Zio-Americans

Israel is hopeful about peace with post-revolutionary Egypt but doesn't like some of what it hears, according to its ambassador to the U.S., Michael B. Oren:

[W]e would be irresponsible to ignore the Muslim Brotherhood, which, although a minority party in Egypt, is the best-organized and -financed opposition group. “Resistance is the only solution against the Zio-American arrogance and tyranny,” the Brotherhood’s supreme guide recently sermonized, pledging to raise “a jihadi generation that pursues death just as its enemies pursue life.”

And the threat to peace comes not only from religious extremists but also from some of the revolution’s secular voices. The Kafaya democratic movement, for example, once circulated a petition to nullify the peace treaty. A spokesman for the April 6 Youth Movement recently demanded the halting of Egyptian natural gas shipments to Israel, which would cut off 40 percent of our supply. And last week the reformist leader Ayman Nour declared that “the era of Camp David is over.”

Tony Raukauckas's Hysterical First

Thanks to Orange County's DA, 11 Muslim students face up to six months in jail for organizing a peaceful demonstration on campus. The ACLU says it's a first.

The Whole World's Laughing

One of the 11 students charged yesterday with conspiracy to disrupt Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren's speech at UC Irvine in February 2010 allegedly posted on a message board:

We will be staging a University of Chicago Style disruption of the Ambassador’s speech.

UCI's freshman comp teachers should brush up on hyphenation and capitalization. There may also be an issue for the U.S. history curriculum, because I'm assuming the young man was talking not about the University of Chicago (whose famous style guide could help with the hyphenation and capitalization) but the 1968 demonstrations in Chicago against the Democratic National Convention.

Thanks to this poor decision by Orange County DA Tony Rackauckas, unless the kids plead out to avoid having to serve up to six months in jail, our community may enjoy a spectacle not unlike the notorious Chicago 7 trial now that U.S. government officials are appearing to single out Muslims for prosecution of campus tomfoolery.

This One Goes To 11

Editorializing about the possibility of criminal charges by the Orange County DA against students who disrupted an on-campus speech by the Israeli ambassador last year, the LA Times is absolutely right:

Criminal charges...are not appropriate. They would be overkill, a punishment out of proportion to the offense. Is it really necessary to threaten the futures of students who engaged in a nonviolent protest that didn't, ultimately, stop Oren from delivering his remarks? These students have been punished already, in an effort to make clear the difference between legitimate protest and their unacceptable actions. We hope they've learned a lesson. Now it's time to move on.

Hat tip to Tom Tierney

"The Only Path To Coexistence"

Israel's ambassador to the U.S. says that Palestinians must formally recognize Israel as Jewish state if peace is to have a chance:

The core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been the refusal to recognize Jews as a people, indigenous to the region and endowed with the right to self-government. Criticism of Israeli policies often serves to obscure this fact, and peace continues to elude us. By urging the Palestinians to recognize us as their permanent and legitimate neighbors, Prime Minister Netanyahu is pointing the way out of the current impasse: he is identifying the only path to co-existence.