When thugs confront Michael Oren

Welcome back to America, ambassador.

Michael Oren, who grew up in northern New Jersey before moving to Israel, experienced firsthand the crude tug-of-war between advocates for Israel and the Arabs.

The newly-minted Israeli ambassador to the United States was shouted down by a group of Arab students at the University of California, Irvine, on Monday, Feb. 8. The criminal disruption exemplifies - but hardly exceeds - the vicious nature of many recent incidents arising from the Israeli-Arab conflict. You are not in West Orange any more, Michael Oren.

The debate in America and our Canadian neighbor has been anything but civil discourse. While neither side is pure, the pro-Arab corner can praise itself for employing perhaps 80 percent of the disgusting tactics that characterize the conflict.

The 11 thugs who were arrested after disrupting Oren’s talk are altar boys compared to some of their compatriots in Manhattan, Toronto, Philadelphia and Miami Beach. They habitually employ tasteless tactics, level broad-based accusations, distort the facts, compare Israel to Nazi Germany, commit low-level criminal offenses and downright lie.

The incident at UCI is appalling, but there have been far worse episodes - some a matter of personal experience. When Oren spoke, intruders had spread out through the audience of 500 and interrupted him 10 times. “Israel is a murderer,” one shouted. “How many Palestinians did you kill?” cried another.

Oren left the stage after the first four outbursts and returned 20 minutes later to withstand six more verbal assaults before dozens of jeering students stormed out to conduct a demonstration outside, according to The Los Angeles Jewish Journal and other media sources.

The reception at UCI should have been a cakewalk for the ambassador. Oren grew up in the suburb of West Orange, west of Newark, before moving to Israel, and survived a Syrian ambush in Lebanon in 1982 while serving as a paratrooper. He also served in the two-front war against Hamas and Hezbollah in 2006 and last year’s invasion of Gaza. In between, he wrote two best-selling books, “Six Days of War” and “Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East.”

The hecklers at UCI also face possible disciplinary action, which could include expulsion.

That same night, in nearby Los Angeles, a small group of demonstrators were escorted out of a room at the UCLA School of Law after they filed into line in front of an Israeli speaker, legal advisor Daniel Taub, and stood in silence with signs taped to their stomachs reading “Turn Your Backs on War Crimes,” the Journal reported. Taub spoke about the Goldstone report.

The California events reflect a long tradition of offensive conduct. Early in the past decade, activists chose Miami Beach’s Holocaust memorial for an anti-Israel demonstration that afforded comparisons of Israeli tactics to Hitler’s storm troopers.

Outside Philadelphia’s Israeli consulate, protesters burned an Israeli flag and marched for a mile to Independence Hall, tying up rush-hour traffic. Pro-Arab students at the University of Pennsylvania crafted Israeli-style checkpoints on campus to prevent other students from moving freely between classes, forcing them to discover how the poor Palestinians feel when they must wait at checkpoints on the West Bank.

They chose Israel anniversary festivals in Boston and San Francisco to gather en masse outside the festival sites and make certain that attendees could hear their taunts. If memory serves, Jews at the Boston site had to pass through a gauntlet of demonstrators to reach the event site.

These activists have disrupted pro-Israel speakers at other venues, including Benjamin Netanyahu in Canada a few years before he was elected prime minister of Israel last year.

Several months ago, Jewish students at York University in Toronto were chased by dissidents to the campus Hillel office, and these ruffians surrounded the place and would not let them leave. In Berkeley, Calif., pro-Arab supporters vandalized a site associated with Jewish students. Did I mention my personal experiences? I’ll summarize:

At Times Square last year, I was part of a small counter-protest after more than 700 protesters against the Gaza war had formed. The 30 of us were kept a block away, yet a few hundred of them surged to the corner across from us taunting and shouting at us. “Shame on you!” a chorus screamed at one point. A few held aloft some shoes, as did the Iraqi who tossed his shoes at President Bush, and someone tossed a few small objects across the street at us.

At a government office, a senior manager tacked up a poster on a bulletin board that depicted a Palestinian flag accompanied by the words, “There will be no peace until there is justice.” She posted a similar sign two days later. Jewish employees, myself included, regarded these signs as anti-Israel and filed complaints with an anti-discrimination agency. The agency rebuffed us, contending that this was a free-speech issue even though she knowingly created a hostile environment.

What to do? Above all, press law enforcement authorities to swiftly enforce the law when these goons so much as jaywalk. As noted above, colleges and employers should impose disciplinary action and victims should inquire about complaints with anti-discrimination agencies. Offenders who are not citizens should be referred to immigration.

If they want “justice” so badly, let us by all means give them justice.