Open letter from Jewish Columbia students denounces anti-Semitism – The Forward

Across the street from the camp, Jewish students hung hostage posters and the Israeli flag at Columbia University. Photo by Leonardo Munoz/AFP via Getty Images

Editor’s Note: Today we published two open letters from students regarding the protests that have rocked campuses across the country for weeks. Below, more than 280 Jewish students at Columbia University say their “concerns were brushed aside and invalidated” when they spoke out against anti-Semitism on campus. In the other letter, more than 750 Jewish students from more than 140 campuses said: “reject the claim that these encampments are anti-Semitic and pose an inherent threat to the safety of Jewish students. » The original letters can be found here and here.

To the community of Colombia:

Over the past six months, many have spoken on our behalf. Some are well-meaning alumni or unaffiliated people who show up to wave the Israeli flag at the gates of Columbia. Some are politicians who seek to use their experiences to foment the American culture war. More particularly, some are our Jewish peers who symbolize oneself by claiming to represent “true Jewish values” and attempting to delegitimize OUR lived experiences of anti-Semitism. We are here to write to you as Jewish students at Columbia University, connected to our community and deeply engaged in our culture and history. We would like to speak on our behalf.

Many of us sit next to you in class. We are your lab partners, your study buddies, your peers and your friends. We participate in the same student government, clubs, Greek life, volunteer organizations, and sports teams as you.

Most of us did not choose to become political activists. We don’t bang drums or chant catchy slogans. We’re average students, just trying to pass finals, just like the rest of you. Those who demonize us under the guise of anti-Zionism have forced us to engage in activism and publicly defend our Jewish identity.

We proudly believe in the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in our historic homeland as a fundamental tenet of our Jewish identity. Contrary to what many have tried to sell you, no, Judaism cannot be separated from Israel. Zionism is, quite simply, the manifestation of this belief.

Our religious texts are completed with references to Israel, Zion and Jerusalem. The land of Israel is filled with archaeological remains of a Jewish presence spanning centuries. Yet, despite generations of exile and diaspora Throughout the world, Jewish people have never stopped dreaming of returning to our homeland – Judea, the very place from which we get our name, “Jews.” Indeed, just a few days ago we all closed our Passover seder with the proclamation “Next year in Jerusalem!”

Many of us are not observant, but Zionism remains a pillar of our Jewish identity. We have been expelled from Russia, Libya, Ethiopia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Poland, Egypt, Algeria, Germany, Iran and the list continues. We are connected to Israel not only as our ancestral homeland, but also as the only place in the modern world where Jews can securely take ownership of their own destiny. Our experiences at Columbia over the past six months are a a poignant reminder of this.

We were raised on our grandparents’ stories about concentration camps, gas chambers and ethnic cleansing. The essence of Hitler’s anti-Semitism lay in the very fact that we were “not European enough”, that as Jews we represented threats to the “superior” Aryan race. This ideology ultimately left six million of us in ashes.

The evil irony of today’s anti-Semitism is a twisted reversal of our Holocaust legacy; the protesters on campus dehumanized us, imposing the characterization of “white colonizer” on us. We were told that we were “the oppressors of all brown people” and that “the Holocaust was not special.” Columbia students chanted “we don’t want Zionists here“, alongside “death to the Zionist state” and “returns to Poland,» where our loved ones lie in mass graves.

This unhealthy distortion highlights the nature of anti-Semitism: in each generation, the Jewish people are blamed and scapegoated for the societal evil of the time. In Iran and the Arab world, we have suffered ethnic cleansing due to our alleged ties to the “Zionist entity”. In Russia, we endured state violence and were ultimately massacred for being capitalists. In Europe, we were victims of genocide because we were communists and not European enough. And today we are accused of being Also European, depicted as the worst evil in society – colonizers and oppressors. We are targeted because we believe that Israel, our ancestral and religious homeland, has the right to exist. We are the target of those who misuse the word Zionist as a sanitized insult to Jews, synonymous with racist, oppression or genocide. We know only too well that anti-Semitism is changing shape.

We are proud of Israel. The only democracy in the Middle East, Israel is home to millions of Mizrachi Jews (Jews of Middle Eastern origin), Ashkenazi Jews (Jews of Central and Eastern origin) and Ethiopian Jews, as well as millions of Israeli Arabs, over a period of one year. millions of Muslims and hundreds of thousands of Christians and Druze. Israel is nothing short of a miracle for the Jewish people and for the Middle East as a whole.

Our love for Israel does not require blind political conformity. It’s quite the opposite. For many of us, it is our deep love and commitment to Israel that drives us to object when its government acts in ways that we find problematic. Israeli political disagreement is an inherently Zionist activity; One need only look at the protests against Netanyahu’s judicial reforms – from New York to Tel Aviv – to understand what it means to fight for the Israel we imagine. It only takes a few coffee chats with us to realize that our visions of Israel differ radically from each other. Yet we all come from a place of love and aspiration for a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike.

If the last six months on campus have taught us anything, it is that a large and vocal population of the Colombian community does not understand the meaning of Zionism and, therefore, does not understand the essence of the Jewish people. However, even though we have been denouncing the anti-Semitism we know for months, our concerns have been brushed aside and invalidated. So here we are to remind you:

We sounded the alarm on October 12 when many people demonstrated against Israel while the bodies of our friends and families were still warm.

We backed away when people shouted “resist by any means necessary,” telling us that we are “all inbred” and “have no culture.”

We shuddered when an “activist” held up a sign telling Jewish students that they were Hamas’s next targets, and we shook our heads in disbelief when Sidechat users told us we were lying.

We were ultimately not surprised when a leader of the CUAD camp publicly and proudly declared that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” and that we are lucky that they “don’t just murder Zionists.”

We felt helpless when we saw students and faculty physically blocking Jewish students from entering parts of the campus we share, or even when they silently turned their faces away. This silence is familiar. We will never forget.

One thing is certain. We will not stop defending ourselves. We are proud to be Jewish and we are proud to be Zionists.

We came to Colombia because we wanted to expand our minds and engage in complex conversations. Even though campus today is riddled with hateful rhetoric and simplistic binaries, it is never too late to begin to mend divides and begin to develop meaningful relationships across political and religious divides. Our tradition tells us: “Love peace and seek peace.“We hope you will join us in the sincere search for peace, truth and empathy. Together we can fix our campus.

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