Another Anti-Israel Teach-in Coming to UC Irvine

Mark your calendars for February 15. Another anti-Israel teach-in is coming to UC Irvine. It is entitled: Together we struggle: Palestine and Feminism. If you are not sure what the connection is, join the club. Best I can figure out, it’s going to be another one of those exercises in “Intersectionality”, which, roughly translated, means blaming the Jewish state of Israel for all the problems in the world.

I had previously never heard of any of the ladies who will be speaking, so I looked up their faculty profiles. One teaches at California State University at Long Beach, and the others at UC Irvine. One specializes in feminist issues in Iran while the others specialize in gender issues and African/African-American and Caribbean studies. Since I am not familiar with them, I am merely linking their faculty profiles without comment. I will leave it to the reader to figure it all out. 

So without further ado:

Tiffany Willoughby-Herard

Catherine Zehra Sameh

Mamyra Douge Prosper

Samiha Rahman

Rudo Robin Mudiwa

I don’t plan to attend this, and I have no idea how they will tie all this into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I’m sure they will find a way. It does remind me, however, of an event I attended at UCI several years ago. That was the time in 2014 when the UCI Campus Police prevented me from videotaping (for which they later apologized.) Loubna Qutami of the Palestinian Policy Network was the speaker, and her topic was domestic violence and spousal abuse within Palestinian society (which she, of course, blamed on Israeli oppression). An Arabic-language film was shown with English subtitles (“Duna“) focusing on domestic violence in the West Bank. According to Qutami and the film, it is a significant problem. During the q and a, in answer to my question, she also acknowledged that this is a problem in other neighboring Arab countries, but she managed to deflect the blame to “neo- colonialism”. 

One wonders if any such discussion will be raised at the upcoming event on February 15.