The situation at Columbia has even drawn the attention of the White House, joining local leaders in urging calm.
“While every American has the right to peaceful protest, calls for violence and physical intimidation targeting Jewish students and the Jewish community are blatantly antisemitic, unconscionable, and dangerous,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement shared with CNN on Sunday.
I do not envy Jewish students right now.
They have spent their life being told, like I was, from their parents and grandparents that if there is no Israel, the Holocaust would happen again and they personally would be put in a death camp.
At the same time, they see Israel’s apartheid state and now the genocide it is committing.
Even though I have been very vocally against both of these things for many years, I still have to headcheck myself sometimes when seeing a rightful criticism of Israel just because I was told for 18 years of my life that Israel was the only thing stopping Nazis from rising up again and killing me.
Wow, that’s a lot to confront. Way to be open to other perspectives.
Thanks. Oddly enough, these same parents and grandparents who taught me this also taught me to be open to other perspectives. They just had a huge blind spot.
I honestly don’t blame my dad and grandparents. They lived in London during WWII, just waiting for the Nazis to invade and kill them. They were incredibly paranoid about it. But I didn’t live through that, so I did not share their fear. My mom, who’s American like I am, stays quiet about her opinions about Israel and I’m not going to push her on it.
I’m more worried about being thrown into a concentration camp by Trump than by any Palestinian. And not even necessarily because I’m Jewish.