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This email was sent to San Francisco State University
faculty and administration on May 10, 2002
by the Director of Jewish Studies.
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
R. Chaim Mahgel
Administrative Assistant to the Director
Jewish Studies Program HUM 416
San Francisco State University
1600 Holloway Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94132
415-338-6075
jewish@sfsu.edu
http://www.sfsu.edu/~jewish |
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