© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

A University of California at Berkeley lecturer speaking at an
anti-war rally Saturday called for a Palestinian-style intifada, or
uprising, against the United States in response to American actions in
the Middle East.

Hatem Bazian, a native Palestinian with a Ph.D. in Islamic studies,
stirred up the San Francisco crowd, asking three times, to resounding
affirmations, "Are you angry?"


U.C. Berkeley lecturer Hatem Bazian

The comments at the outdoor rally held at United Nation's Plaza were
caught on a digital camera's movie format by a reader of the popular
weblog Little Green Footballs.

An estimated 2,000 to 3,000 people attended the "emergency" action
organized by the radical anti-war group International A.N.S.W.E.R. in
response to the increased fighting in the Iraqi city of Fallujah.

The International A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition is an umbrella group tied to
the World Workers Party, a Marxist organization that supports
authoritarian regimes and communist dictatorships.

The lecturer in Berkeley's Near Eastern Studies and Ethnic Studies
Departments continued:


"Well, we've been watching intifada in Palestine, we've been watching
an uprising in Iraq, and the question is that what are we doing? How
come we don't have an intifada in this country?
Because it seem[s] to me, that we are comfortable in where we are,
watching CNN, ABC, NBC, Fox, and all these mainstream ... giving us a
window to the world while the world is being managed from Washington,
from New York, from every other place in here in San Francisco:
Chevron, Bechtel, [Carlyle?] Group, Halliburton; every one of those
lying, cheating, stealing, deceiving individuals are in our country
and we're sitting here and watching the world pass by, people being
bombed, and it's about time that we have an intifada in this country
that change[s] fundamentally the political dynamics in here.

And we know every – They're gonna say some Palestinian being too
radical – well, you haven't seen radicalism yet!"

On his website, Bazian says he teaches courses on Islam, Islamic law,
Sufisim, Arabic, and politics of the Middle East at U.C. Berkeley as
well as at San Francisco State University, Berkeley Graduate
Theological Union and Diablo Valley College.

He also provides "guidance to the community on issues pertaining to
Islam and Muslims in the Bay Area."

Bazim, his website says, was chairman of the U.C. Berkeley Graduate
Assembly and from 1995-1999 was coordinator of the Graduate Minority
Students Project of the Graduate Assembly, "through which he
spearheaded statewide efforts to defeat proposition 209," which sought
to eliminate affirmative action programs in California.

He is co-host and assistant producer of the radio program "Islam
Today" in the Bay Area and was a translation consultant for the San
Francisco Chronicle on stories relating to Islam, Muslims and world
politics.

Vietnam will be 'child's play'

At the rally Saturday, Bazian said the Vietnam War will be regarded as
"child's play" compared to the U.S. experience in Iraq:


"And the people in Iraq understand who's the foreigner in the country.
It's not the Arabs who are coming to help. Even if more Arabs who come
to help, they understand who's helping and who's opposing them. The –
it took the British three years to unite the Iraqis against them. And
it took less than a year for the – for the Bush administration to
unite all the Iraqis. And they need to understand: what took place in
Vietnam will be child's play to what will take place in Iraq ... ."
A Berkeley student at the rally expressed support for Iraqi attacks on
U.S. troops, charging "the occupation is a source of tremendous
violence against Iraqis."


"In light of that, you know, I think we've got to support the
resistance; we've got to say that we support attacks against the
occupying forces," he said. 'So I mean – and you can imagine what kind
of an inspiring thing that is for people in Palestine, for people in
Bolivia, for people in Argentina, Colombia, all over the world, facing
down the barrel of a US-supplied gun. Seeing the people of Iraq fight
back, that's what we need."
An unidentified speaker encouraged attacks on U.S. troops worldwide:


"We stand here – we stand here recognizing that the war on Iraq is
illegal, that the war on Iraq is illegal, and that resistance, that
resistance against this war is protected by international law. It is
legitimate, and that we – and we in this movement support the
resistance against American imperialism by any means necessary."