[NOTE: This post is the first in a series of four retrospective posts to this blog, all of which are relevant to its theme and were instrumental in prompting the author to see to its inception. This post originally took the form of the description of the Facebook group referred to in the title. The Daily Cal article referred to in the body can be found as it was printed here.]
In light of the confrontation that took place at the Israel Liberation Week Concert on Thursday, Nov. 13 between a group of those running the concert on one side and protesting members of Students for Justice in Palestine on the other, the Daily Cal reported on Tuesday, November 18 that Yaman Salahi, a UC Berkeley senior and SJP higher-up, was in the process, in conjunction with unnamed "current ASUC senators," of collecting a petition with 1000 Berkeley students' signatures to "begin the recall process of... senator" John Moghtader. This group is dedicated to the proposition that John Moghtader should – indeed, must – not be recalled because such an action would be a perversion of justice and an abominable waste of funds.
Under the current political climate on campus, the vast majority of any support for the aforementioned petition would come from students who associated Moghtader with the physical altercation – one which thanks to shoddy reporting is tied to his name, but also one in which neither John Moghtader nor any current Berkeley student associated with Tikvah: Students for Israel or the Zionist Freedom Alliance (the group that ran Israel Liberation Week) engaged. Moghtader's lack of involvement has been corroborated by eyewitnesses and is verified by his lack of citation by the UCPD.
Salahi also cited as a reason for the recall campaign the disruption by Moghtader and other members of Tikvah of an Oct. 15 lecture hosted by SJP. However, this is a highly hypocritical allegation: SJP has traditionally made its name disrupting pro-Zionist events on Berkeley's campus, and in personally conducted interviews, security personnel at an Oct. 16 lecture hosted by Tikvah revealed to this author sighting several presumed UC Berkeley students, some of whom were sporting what they deemed "anti-Zionist"-themed clothing accessories (pins, etc.), leaving disgruntled after sighting the metal detectors. Whether or not these people were indeed intended disruptors, and in that event whether or not these were tied in any way to SJP, can, of course, simply not be verified; however, in keeping with the ASUC Senate tradition of reporting "I" Statements, the collective, non-representative suspicion of the interviewees was that these were indeed thwarted disruptors associated either with SJP or else with some other local anti-Zionist organization. Regardless, the point stands that disruptions take place regularly on both sides, and that Moghtader has gone no further on this count to alienate members of "all student groups" than has any Senator that is also a recognized member of SJP (a notable example being Kifah Shah).
But perhaps there is no readily publicly-expressible reason for Salahi's pursuit of the Senator. Bay Area Zionism activist Dan Kliman described the proceedings as a "witch hunt," and he is hardly alone in possessing this opinion in the Zionist community – not only within the confines of Berkeley or the Bay Area, but even on a much wider scale, where the whole unfolding drama has come to be symbolic of the unfortunate situation of Zionist collegiate youth nationwide. For his part, Moghtader was quoted in the Daily Cal: "Salahi and his associates never wanted me elected in the first place, and they're looking for any opportunity to remove me from the Senate."To interject another "I" Statement, this author understands that both witch hunts and money wasting are time-honored Berkeley traditions. At the same time, though, he is firmly opposed to the relocation of "tuition" funds to pay for the ASUC Senate to begin with, and was appalled by the absurd waste of time that was Monday, Nov. 17th's Community Forum. In this author's opinion, the last thing the collective student body needs is the recall of any current Senator from our self-righteous student government, much less the recall of one of the few who serves without pretention on charges that are either merely puerile attempts at retribution or else simply completely fraudulent.
Join this group if you express agreement with the arguments formulated above and oppose the planned attempt to recall ASUC Senator John Moghtader.
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