In his critique of the Western media, journalist Joris Luyendijk recalls looking for a street battle between Israeli troops and Palestinians in Ramallah, which appeared too peaceful to be the same city he saw on CNN. He asked where to find the fighting and was told to be at the City Inn Hotel around 2 pm. Sure enough, soldiers and stone throwers appeared on cue at that time the next day.

When it comes to covering the Israel-Palestine conflict, journalists are often tourists, and the combatants are like hula dancers putting on a show for them.

But sometimes the show makes its way here. Students disrupting a talk that Israel's ambassador to the U.S. gave last month seemed designed to suck reporters into another staged event.

On February 8, 11 students were arrested after repeatedly interrupting Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren's speech at UC Irvine. The students, some of whom were from UC Riverside, have been dubbed the "Irvine 11," and the incident became news fodder for partisans eager to churn out press releases. In this case, the combatants weren't just the students who got arrested but also the outside groups opining on the incident.

The Zionist Organization of America's call for prospective UC Irvine students to apply elsewhere and donors to stop sending the school money seemed to get the most coverage.

The Muslim Public Affairs Council's call for an investigation into the arrests and the Council on American-Islamic Relations' demand that charges against the students be dropped drew less attention.

Fortunately, there was some analysis of the spectacle itself.

Perhaps the most insightful story about the Irvine 11 appeared in the Los Angeles Times. The article, by Raja Abdulrahim, described a situation where the "loudest voices are being raised far from campus, all but drowning out the sentiments of students."

A UC Irvine political science professor was quoted as saying, "I'm Jewish, and I only hear about this stuff at UCI when I'm off campus." A student who heads a pro-Israel group said, "It seems like sometimes people forget that the conflict is over there and not at UCI."

More than a week before the Academy Awards, the Feb. 26 Times article seemed to hand out Oscars for best performances:

• The Council on American-Islamic Relations and the National Lawyers Guild asked that charges    against the Irvine 11 be dropped, even though the Orange County district attorney hadn't filed any charges.

• The head of the Muslim Public Affairs Council wrote a piece for the Huffington Post a week after the incident demanding that the students be freed. But campus police held the students only until the speech ended and never took them into custody.

• State Assemblyman Chuck DeVore sent a letter to the university's chancellor urging that the Muslim Student Union be banned from campus. He said his opinion mattered because he had studied Arabic and helped secure U.S. support for Israel's anti-ballistic missile system. (The Muslim Student Union has said it wasn't involved in the Feb. 8 incident.)