While Israel celebrates Independence Day today, Jewish students at the University of California at Irvine will have a hard time ignoring the hatred and hostility towards the Jewish state and its Jewish citizens that poisons the air on their campus. UC Irvine’s annual Israel Apartheid Week, organized by the Muslim Students Union (MSU) is now in progress, making this an especially difficult time for the school’s estimated 1,000 Jewish students.
But Rabbi Zevi Tenenbaum, director of Chabad at UCI is well prepared. Tenenbaum secured a spot on the main road where MSU erected the apartheid wall and conducts demonstrations. Twenty five year-old Joe Wolf,who is pursuing a PhD in astrophysics used to lay claim to this coveted spot on the main road, but he gave it to Chabad so they could set up a table with Jewish literature.