Anti-Semitism in America
Cannot help a guilty sense of joy and delight
All of us Muslims feel very bewildered and distressed at the unjust and overwhelming support our Country gives to the State of Israel at the cost of Palestinians. We feel our Abrahamic cousins, the Jews are having a nice time. I therefore immediately spotted a headline in New York Times
"Anti-Semitism at My University, Hidden in Plain Sight" http://nyti.ms/2cJ7k2c.
It is written by Benjamin Gladstone, Junior at the Brown University, Providence, Rhode Islands and makes an interesting reading. Some of his revealing remarks include:
Other student groups were not willing to work with me because of my leadership roles in campus Jewish organizations. That was neither the first nor the last time that I would be ostracized this way.
Also last semester, anti-Zionists at Brown circulated a petition against a lecture by the transgender rights advocate Janet Mock because one of the sponsors was the Jewish campus group Hillel, even though the event was entirely unrelated to Israel or Zionism. Nevertheless, it’s painful that Jewish issues are shut out of these movements.
My fellow activists tend to dismiss the anti-Semitism that students like me experience regularly on campus. They don’t acknowledge the swastikas that I see carved into bathroom stalls, scrawled across walls or left on chalkboards. They don’t hear students accusing me of killing Jesus. They don’t notice professors glorifying anti-Semitic figures such as Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt or the leadership of Hezbollah, as mine have.
Nor do they speak against the anti-Semitism in American culture. Even as they rightfully protest hate crimes against Muslim Americans and discrimination against black people, they wrongfully dismiss attacks on Jews (who are the most frequent targets of religiously motivated hate crimes in the United States) and increasing anti-Semitism in the American political arena.
Many of my fellow activists also perpetuate anti-Semitism by dismissing Jews of color.
Even hummus has become politicized: Anti-Zionists at my school who demanded that cafeterias stop serving hummus produced by a company with Israeli ownership.
They don’t take issue with calls for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state.
My fellow activists tend to dismiss the anti-Semitism that students like me experience regularly on campus. They don’t acknowledge the swastikas that I see carved into bathroom stalls, scrawled across walls or left on chalkboards. They don’t hear students accusing me of killing Jesus. They don’t notice professors glorifying anti-Semitic figures such as Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt or the leadership of Hezbollah, as mine have.
Nor do they speak against the anti-Semitism in American culture. Even as they rightfully protest hate crimes against Muslim Americans and discrimination against black people, they wrongfully dismiss attacks on Jews (who are the most frequent targets of religiously motivated hate crimes in the United States) and increasing anti-Semitism in the American political arena.
Many of my fellow activists also perpetuate anti-Semitism by dismissing Jews of color.
Even hummus has become politicized: Anti-Zionists at my school who demanded that cafeterias stop serving hummus produced by a company with Israeli ownership.
They don’t take issue with calls for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state.
