by Aviva Slomich
Will the social justice warriors who scream against cultural appropriation come to the defense of their Jewish classmates?
What should be considered hateful behavior on American university campuses? Using ethnic or religious slurs, as are heard on many campuses across the U.S.?
Intimidating students
who don't agree with you to such a degree that they are afraid to attend
classes, as happened at the University of Michigan, or feel the need
to transfer to another university, as happened to former Graduate
Students Association president Milan Chatterjee at UCLA?
Creating videos that portray a particular ethnic group as monsters?
Supporting restarting
the intifadas that have murdered hundreds of innocent men, women, and
children from various ethnic groups?
Sharing Nazi propaganda
on a student organization's website, and selling shirts with the
terrorist Leila Khaled emblazoned on them, as happened at Vassar
College?
Hijacking every liberal cause on campus to target one ethnic group?
If you've answered yes
to any or all of the above questions, then it should be clear: Students
for Justice in Palestine is a hate group. All the above examples have
been orchestrated on U.S. campuses by that group or its affiliated
organizations.
Does this mean every
member of SJP is a hateful extremist? No. Does it mean every
organization that sponsors an event with SJP or co-signs a petition with
SJP is a hate group? No.
What it does mean is
that every university that permits an SJP chapter to register as a
recognized student organization is abetting hate speech. Every group
that sponsors an event with SJP or co-signs a petition with the
organization is legitimizing its hateful messages. Every professor who
serves as a faculty adviser, officially permitting SJP to spread its
hateful rhetoric on campus, is responsible for the manipulation of the
naive students who join SJP, thinking they are fighting for a just
cause and against hate.
At the university
level, we assume that students receive information from various
sources, and that their professors are guiding them to ask the right
questions, to follow no one blindly, and to try their best to get an
even-handed account on all issues that matter to them by looking to
differing perspectives.
That's not happening.
Instead, professors are
taking advantage of their impressionable students, who look to them as
omnipotent mentors. With social media and Google filtering content by
popularity, and with most millennials tending to follow those who share
the same opinions, it's almost absurd to think that university students
are getting a well-balanced and unbiased education.
One result of this is a spike in campus anti-Semitism.
At Brown University,
Janet Mock, a transgender, black, native Hawaiian activist, was
pressured to cancel an event because Hillel, a Jewish institution, was
sponsoring her talk.
Stanford alumna Molly
Horwitz didn't receive a bid for Student Senate from the Students of
Color Association because she was Jewish and was thus suspected of
having "duel loyalties."
At the University of
California, Santa Cruz, Daniel Bernstein was told that he must abstain
on a BDS resolution because he was "elected to the student government
with a Jewish agenda."
Recently, after a class
at the University of California, Berkeley was suspended for a short
period of time due to its extreme bias on the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict, the campus saw an outbreak of anti-Jewish literature.
The cases spark many questions.
Will the social justice
warriors who scream against cultural appropriation come to the defense
of their Jewish classmates? Will those who chant for lower tuition fees
stamp out anti-Semitic absurd claims that Jews and Zionists are the
reason for the high costs? Will feminists jump to the side of the
future Molly Horwitzes and Janet Mocks? Will those who battle
Islamophobia protest until anti-Semites are kicked off campus? Will
LGBT activists support the only country in the Middle East where gays
feel safe?
Lastly, will those who
honestly want to help find a peaceful resolution to the Arab-Israeli
conflict denounce those who support the murder of innocents or will they
trample on those who speak for the peace of all peoples: Israelis,
Palestinians, Arabs and Jews?
Aviva Slomich is international campus director for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.
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Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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