be a subservient minority under Islamic authority like in Ottoman times. Read a little Edward Said , it even filters through there.
Oh yeah, and Mario Savio would be ashamed of the Irvine 11, because they don’t seem to know what free speech is. Free speech is respecting the right of an invited guest to give the speech he is there to give, even if you disagree with it. The Irvine 11 are a disgrace to free speech.
They’re protesting people being “silenced,” when those 11 students denied a man his right to free speech? Hypocrites. They’re quelling the Israeli narrative, then acting like they’re the victims. Down the rabbit hole indeed.
The idea behind freedom of speech is that the government will not fine or imprsion anyone for expressing their ideas.
“ Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. ”
“government will not fine or imprsion anyone”
The first amendment (which you quote) says nothing of the kind. People can exercise their right and suffer the appropriate consequences. No one is exempt from rules and laws regarding conduct. Fines and imprisonments are for the commission of offenses.
Quite well said.
“or the right of the people peaceably to assemble”
The disruption of a peaceful assembly is a violation of rights.