 The pro-Israel campus advocacy group StandWithUs described this image as offensive.In October 2009, students from UCI met with Hamas official Aziz Duwaik on a university-sponsored trip to the West Bank under a program called the Olive Tree Initiative (OTI), a neutral, apolitical education group that studies the Arab-Israeli conflict.The meeting was questioned in 2011, and the initial response from UCI was that the meeting was justified, as the education group was studying the different narratives that contribute to the situation in the Middle East.