IN THEORY:

The Hillel Foundation of Orange County this summer suspended its investigation into reports of anti-Semitism at UC Irvine and instead directed its resources to promoting Jewish life on campus. The task force Hillel assembled to do the review, though, is pressing forward with the investigation. Do you think the investigation should continue or should the focus turn to promoting Jewish life at UCI?

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Perhaps the Hillel Foundation of Orange County did not feel that there was gross violations against Jewish students at UC Irvine and hence redirected their efforts toward a more positive direction — promoting Jewish life on campus.

If this is the case, then I completely support their efforts by focusing their attention toward beneficial work.

However, if gross violations occurred against the students, then the matter must be pursued and resolved.

It is my hope that such esteemed organizations begin to focus on the bigger picture, and that is moving us all in a direction that brings about a peaceful coexistence among all students.

— Imam Sayed Moustafa al-Qazwini

Islamic Educational Center of Orange County

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Rather than an investigation on anti-Semitism or to promote Jewish life on UCI campus, a rabbinical statement is called for.

The Muslim protest has nothing to do with anti-Semitism against American Jews, but rather against Israel. Therefore one must understand my statements. In 1948, the civil and religious world offered the Jews a very small state composed of non-arable land. The Jews made a modern-day miracle and made the land habitable.

At the same time, England offered the Arabs mainly fertile land for their state.

At that time, the Palestinian Arabs rejected the offer. Had they accepted it, they would be closing in on celebrating 60 years of statehood.

The Arab and Islamic world wanted the Jews out of the Middle East, more than they wanted the Palestinians to have a state of their own. A solution could have been solved nonviolently, but the Arabs made the wrong choice.

In consequence, Israel has had to fight a half a dozen wars just to survive.

The Muslim world tries continues to humiliate Isarel with their demand of every inch of the 1967 lands.

The Arabs believe to accept anything less than the return of all lands settled by the Israelis “where there is a dominant Arab population in those lands” is to accept anything else than the “relative justice” Arabs deserve, and is degrading to the Arabs. One could say the “Arabian Peninsula is for the Arabs, as America is for the Americans.”

The Arabs make the Jews feel that they have no right at all to exist anywhere in the Middle East, and unlike many of us, who as children learned the meaning of the word “to share,” they have not learned its meaning.

Israel has bent over backward to share the land with the Arabs. You give out your hand in friendship, and they seem to want your whole hand.

Rabbi Marc Rubenstein

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It is important that investigation into anti-Semitism at UCI be continued. For while the spewers of hate on campus claim they are only condemning Israel, their anti-Zionism is a fig leaf for anti-Semitism.

Just as “law and order” was once code for enforcing a brutal segregationist policy in America, so assaults on Israel’s very legitimacy is a façade for condemning Jews qua Jews. The Islamists’ hate speech and vilification not only attacks Zionism but implicitly targets Jews and Judaism.

No matter their demurrers, that their vitriol is directed at Israel as a state it is a veneer for their Jew-hatred.

Temple Bat Yahm, Newport Beach