At UC-Irvine, the Muslim Student Union this week hosts a program called “Holocaust in the Holy Land.” One of the sessions is titled “Israel: The Fourth Reich.”

In a news story, one student summarizes the MSU’s views:

Kareem Elsayed, a student who is a former president of the Muslim Student Union, said in an e-mail interview that “the pro-Zionist media has allowed for the monopolization of the term ‘holocaust’” to refer to what the Nazis did to the Jews. But he said that there have been many holocausts, and that the group looks to link Israel to the Nazis for specific reasons.
“We are using this title to emphasize the fact that the apartheid state of Israel has moved from oppressed to oppressor,” he said. “We refer to the apartheid state as the fourth reich to emphasize the fascist and oppressive policies, and genocidal tendencies, of the apartheid state.” Those who criticize the use of language linking Israel to the Nazis “are using the issue of the name as a cloak to cover their true intentions of silencing anyone that would reveal the realities of the oppression of the indigenous Palestinian people.”