Surprised they are being charged…not surprised the libtard anti-semetic academics are upset…
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/142253#replies
by Maayana Miskin
Eleven California students are facing criminal charges for harassing Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren last year. The eleven shouted insults at Oren during a scheduled address and prevented him from speaking for 20 minutes.
Among other things, the hecklers called Oren a “war criminal” and shouted, “How many Palestinians did you kill?” Oren was shouted down at least ten times by the protesters, who were eventually removed from the hall.
The Orange County district attorney’s office has announced that, in a rare move, the hecklers will be charged with misdemeanor crimes — one count each of conspiracy to disturb a meeting and disturbance of a meeting.
Officials at the University of California, Irvine, where the February 2010 incident took place, punished the disruptive students by temporarily closing down the Muslim Student Union which had coordinated the harassment in advance. The group remains on probation.
Attorneys for the students say their actions constitute regular protest activity, and that the charges violate their right to free speech.
District Attorney Tony Rackauckas disagrees. “This is a much different kind of thing” than a normal protest, he said. “It’s not just a group of a few student demonstrators. This is an organized plan to stop the Israeli minister from speaking and to stop anybody from hearing what he has to say. It’s a real violation.”
The Council for American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, had campaigned against the filing of criminal charges, coordinating a letter from civic and religious organizations in Southern California to the District Attorney. CAIR officials said that UC-Irvine had already “taken plenty of action,” and that the criminal charges are unnecessary.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center applauded the decision to bring charges. “Zionist and pro-Israel speakers are often subjected to this kind of treatment… We commend the DA for at least opening the books on this and for promoting an understanding of how all free speech has a right to be heard, even that of Israel and of Jewish students,” the group said.
UC Irvine: 100 faculty members call for dismissal of charges against Muslims who organized disruption of Israeli ambassador’s speech — to promote the “healing process”
What if the shoe were on the other foot, and another campus group were found to have conspired to deny the right of free speech to a member of a fashionable left-wing cause in exactly the same manner?
For this case, pressing charges against these Muslim students is inimical to “the healing process.” Never mind those promoting the “healing process” here are going against their own psychobabble: every armchair therapist knows you can’t “let the healing begin” while sweeping problems under the rug and rewarding bad behavior.
Except when your views don’t count, apparently. So… shut up and “heal!” An update on this story. “100 UC Irvine faculty members ask district attorney to drop charges against Muslim students,” from the LA Times, February 9 (thanks to Craig):
A group of 100 faculty members at UC Irvine signed a letter asking the Orange County district attorney to drop criminal charges against 11 Muslim students who disrupted a speech by the Israeli ambassador to the United States.
The group, including five deans, said the Muslim Student Union was wrong to disrupt the speech last year by Ambassador Michael Oren but that the students and the group had already been disciplined by the university.
Orange County prosecutors announced last week they were charging the students with two misdemeanor counts, including conspiracy to disrupt the speech. If convicted, each faces up to six months in jail.
The decision to charge the students, the faculty letter says, “sets a dangerous precedent for the use of the criminal law against nonviolent protests on campus.”
Once again: what if the shoe were on the other foot?
It goes on to argue the charges are harmful and divisive to the school and risk “undoing the healing process” after widespread debate erupted following the protest and the decision to temporarily suspend the group.
Are your students that emotionally fragile, or are you just insulting their intelligence?
“I think there was a great deal of dismay that the DA was reviving what we thought had been a closed chapter in the university’s history,” said UC Irvine history professor Jon Wiener.
The district attorney has argued that the students organized to squelch the speaker in clear violation of the law. The students are set to be arraigned March 11 in Santa Ana.
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