More anti-Semitism in a Paris suburb: A group of North African youths violently assaulted five young Jews last night, and several of the latter suffered broken jaws. A local police officer reported that the attackers numbered 20 people.
San Francisco, as well, was the scene of an anti-Semitic near-riot last Thursday. Laurie Zoloth, Director of the Jewish Studies Program at San Francisco State University, says she witnessed a \"hate mob\" and a \"large, angry crowd of Palestinians and their supporters\" that surrounded a group of 50 Jews and \"screamed at us to \'go back to Russia\' and... that they would kill us all, and other terrible things...\" Her account continues:
\"[The] threatening crowd shoved the Hillel students against the wall of the plaza... 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... [The police finally arrived and] 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... We had to be marched back to the Hillel House under armed San Francisco police guard, and we had to have a police guard remain outside Hillel.\"
Ms. Zoloth further writes about a permanent atmosphere of anti-Semitism on the SFSU campus:
\"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.\"
While on the topic of anti-Semitism at California universities, the Wall St. Journal recently featured an article discussing a course offered at University of California-Berkeley. The course description for English R1A, \"The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance\" (4 credits), reads as follows:
\"The brutal Israeli military occupation of Palestine, [ongoing] since 1948, has systematically displaced, killed, and maimed millions of Palestinian people. And yet, from under the brutal weight of the occupation, Palestinians have produced their own culture and poetry of resistance. This class will examine the history of the [resistance] and the way that it is narrated by Palestinians in order to produce an understanding of the Intifada... This class takes as its starting point the right of Palestinians to fight for their own self-determination. Conservative thinkers are encouraged to seek other [classes].\"
San Francisco, as well, was the scene of an anti-Semitic near-riot last Thursday. Laurie Zoloth, Director of the Jewish Studies Program at San Francisco State University, says she witnessed a \"hate mob\" and a \"large, angry crowd of Palestinians and their supporters\" that surrounded a group of 50 Jews and \"screamed at us to \'go back to Russia\' and... that they would kill us all, and other terrible things...\" Her account continues:
\"[The] threatening crowd shoved the Hillel students against the wall of the plaza... 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... [The police finally arrived and] 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... We had to be marched back to the Hillel House under armed San Francisco police guard, and we had to have a police guard remain outside Hillel.\"
Ms. Zoloth further writes about a permanent atmosphere of anti-Semitism on the SFSU campus:
\"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.\"
While on the topic of anti-Semitism at California universities, the Wall St. Journal recently featured an article discussing a course offered at University of California-Berkeley. The course description for English R1A, \"The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance\" (4 credits), reads as follows:
\"The brutal Israeli military occupation of Palestine, [ongoing] since 1948, has systematically displaced, killed, and maimed millions of Palestinian people. And yet, from under the brutal weight of the occupation, Palestinians have produced their own culture and poetry of resistance. This class will examine the history of the [resistance] and the way that it is narrated by Palestinians in order to produce an understanding of the Intifada... This class takes as its starting point the right of Palestinians to fight for their own self-determination. Conservative thinkers are encouraged to seek other [classes].\"