Free Republic

Irvine - Closing arguments will resume today in the trial of 11 students accused of disrupting a speech at UC Irvine by the Israeli ambassador to the United States. The students who interrupted the speech last year "meticulously" planned the disruption and one of the activists afterward boasted, "We pretty much shut them down," a prosecutor said Monday in arguing they should be found guilty of violating laws governing conduct at public meetings. But defense attorneys countered in their closing arguments that just because the students planned to protest the meeting doesn't mean they are guilty of the misdemeanor charges...

An Orange County jury has reached a verdict in the Irvine 11 case of Muslim students accused of conspiring and disrupting a February 2010 speech by the Israeli ambassador to the United States. The case garnered national attention over free-speech rights and centered on conflicting views of who was being censored. Prosecutors argued that Ambassador Michael Oren was "shut down" when his speech was interrupted by students who took turns shouting preplanned phrases in a crowded UC Irvine ballroom.

An official at the anti-Israel American Muslims for Palestine group who openly advocates for violence against the Jewish state contributed $2,500 to Democratic Party leader Rep. Keith Ellison (Minn.) last year, according to campaign disclosure documents.

Just a day after Hamas’s Oct. 7 rampage through Israel, the nation’s largest anti-Israel campus group snapped into action, issuing a call for "unity intifada" at colleges across the country and mobilizing its network of pro-Palestinian agitators for a "national day of resistance" that would "normalize" terrorism against Israel, according to a strategy document reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. The materials provide insight into National Students for Justice in Palestine’s (NSJP) campus playbook and suggest the anti-Israel umbrella group anticipated a conflict in the Middle East and was prepared to unleash its army of adherents on college campuses across...

Anti-Israel protesters at many of America’s universities have been consulting with and sometimes trained by left-wing groups and activists, some of which have ties to support of terrorism, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday. Protesters at universities across the country have consulted with groups like National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) and Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, in some cases resulting in months of training, planning and encouragement, according to the WSJ. Administrators and police have battled pro-Palestinian protesters in recent days at schools like Columbia and the University of California, Los Angeles, in some cases calling in officers...