UCI students’ protest display burned down

Deepa Bharath

A cardboard wall, which was built by Arab students on campus to

symbolize Israel’s controversial security barrier to fend off

Palestinian suicide bombers, was burned to the ground after someone

set it on fire, university officials said on Saturday.

The Society of Arab Students at UC Irvine had obtained a permit

to construct a 6-foot-by-8-foot wall made with cardboard boxes, to

let it stand in the quad area -- also known as the Free Speech Zone

-- for a whole week, said UCI spokesman Tom Vasich.

Though university officials first released information about the

incident Saturday, it happened Thursday. At about 3:50 p.m. on

Thursday, campus police received a call that a fire had been started

at the wall, Vasich said.

“Soon, the fire engulfed the entire wall and burned it down,” he

said.

University officials are treating this as arson, and not as a hate

crime, Vasich said.

“That’s because we don’t know what motivated it,” he said. “A hate

crime is when something is motivated by race or religion. This

incident could’ve been politically motivated. We don’t have enough

evidence yet to determine that this was a hate crime.”

No one has been arrested yet, but according to the police report,

someone was seen “fleeing into the parking lot,” Vasich said.

No one was injured in the fire, he said, adding that police are

investigating the incident, and not ruling out the possibility that

it was a hate crime.

Arab students on campus were disappointed by the incident, said

Osama Abuljebain, president of the Society of Arab Students.

“We spent 20 hours on Monday building that wall,” he said. “Now

all that’s left is ashes and sand.”

He said the students put it up to mark Palestine Awareness Week

and to show their opposition to what Palestinians call the “Apartheid

Wall” because they believe it has illegally grabbed Palestinian land

and devastated their lives.

On the students’ cardboard wall were pictures of Nelson Mandela

and Martin Luther King Jr., quotes from the civil rights leaders and

pictures of the wall in Israel and maps showing its location in the

Gaza Strip, Abuljebain said.

He said he was horrified to hear that the university was not

considering the incident as a hate crime.

“There is no doubt that this incident was motivated by hatred

against the Arab race,” he said.

The wall was vandalized two times before the incident on Thursday,

Abuljebain said.

“One time, someone poured paint on it and we repainted it and put

up fresh posters,” he said. “The second time someone broke part of

the wall by stealing the sand bags we had put in the cardboard boxes

to hold everything together.”

A part of the wall collapsed and the students rebuilt it,

Abuljebain said. He said students plan to stage a protest on campus

Thursday to voice their opposition to the alleged crime, and to seek

the support of university officials.

The university must not only apologize to the students who have

suffered, but must treat the incident as a hate crime and felony

arson because it endangered the life and welfare of people on campus,

said Ban Al-Wardi, president of the Arab American Ani-Discrimination

Committee’s Los Angeles and Orange County chapter.

“This big wall had burst into flames, and if more people had been

around, someone could’ve gotten hurt or even died,” she said. “The

message of these Arab students was to end racism, and this was

clearly a response to that, done in a very racist way.”

* DEEPA BHARATH covers public safety and courts. She may be

reached at (949) 574-4226 or by e-mail at deepa.bharath@ latimes.com.