When I lived in Berkeley full time, I used to read the East Bay Express regularly. Perhaps I still should, because this article shocked me to my cynical core.

An excerpt:

"....I came to Berkeley -- because of its strong romantic aura of the Free Speech Movement and Mario Savio," he recalls. "Then I got here and discovered that that light seems to have been extinguished. You have this vitriol. You feel it everywhere. Berkeley is now the epicenter of real hatred."

Almost three years later, Weinberg graduates this month as a student whose days at Cal were marked by what he calls "pinnacles of horror," in the pinched tone of a man betrayed. He remembers pro-Palestinian protesters insisting that Israeli border crossings are as bad as Nazi death camps. He remembers the glass front door of Berkeley's Hillel building -- where he attends Friday night services -- shattered by a cinderblock, with the message FUCK JEWS scrawled nearby. He remembers the spray-painted swastikas discovered one Monday morning last September on the walls of four lecture rooms in LeConte Hall accompanied by the chilling bilingual message, "Die, Juden. " (Via Glenn Reynolds.)

Here's Abdel Malik Ali, an African-American imam affiliated with Oakland's Masjid Al Islam mosque, addressing the sixth annual Muslim Students Association West Conference, held on at the Berkeley campus in February:

"Neo-cons are all Zionist Jews," he continued. He scanned the hall, wondering aloud whether Jewish infiltrators were among his listeners. If so, he had a message for them: "You made all the mistakes we wanted you to make. You went after Cynthia McKinney" -- the outspoken African-American former Georgia congresswoman who was frequently cited as the most anti-Semitic member of Congress. "So now black folks don't like you. ... You're walking into all the traps we want you to walk into. You hijacked American foreign policy."

Is this what Mario Savio and his followers had in mind? I doubt it.

I forwarded the East Bay Express link to a good friend in Berkeley, and here's his partial reaction:

It has now gotten to the point that I often lie about being Jewish when I am on campus, and I'm asked about my ethnicity. I'm not ashamed of being Jewish. Its just a matter of personal safety. When I am in a situation in which I am unsure about the people around me, I say I'm Greek. I used to do that in Baltimore 30, 40 years ago. "Xxxxxxx" [name omitted] is a common last name in Macedonia (northeastern Greece). Nobody beats up Greeks, so its relatively safe. Of course, it is sad that I feel that I need to do this.

It's a disgusting and shameful situation, and I can't believe that I am writing about the unbelievable spectacle of a Jewish friend being forced into "passing" for reasons of personal safety.

Readers should not make the mistake of dismissing this as "Oh well, what do you expect from a place like Berkeley?" Berkeley is not only part of the United States, it has been a trend-setting place for many years. I've watched as things like rent control, bans on smoking, attacks on the free market, a vicious intolerance for all things branded politically incorrect, and much more spread from Berkeley to the East Coast, then gradually made their way across the rest of the country until they were "in."

And now, anti-Semitism is "in" in Berkeley.

Anyone who thinks it will remain confined to Berkeley is mistaken.