SF Student activists anti-semitic?

Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 07:45:20 -0700
Wrom: UNNYCGPKYLEJGDGVCJVTLBXFGGMEPYOQKEDOTWFAO
To: sfsu-faculty [at] sfsu.edu
Subject: Report to the Campus

In my 14 years as president of this university, I have never been as
deeply distressed and angered by something that happened on this campus as
I am by the events of last week. On Tuesday, a pro-Israel peace rally,
thoughtfully organized and carefully carried out by SFSU Hillel members,
drawing some 400 participants from both campus and community, evoked
strong opinions and strong speech -- some from the free speech platform,
much from the nearby pro-Palestinian counter-demonstration. But strong,
even provocative, speech is not the problem, nor are strongly held
opinions on highly-charged topics. Rather, it was the lack of civility and
decency on the part of a very few demonstrators at points during the
rally, and much more markedly after it, when rhetoric and behavior
escalated beyond what this campus will tolerate.

For the most part, the most objectionable behavior occurred after the
rally's organizers brought it to a formal close and a group of
pro-Palestinian demonstrators who, in keeping with our student event
policy, had been held back by barricades and campus police, moved onto the
event site, where a few dozen organizers remained. There, some of the
demonstrators behaved in a manner that completely violated the values of
this institution and of most of you who are reading this message.

Thankfully, I am not speaking about physical violence. The monitoring by
University staff throughout the event and the significant police presence
we had arranged to have on hand ensured the safety of all involved.
Unfortunately, we were not equally able to ensure civil discourse and
maintain the sense of security to which every member of this campus is
entitled. A small but terribly destructive number of pro-Palestinian
demonstrators, many of whom were not SFSU students, abandoned themselves
to intimidating behavior and statements too hate-filled to repeat. This
group became so threatening in gesture and hostile in language that we
interposed a police line between the groups and eventually escorted the
Hillel students, and the faculty with them, from the plaza. No one was
physically assaulted, but that encounter puts at risk all that we value
and represent as a university community.

The demonstrators' behavior is not passing unchallenged. The University's
code of student discipline and event policy allow for individual and group
sanctions ranging from warning to suspension to expulsion for certain
violations, and some of what took place on Tuesday may well fall within
that area. Our videotaped record of the event is being reviewed now by SFSU
Public Safety to note violations and identify violators so that the
University's disciplinary procedures can begin. In one instance, that of a
protestor who seized and stamped on an Israeli flag, the case has already
gone forward. I fully expect to see other cases presented. If we identify
violations of public law, we will refer cases to the District Attorney,
with our strong recommendation for full prosecution. We have requested that
the District Attorney assign a member of the hate crime unit to work with
us, and our Department of Public Safety is contacting individuals who have
reported behavior at the rally which would warrant legal action on our part.

I hope you will agree that no love of homeland, no fear or grief for loved
ones in the actual area of Middle East conflict, excuses the behavior that
has been reported. This is not a war zone. It is a campus, a place where
all must feel physically protected even as we engage in the disputation
that is part of a teaching and learning environment. But when disputation
degenerates into bigotry and hate, we must -- and do -- act. We did so in
the case of the "blood libel" flyer (as I reported several weeks ago), and
we are doing so now. The anguish and fear that the May 7th events have
caused for members of our community can only intensify our active
commitment to making this campus a hate-free zone.

We have reviewed, and will continue to review, the policies and procedures
that guided our responses during the May 7 event. We may well adjust them.
Certainly, we will take steps to ensure that encounters like those I have
described will not recur. Nothing justifies such acts of overt hostility,
or even the implied threat of physical assault. Such behavior is not an
expression of free speech.

The vast majority of this campus community would condemn the hateful
speech and threatening behavior we saw last Tuesday. It is a very few
individuals who are fomenting this discord. Yet, as we see, their impact
can be profound -- if we allow it to be. Despite the claims of some, this
is not an anti-Semitic campus. But as history shows us, silence and
passivity can at times of crisis be very little different from complicity.
All of us -- and I would say especially members of the faculty, who have
the greatest opportunity to educate and influence our students -- have a
responsibility to help maintain this as a safe and sustaining environment
for the expression and exploration of opposing views.

Many of our best faculty are doing exactly that, consciously and
powerfully, every day. We need now to find ways to bring good colleagues
together to shape a collective effort. The CUSP II strategic planning
process offers us one opportunity; I am looking for others and welcome
your thoughts. We need to make what has happened on our campus an
occasion for learning, for reflection, for growth.

As you know, since the terrorist attacks on September 11th, I have sent
frequent messages to the entire University community calling for peace and
tolerance and many of you have responded marvelously, both in words and
action; I take great pride in the hundreds of very positive e-mail and
letters I have received. But now, as the actions of a small band of
bigots threaten to tarnish the reputation of the University as a whole and
to discredit all our students, I ask you to join me in speaking out for
this University's true values. Show in actions well as words that you
believe not only that "Love is Stronger Than Hate" but that hateful
actions, threats of violence, outrageous slurs and bigoted statements are
rejected and contemned by our entire campus community.

-- Robert A. Corrigan, President

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

A postscript: On May 10, the Jewish Bulletin ran a news story on the
rally. Following are the online link and the text of the article itself.
http://www.jewishsf.com/bk020510/sf10.html

Jews of SFSU make voices heard with pro-Israel rally

LYDIA LEE
Bulletin Correspondent

San Francisco State University's Malcolm X Plaza was thronged with
blue-and-white flags on Tuesday afternoon. The crowd heard a Holocaust
survivor, former Jewish refugees and others speak out in favor of Israel
and against perceived anti-Semitism on campus.

A small but vociferous group of Palestinian sympathizers cordoned-off to
one side loudly interjected their views, but campus police kept the two
groups separate.

Around 400 to 500 students and members of the Jewish community turned out
for the rally -- a triumph for some on campus. "This is the proudest day in
my six years on campus," said Fred Astren, a professor in the Jewish
Studies program at SFSU. "The voice of Jews was heard."

"The pro-Palestininians have been more vocal on campus," said Dustin
Jacobsen, a Jewish student who said he was anxious to hear the other side
of the story. He was one of about 100 bystanders who stood listening
outside the plaza. "They've had more protests and been more visible."

According to S.F. Hillel Executive Director Seth Brysk, there have been a
number of events on campus which have caused tension, including a flier
that alludes to "blood libel," or the ancient myth that Jewish people
sacrifice people of other religions for food. A large pro-Palestininian
demonstration during a Yom HaShoah commemoration, where some Jewish
students were threatened, said Brysk, was the last major confrontation on
campus.

Against the backdrop of a large sign reading "Israel Wants Peace: We Have
No Partner," a Holocaust survivor named Gloria, who went by first name
only, started the rally by defending Israeli military action as a fight
against terrorism.

"I ask you," she said, "what Israelis have ever been suicide bombers -- or
have blown up buses...[or] have attacked the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon on Sept. 11? There is a difference in the way Israel's enemies
attack and the way Israel defends itself."

"Everybody has the basic human right to be able to get on a bus, to be able
to go to a café...to be able to live their lives without the fear of people
using bombs as a political tactic," said Mark Schickman, president of the
Holocaust Center of Northern California.

Representing an organization called JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle
East and North Africa), Gina Waldman and Joseph Wahed spoke of the many
Jewish people who had been displaced from Arab countries.

"In 1967, like many hundred thousand Jews...my family was expelled from
Libya," said Waldman. "All of our assets were confiscated. I was 19 years
old at the time.

"I am not here to seek revenge for the 900,000 Jewish refugees -- I am here
to seek recognition," she added.

"We just assimilated wherever we went," said Wahed after the rally. "We
Jews from the Arab world deserve some respect."

Yitzhak Santis, director of Middle East affairs at the Jewish Community
Relations Council, referred to "racism and apartheid" in the Arab world.
"In countries like Iraq -- there are non-Arab minorities, the Kurds, the
Assyrians -- ask them about their civil rights...about their demand for
self-determination," he said. "Bring real peace to the Middle East. Bring
democracy for all Middle Eastern people."

John Rothmann, host of a local radio show on KGO, gave his retrospective on
Israel's history. "This is not the first time I have stood here in this
plaza. I stood here in 1967...and there was the same voices you hear today
chanting for Israel's destruction."

In between the speakers, students led the crowd in chants like
"Two-four-six-eight/Teach your children not to hate."

Sophomore Gabriana Marks encouraged students to come to Hillel and repeated
the words: "Don't be afraid to be a Jew."

The counter-rally was organized by the General Union of Palestinian
Students. About 100 people held flags and signs, including one sign that
read: "Master-subject relationship: creates anti-social behavior."
Throughout the speeches, they chanted "No peace -- no justice," "End the
occupation now," "Free, free Palestine," and "Israel is a racist state."
Occasionally there were yells of, "Go back to Europe."

One young man carried a Palestinian flag and wore a "Hello My Name Is"
sticker which read "F--- Sharon."

The Palestinian supporters expressed demonstrable hostility. After the
rally ended, several of the people in that group tried to take over the
stage. Thwarted by campus police, the pro-Palestinian contingent clamored
for the removal of a banner which said "We stand with Israel with hope for
peace" and also wanted two Israeli flags taken down.

"Why do I have to look at this s---?" said Joseph Jada, a member of the
pro-Palestinian group, complaining about the flag. Of the rally, Jada said,
"It's terrible -- we were behind barricades."

"They have the right to protest," said Hillel's Brysk.

He expressed regret that campus police had to step in and escort the
remaining group of Israel supporters to the edge of campus after the rally,
but was generally positive about the event. "This is the first time in a
very long time where Jewish students were able to express themselves and
stood up in the face of intimidation."

Dear Colleagues,
>
> Today, all day, I have been listening to the reactions of students, parents,
> and community members who were on campus yesterday. I have received email from
> around the country, and phone calls, worried for both my personal safety on
> the campus, and for the entire intellectual project of having a Jewish Studies
> program, and recruiting students to a campus that in the last month has become
> a venue for hate speech and anti-Semitism.
>
> After nearly 7 years as director of Jewish Studies, and after nearly two
> decades of life here as a student, faculty member and wife of the Hillel
> rabbi, after years of patient work and difficult civic discourse, I am
> saddened to see SFSU return to its notoriety as a place that teaches
> anti-Semitism, hatred for America, and hatred, above all else, for the Jewish
> State of Israel, a state that I cherish. I cannot fully express what it feels
> like to have to walk across campus daily, past maps of the Middle East that do
> not include Israel, past posters of cans of soup with labels on them of drops
> of blood and dead babies, labeled "canned Palestinian children meat,
> slaughtered according to Jewish rites under American license," past poster
> after poster calling out "Zionism=racism, and Jews=Nazis." This is not civic
> discourse, this is not free speech, and this is the Weimar Republic with brown
> shirts it cannot control. This is the casual introduction of the medieval
> blood libel and virulent hatred smeared around our campus in a manner so
> ordinary that it hardly excites concern-except if you are a Jew, and you
> understand that hateful words have always led to hateful deeds.
>
> Yesterday, the hatred coalesced in a hate mob. Yesterday's Peace In The Middle
> East Rally was completely organized by the Hillel students, mostly 18 and 19
> years old. They spoke about their lives at SFSU and of their support for
> Israel, and they sang of peace. They wore new Hillel t-shirts that said
> "peace" in English, Hebrew and Arabic. A Russian immigrant, in his new
> English, spoke of loving his new country, a haven from anti-Semitism. A
> sophomore spoke about being here only one year, and about the support and
> community she found at the Hillel House. Both spoke of how hard it was to live
> as a Jew on this campus how isolating, how terrifying. A surfer guy, spoke of
> his love of Jesus, and his support for Israel, and a young freshman earnestly
> asked for a moment of silence, and all the Jews stood still, listening as the
> shouted hate of the counter demonstrators filled the air with abuse.
>
> As soon as the community supporters left, the 50 students who remained praying
> in a minyan for the traditional afternoon prayers, or chatting, or cleaning up
> after the rally, talking -- were surrounded by a large, angry crowd of
> Palestinians and their supporters. But they were not calling for peace. They
> screamed at us to "go back to Russia" and they screamed that they would kill
> us all, and other terrible things. They surrounded the praying students, and
> the elderly women who are our elder college participants, who survived the
> Shoah, who helped shape the Bay Area peace movement, only to watch as a
> threatening crowd shoved the Hillel students against the wall of the plaza. I
> had invited members of my Orthodox community to join us, members of my Board
> of Visitors, and we stood there in despair. Let me remind you that in building
> the SFSU Jewish Studies program, we asked the same people for their support
> and that our Jewish community, who pay for the program once as taxpayers and
> again as Jews, generously supports our program. Let me remind you that ours is
> arguably one of the Jewish Studies programs in the country most devoted to
> peace, justice and diversity since our inception.
>
> As the counter demonstrators poured into the plaza, screaming at the Jews to
> "Get out or we will kill you" and "Hitler did not finish the job," I turned to
> the police and to every administrator I could find and asked them to remove
> the counter demonstrators from the Plaza, to maintain the separation of 100
> feet that we had been promised. The police told me that they had been told not
> to arrest anyone, and that if they did, "it would start a riot." I told them
> that it already was a riot. Finally, Fred Astren, the Northern California
> Hillel Director and I went up directly to speak with Dean Saffold, who was
> watching from her post a flight above us. She told us she would call in the SF
> police. But the police could do nothing more than surround the Jewish students
> and community members who were now trapped in a corner of the plaza, grouped
> under the flags of Israel, while an angry, out of control mob, literally
> chanting for our deaths, surrounded us. Dr. Astren and I went to stand with
> our students. This was neither free speech nor discourse, but raw, physical
> assault.
>
> Was I afraid? No, really more sad that I could not protect my students. Not
> one administrator came to stand with us. I knew that if a crowd of Palestinian
> or Black student had been there, surrounded by a crowd of white racists
> screaming racist threats, shielded by police, the faculty and staff would have
> no trouble deciding which side to stand on. In fact, the scene recalled for me
> many moments in the Civil Rights movement, or the United Farm Workers
> movement, when, as a student, I stood with Black and Latino colleagues,
> surrounded by hateful mobs. Then, as now, I sang peace songs, and then, as
> now, the hateful crowd screamed at me, "Go back to Russia, Jew." How ironic
> that it all took place under the picture of Cesar Chavez, who led the very
> demonstrations that I took part in as a student.
>
> There was no safe way out of the Plaza. We had to be marched back to the
> Hillel House under armed SF police guard, and we had to have a police guard
> remain outside Hillel. I was very proud of the students, who did not flinch
> and who did not, even one time, resort to violence or anger in retaliation.
> Several community members who were swept up in the situation simply could not
> believe what they saw. One young student told me, "I have read about
> anti-Semitism in books, but this is the first time I have seen real
> anti-Semites, people who just hate me without knowing me, just because I am a
> Jew." She lives in the dorms. Her mother calls and urges her to transfer to a
> safer campus.
>
> Today is advising day. For me, the question is an open one: what do I advise
> the Jewish students to do?
>
> Laurie Zoloth,
> Director, Jewish Studies Program

arabs are semites too.

"too"??

Arabs, Palestinians, and Arab World Jews are the original Semites from the semitic regions where Israel/Palestine is. White pale-face Euro Jews are white pale-face Europeans.

part of the effect of institutionalized Zionism is that we're led to believe (lied to) that somehow, some way, Euro Jews are native to the Semitic regions that have been inhabited by Palestinians (forever, since it's their homeland) and other Arabs. this is bullshit, of course, since there are ethnic semite Jews in Israel, but Euro Jews are hardly ethnically or geographically semites.

take back history, take back definitions, prmote the truth!

JC

Actually genetic research shows that Jews have maintained a remarkable degree of genetic seperation from European populations. Jews from most parts of the world are more closely related to palestinians than host countries. Indeed your average Jew is literally a dirrect descendent the origional Palestinian Jews who where driven from their homelands over a 1000 years ago.

it is that the u.s. government supports israel that the protestors hate. they are against the u.s. and would protest honky colored band aids if there was nothing else. some of them are misfits who feel cowered by the weight of u.s. citizenship. some of them are bored and spoiled and love the college civil disobedience crowd. much of life is about being accepted by the `right` crowd, here in America.

"dont mind the maggots"

Here's the University administration's account of what happened:

http://www.sfsu.edu/~news/response/summary.htm

Haven't found the pro-Palestinian students' account yet.

But the administration quotes some counterdemonstrators saying "go back to Europe". The founders of the Israeli state did come from Europe - even if many of their distant, distant ancestors came from the Middle East, so what?

'Course "go back to Europe" ain't worth that much as a political program.....in Israel, or in South Africa for that matter.

The vote is clearly between ragimes as Egypt, Iran, Iraw, syria, Lybia, etc and a free, liberal democracy as Israel, some people just aren't ready for democracy.

Let's be clear about one thing --- Israel is a theocratic state with limited potential to be a democracy as long as apartheid is a core component of their state structure.

Get your facts straight birdbrain. Israel is not a theocracy. It was founded by a bunch of left wing socialists who were agnostics, if not atheists.

The Religious parties in Israel have too much power in the minds of most Israelis, but it is by know means a theocracy. If you ever went there you'd know that.

It is also not an apartheid state. Arab citizens of Israel have more rights than Arabs in any part of the middle east. There are Arab elected officals in Israel's Kenneset. There is a high ranking Arab General in the IDF. He is of Druze extraction.

So check your facts. Israel was created to be a haven for Jews after Europer murdered 6 million of them. It must always remain a Jewish homeland and act as a haven for Jews. It does not have to be a theocratic state and it isn't.