ONE FREE COPY
OFFICIAL STUDENT NEWSPAPER
September 2015
VOL. II ISSUE VI
Controversy on Campus A Talk with Miko Peled By Patrick Arellano
On Wednesday May 13, on MSJC’s Menifee campus, Room 927 was densely packed with students and faculty awaiting one of the most anticipated events of the year. After a considerable amount of resistance, the controversial speaker Miko Peled would voice his opinions on IsraeliPalestinian relations. The hype and controversy all started when on March 2015, Professor Shahla Razavi with Amnesty International proposed bringing Miko Peled to campus for a lecture. She brought this proposal to
the Diversity Committee seeking funding to help cover his lecture fee. Miko Peled is the son of an Israeli general and was raised based on the ideas of Zionism; Ideas that he eventually renounced. According to Peled, his activism sparked in 1997, when his 13 year old niece was murdered by a suicide attack In Jerusalem. “The activist side of me that I’d been suppressing,” he claims, “suddenly burst out. It became stronger than anything.” Even though Miko Peled identifies as a peace activist, he is a figure who has gained considerable controversy. During the months before Miko Peled’s speech, the school had many students and faculty divided on whether or not he should be allowed to voice his opinions on campus. Between the February and March’s Diversity Committee meetings, a professor who shall remain anonymous spearheaded the resistance by sending letters to the clubs and faculty as well as current and former congressmen. They described Peled as an anti-Semite who is “filled with hatred.” They’ve been very passionate in their opposition, saying, “Why don’t we just bring the leaders of Hamas and hand out suicide vests at the event?” In the Professor’s letter to their colleagues, they claimed that Peled “perpetuates lies and misconceptions
that can, and most likely WILL, incite hate and prejudice.” They said that Peled “is a representative of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement (BDS),” a movement that they’ve claimed to be “a bigoted global propaganda campaign against Israel.” They also criticized Peled for omitting important information such as the role of Hamas in the oppression of the Palestinian people. But the most powerful condemnation came from their critique of Peled’s reaction to the deaths of three Israeli teenagers. They claimed that “Peled believes Israelis deserve to be targets of terrorist acts and they should expect it.” Congressman Juan Vargas was also very vocal in his opposition to Miko Peled’s speech at MSJC. In his letter to MSJC President Shultz, he stated that “while I strongly support diverse ideas and free speech on our college campuses, I would like to highlight some of the offensive and inaccurate statements and incendiary actions Mr. Peled has made in recent years.” Congressman Vargas also claimed that “Israel has remained a stalwart ally of the United States and a vibrant democracy in an often hostile region,” and that it “strives to respect the human rights of all people.”
OPINION 2 | STUDENT FEATURE 6 | ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT10
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