back in january two thousand and ten i was a student at the university of california irvine and i received an e mail from the school of social sciences which i'm a part of that was saying that his excellent c michael b oren would be coming to our campus he was israeli ambassador  to united states at the time and he still is right now he'd be coming to our campus in order to give a lecture on the historical relationship between israel and the united states and really the event was being put on by the university along with other campus organizations and off campus organizations pro israeli prosiness organizations both on and off campus and the school was not making any mention of the plight of the palestinian people and event was coming almost exactly on the one year anniversary of operation cast lead which was the operation in the gaza strip by the israeli military that led to the death of over fourteen hundred palestinians no mention was ever made of the policy and people to have been killed no mention was ever made of occupation and said the university was rolling out a red carpet for michael oren and for us that amounted to nothing less than tacit approval of israeli policies in regards to the way in which the israeli government deals with the palestinian people and so  us being students of course we weren't too happy with that and what do students do when they're not happy they like to protest and so we got together and we decided to protest his presence on campus and for some of the students it was also a personal matter actually two of the eventual irvine eleven had family members some of their cousins were killed during operation cast lead the families were from the gaza strip and for them it was you know their cousins had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and so it was it was a personal matter that this man was responsible for the death of their family members and we were fully aware of the role that michael oren had played during operation cast lead both as the as the spokesperson for the israeli military and even before that he had served in the israeli defense forces as a paratrooper uk in the the invasion of lebanon in the one nine hundred eighty s that led to the death of of over thirty thousand lebanese civilians who were well aware of the role michael oren had played and his direct responsibility in operation cast lead as well as in other  invasions and occupations that had taken place for me i'm the palestinian but i also had the opportunity to visit the gaza strip a few months after the ending of operation cast lead and for me y had seen had left a very very clear message in my mind  and it showed me that really when the israeli soldiers came into gaza they came in and really played modern warfare call of duty with people's lives and that there was just everywhere you went there was just bullet holes everywhere everything was destroyed they had been months since the since operation cast lead had ended yet there was still no ability to even rebuild and we even got a chance to speak to these three young girls known as someone you girls and at one point in time they were giving us their story and in during the course of their story one of the girls and she's the oldest one of the three girls they're all cousins she begins to tell her story and it's never really out of pity either it's just more so in order for her to get a cross the point of what she's dealt with and when you ask them all how can we help the only thing is you know just let people in america know what's really happening so here's my story for you to relate to others in america and so she's giving us her story and at the end she asked a question of what did i do to israel for them to have done this to my family what have i done to israel for them to take away my family like this and she had lost forty members of her family and she had lost her entire immediate family in one bombing and so to hear her ask this question of what did i do to deserve this is sticks with you and so when michael oren was coming to camp it was it was never a matter of should we do something but what is it that we should do we sat down and we actually want to a long laundry list of ideas in regards to how we wanted to protest we actually settled on something that we called the university of chicago style protest and the reason why we called it that was because i believe in october of the previous year i think is october november camera exactly when olmert who was also who had been an israeli official was giving a talk at the university of chicago and around thirty students and even i believe a professor had stood up individually one by one and individually disrupted his lecture and they would stand up they would get out either statement some even read off a list of the names of people who had been killed  and they would keep going sometimes they would go thirty seconds sometimes they'd go a minute sometimes even longer and the police would come and they would escort them out and then that was the end of the story no one was academically disciplined nobody was arrested so for us also this was just one example of you know what this is one way to protest and this is something that we like that we had seen another protest even on our own campus at u c irvine in november of the previous year the u c regents which is the governing body of the entire university of california system was increases which left students really really mad and angry and even at u c irvine we had a huge protest that november and during the protest actually we had probably over a thousand students protesting we actually go to every major lecture hall on campus and we disrupt it become politically and in terms of professors would concede in the current classes dismissed everybody can leave and other times the pressures wouldn't be too happy with the fact that their leisure was being disrupted and even at one point one student gets up on the stage and he yells out you know what class is dismissed everybody leave in the press the press is not too happy with that and they actually get into a little bit of an argument which turns into a shoving match until it's eventually broken  up and the reason i mention all of this is you're having hundreds of students coming into a lecture hall walking up and down the aisles from every possible door with another thousand students outside everybody's chanting walk out walk out walk out and then you have a student that gets even into a shoving match and all this time the u c irvine police department along with the senior university of u c irvine and ministers who are in charge of student conduct on campus are all present at the protests in our whole following along with the protest nobody's academically disciplined nobody's arrested for any of these disruptions so for us this was also something that happened on our own campus not only did this happen at the university of chicago or did code pink do this or did any one of these numerous groups that protest in these ways do this on somewhere else in the united states but this is on our own campus students have protested in this manner and so we thought you know what this is more than within our legal rights to do something like this and so we took the university of chicago style destruction and we decided to manipulate it a little bit in order to fit our own circumstances we decided in the end that we would have ten students who would disrupt individually and there would be other students in the audience and they would come and support the students who were disrupting and after the ten student disrupted a large student walkout would take place and so we went in with this mindset and so sometimes people have asked us well why did you guys process in this way and really the main reason was to send a message to michael oren that would be relayed directly back to tel aviv we didn't feel that asking a question and answers would get that message across and that we went into this protest with a purpose and a goal in mind and our goal wasn't to educate the audience because sometimes when you have a protest you have to you know you have a goal in mind sometimes it's educate the audience sometimes it's to send the message whatever it may be this time it was to send a message directly to michael oren the speaker himself and to the israeli government we understood that we were dealing with a state power that michael oren represents state power and that in the course of his event and really state powers what they like to do is to legitimize and enhance their power by allowing for certain forms of dissent and so in the course of this lecture michael oren would be allowing and really enhance in his power by allowing for you to challenge him by asking some tough questions now for us really to challenge michael oren in the way he wants to be challenged is not a challenge and so we wanted to go outside of that framework that the event provided and for us that was by throwing a curveball at michael moore and using the element of surprise that we had as audience members by popping up randomly throughout the lecture hall and yelling out a short statement and that if we had said those statements during a question and answer session they wouldn't have been as amplified as he is during the middle of the lecture when everyone's listening and of voice appears and it kind of disk shuts the room down in terms of silence and so that was really the mindset that we had going into the event the event took place on a monday night february eighth two thousand and ten the lecture hall was a room in the student center that's able to hold up seven hundred people and it was packed that even had overflow room with a few other hundred people i think in the overflow room so the event was packed and we knew also that it would be packed with community members not necessarily students that this event was more for the community he starts talking in about thirty seconds or a minute into his talk i'm actually the first student to stand up the audience immediately reacted and actually my statement was a little bit longer michael oren propagating murder is not an expression of free speech the only stand you deserve to take is in front of the international criminal court i didn't get off the second half of it because what we had also decided was is that once the crowd reacts to the disruption you don't actually want to raise your voice above the level of the crowd and just make it look like you're just screaming angrily and just shouting your head off without anyone really being being able to hear you so once the crowds a voice erupted and it was a it was a mix of cheers and booing someone yelled at me i mean hear this but someone told me and i think it was even caught on video someone told me i should i would be better off becoming a suicide bomber so there was a lot of opposition and also a lot of support of people so i began making my way to the aisle and the police meet me at the aisle and actually grabbed me and they take me to a back room and i'm patted down and i'm arrested immediately in handcuffs and they had come prepared i mean there was literally a mound of metal handcuffs just waiting in the back room and what's ironic is at that time the mc of the event who was the chair of the political science department which was also sponsoring the event professor mike but trucker had gone up on the microphone and he's like one interruption is fine get it out of your system i was already in handcuffs  unable to do anything so it's obvious that one interruption was not fine and the university was not going to tolerate any form of disruption event continues and then i second student interrupts and he yells out his state and at this point i can't even hear anything all i hear is just you know an increase in the volume of the room and then it kind of decreases again in another student walks into the back where i am is handcuffed and arrested and put down on the ground next to me and so the second student goes and  the event proceeds and then the third student there was maybe about thirty seconds to a minute in between each student and if only the fourth student goes and each student was yelling out a different statement one student yelled out judaism is free of the crimes of zionism  another student yelled it is a shame that this university has sponsored a mass murderer like yourself another student yelled out you sir are an accomplice to genocide some of the students actually repeated my statement i guess in the heat of the moment they forgot what they were what was on their card  and they just feel about anything and so the students would join me in the back and after the four student actually michael warren decided to take a break from the event and he goes off the stage for about ten or fifteen minutes  and afterwards the event continues now once the event continues the process continues and student number five goes in student number six and sort of number seven in the number eight and the number nine and finally number ten and each student just one by one by one with maybe you know thirty seconds to a minute in between each one and each one of our statements takes about ten or twelve seconds max and so finally after the ten student allowed student walkout occurs and during the process of the law student walk out some of the students are chanting and one of the students actually grabbed by police and is also arrested and he joins us in the back and that's how we become eleven the event continues after that and actually in terms o timing that we had the event itself was supposed to continue until seven o'clock and so we left ample amount of time for michael warren to finish his speech and he ended up having about thirty five minutes left to finish his speech anyways and  complete his speech because it has often been the the argument that's put against us is that well you didn't allow michael oren to complete his speech when in fact he actually completed his speech and the chancellor of the university himself actually came out the next day and was like oh in an attempt to cal m the the uproar that had come about in regards to our protests i said well actually the event was successful and michael oren completed his speech and he completed his speech with about ten minutes left in the event after which he had the ability to take question answers and so always the counterargument has been when we say well actually michael oren did finish his speech is well you didn't allow the audience as question and answers and you took away the right to do so because of the amount of time you took up now michael oren was able to field question and answers about ten or fifteen minutes left before seven o'clock but he actually and the event early and goes off to a los angeles lakers basketball game because he has a photo opportunity with kobe bryant we actually have the head of los angeles lakers security testify  to this fact during our trial so in terms of making life miserable for michael warning him not being able to complete his speech we only took up seven minutes of a scheduled ninety minute talk and so with that we are eventually sighted and released at u c irvine and were let go a few hours after the event and for us we really thought ok yeah we got arrested but i mean really this is more of an intimidation on the part of the university and that u c irvine police response the commands of the administrators and when they went in a minute or say hey we're not going to tolerate anything today you serve on police respond and they have people arrested as a sign of intimidation not necessarily because you're committing a crime and that yeah you'll get released and you or you get you'll get cited released and no one's really ever going to follow up with with what you did and for sure no judge is going to allow a case like this in front of his courtroom and that obviously is freedom of speech happens all the time and so we really didn't make much of it at that point in time and instead we were like all right did we accomplish what we came to do yes we did we felt we had sent our message and that really we had accomplished it was a mission accomplished the next day actually it begins to pick up in the media the orange county register and other media organizations from the orange county area begin to pick up on the story and even some international news the major israeli newspaper haaretz picks up on the story as well and it begins to get broadcast around and we're like ok cool this is actually getting a lot of media coverage when expect to get that much media coverage but it was and a few days later we begin to actually receive e mails in our inbox is from the university itself saying hey we think you guys might have broken some school rules so we'd like to sit down and meet to discuss this so at that point in time we actually begin a seven month academic disciplinary procedure with the university the took place in february the discipline and the final sanctions on us were placed on in late august early september so really a seven month period of meetings and and whatnot with the university and in the end each one of us is individually academically disciplined by the university and the muslim student union which eight of us were a part of was also disciplined and held responsible for the for the protest and at that point in time eight of us were u c irvine students three of us were u c riverside students so the u c riverside students were dealing with the riverside administration and we were dealing with the irvine administration and we were all academically disciplined and muslim student union was actually suspended for a year and then that suspension was reduced to a quarter suspension which is ten weeks in our academic system at which point in time the school year continued and d m s you they were back to doing what they do and we thought that that was the end of the road we felt even if academic disciplinary sanctions were harsh considering that no one who had protested in this fashion had ever been disciplined in this way but we thought you know what ok we disciplined by the university yes we don't agree but ok this has to be the end of the road we can continue with our lives and everything will just go back to normal and actually what we ended up finding out was that a few weeks later after we received our  punishments was that the orange county district attorney had begun to investigate and was actually sending investigators into the field in order to invade ask people questions and interrogate people aman really what became harassment of a lot of students on our campus and what he would do would say he would show up at someone's house have five am on a sunday morning banging on the door hey this is a police open up and they would show up to people's houses day after day after day and really intimidate the parents t o of students at u c irvine i know your son and daughter is in there let me talk to them and the parents but no he's not here i know they're in here and it's happened on a daily basis with these students trying to get them to to answer his questions  this went on for some time and we actually found out also that the district attorney had initiated subpoenas and even a grand jury subpoena and grand jury testimony everything that he could possibly do to get felon charges against us and he had even in fact search warrants and he had obtained almost all of our communications by e mail from google yahoo hotmail whatever it may be from a period of about two weeks from all these different email providers during the time of the protest and so he actually came upon a hundred thousand pages of documents from our from our e mails and other type of communications and all of this was used to attempt to get felony charges and even everything he had got in is usually only granted by a judge when you have a felony case on hand as to be a very serious type of crime in order to do this and all we had done was protest and i mean if you watch the video it's quite obvious yes that to me that's protesting we never attempted to deny that you know that's me protesting but really what else is there other than what's on the video and is that really a felony charge and he really did everything in his his in powers to try and get felonies and even when it came time for the grand jury he had what ends up happening is if you have to testify you have to have your papers served to you  so a lot of the students they had classes and whatnot and they had regular lives and so he went well out of his way in order to have the papers hand delivered to them because you can't give it to their parents you can't give it to their cousin to their own call to that on has been given to them for it to be official and for them to have to actually testify in front of a grand jury and so one girl has her mid term one day and is pulled out of her mid term by a man in a suit here you go here your papers someone else is driving home goes to fill up gas all opals up behind her or him and hears your papers and so that was really what was happening and so of course students were intimidated and scared by this and so the grand jury is  summoned and in the end he actually has one year to file misdemeanor charges so his statue of limitation is one year for a misdemeanor and three years for a felony so it comes almost full circle to one full year after the protests that happened february two thousand and eleven i think at the time it was february sixth or seventh he ends up filing charges on a misdemeanor and i guess he realized that hey there's not really much i can get in terms of in terms of a felony and really the only thing that we could have possibly thought of in the lawyers even thought of in terms of a felony was he was looking for something terrorism related that you know what these are eleven muslim students who have acted up and is really trying to find something in in that regard thinking and what was going on and really when we were just exercising our first amendment rights and so we're finally charged with two misdemeanors the first being a disturbance of a public meeting and conspiracy to disturb a public meeting and this happens right before the one year deadline and a few weeks later the district attorney himself twenty or a caucus actually wants to sit down and talk to us and negotiate a settlement and we find out once we get there that there really isn't much negotiation that's going to take place we're offered a deal of pleading guilty admitting that we committed a crime and that we would be given community service and a few other things and really for him it was a way in which to score some cheap political points by saying hey i took care of these kids we felt that what we had done was completely well within our rights and so we didn't take the deal and even when you're a caucus himself sat down at the table with us and really what was an attempt to really int data i mean this is the district attorney for one of the biggest counties in america i think within like the top ten biggest counties in america and he's taking his time out to sit with a bunch of misdemeanors that doesn't happen this is a man who's a  political official he's elected and so for tony rackauckas it really was a no brainer to try and offer us a settlement where he can come out and say hey the student said they were guilty and then go about his normal business the only problem was that we didn't feel we had done anything wrong and so we begin to go through the process of going to trial and before you actually go to trial you have tons of hearings in which pretrial motions and other things are heard out in order to get ready for the actual trial so during the course of pretrial motions one point time we went through something called discovery each side brings out the evidence that they're going to present during the course of the of the trial as well as issues attorney at this point time releases all the information he had obtained from the search warrant and our attorneys going through him or one of our attorneys going through and realizes that a lot of the documents are actually privileged information because it's communications between her and us and at the time she was our attorney and we were her clients us attorney client privilege and so the judge and the ruling on on this we filed a motion saying that these are all illegally obtained and the judge in the siding with us and actually strikes out twenty thousand documents from the one hundred thousand documents  of evidence and saying that they were all attorney client privilege and even at that point in time also the judge remains removed i believe three attorneys from the case as well as the lead investigator from the case which is a huge blunder from shoe tourney's office to have that many people removed from the case now one of the main pieces of evidence being used to prosecute the eleven student the guy who was part of the student walkout is an e mail between him and the at and one of the attorneys and so the judge strikes that out and this is this of attorney no longer has any evidence against this eleven student and so at that point in time the disappeared attorney decides to return to the settlement table with the eleven student offers him  plea and he actually takes it we tell him you know what great offer you plead that you're innocent as if you know you never did anything and you can go about your normal you know everyday life and so he takes the no guilty plea and has to do about forty hours of community service and at that point on we become the ten students on trial rather than there are vine eleven being put on trial and so really for us we were never offered any such deal and so that's why we never took anything of that nature and we want to maintain our innocence and that what we had done was you know well within our rights and so we go to trial and really most missed a mistake about two to three days hours took about four weeks and so it really became a nice nine to five job  and at times it was interesting at times it was quite boring they know but it was a good experience you learn a lot from it and in the end we were found guilty unanimously by the jury of both of our charges and during sentencing the district attorney was trying to get us to serve some form of jail time but the judge actually there in sentencing said that due to the fact that this was a nonviolent protest and that these students acted out of moral conscience and that they really it was their actions were sincere action they were just trying to cause chaos and havoc but they felt if they were coming from a principled moral standpoint that he would and that we had you know good community records and we had always had a standing behavior that didn't or any jail time and he just gave his community service and probation and so in the end we were given community service and probation and for us though that really wasn't the end of the line because we felt that what we had done was not wrong in any sense of the word rude but rude is not against the is not against the law and that we were actually that was the point was to be rude and that when you're dealing with a form of injustice i mean you should be rude towards injustice and so that we really wanted to  the fact that people should not be allowed to be prosecuted by a district attorney because their political views go against that of the district attorney or of anyone within political power and that anyone who wants a protest should be able to protest and so we decided to appeal the case and the case is currently going through the appeals process right now which takes a lot of time but we're hopeful that it will be overturned during the pills process based on the fact that the way in which we are prosecuted  that was selectively and that that to be prosecuted selectively is unconstitutional and that that this one approach this is well within the rights of everyone here in this country and that the best way to protect our rights is t