Love of the Land: Anti-Israeli student 'activists' don't take risks – they just give smug interviews to Iranian TV

Anti-Israeli student 'activists' don't take risks – they just give smug interviews to Iranian TV

Stephanie Gutmann
Telegraph.co.uk
09 March '10

“Stand with the Irvine 11!” blared the email in my inbox this morning. “OK,” I thought groggily, “but which one of the dozens of activists sending me email are you and why are you appropriating the jargon of Sixties activism?”

As I read the bold type and caps-filled missive it turned out that the Irvine 11 are some of the students, the ones who were actually arrested, a few weeks ago at the University of California, Irvine campus when they refused to let an audience of nearly 500 hear Israeli ambassador Michael Oren deliver a speech.

The young activists used a tactic I’d never seen before, one that can superficially represent it self as “vocalizing dissent” in a “non-violent and non-threatening manner” (as their press release puts it) but actually works quite effectively to silence.

Oren had just began his lecture when a solitary student popped out of the crowd and began yelling (”killer”, “war criminal” etc.). Eventually an obsequious campus officials persuaded him to leave the room. Oren resumed, but then another howler sprung to his feet from a different part of the room. Calm was restored – for a second. And then, again: a man, popping throat veins, pumping fist, screaming, unintelligibly but very loud.

It was a particularly nerve-jangling tactic because one had no idea when and where the next screamer would pop up, if the disruption was really over or just on hiatus. This tension alone was enough to thoroughly shift the focus away from Oren even when the room seemed to be under control. The activists had, in effect, made themselves the subject. There was, of course (due process and all) no way to remove them en bloc, so the audience had to wait till each and every demonstrator had done his bit.

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Related: Muslim students disrupt Israel Amb. Michael Oren's talk

Love of the Land: Anti-Israeli student 'activists' don't take risks – they just give smug interviews to Iranian TV