Apathy: The Silent Killer
Monday, February 04, 2008
Jewish apathy is suicidal.
I just finished watching the classic film Animal House. Whether you agree or not with mass amounts of destruction and general chaos, you have to admit that the film made a great point about the power of empassioned protest. While I'm far from a hippie radical, I have a ringing admiration in my heart for students in films like Animal House and PCU, kids oppressed by the system because they're deemed "outsiders" and "unfit" for the general population for one reason or another. Call it the Jew in me. Watching Animal House just now, I realized that the passion was what I admired the most about these farces and it reminded me of the lack thereof in my own college experiences.
As an undergraduate, I attended an average east coast public university. Out of their entire Jewish population (estimated at 10% of the student body) roughly 3 people showed up to Hillel meetings, and at least 5 of the 15 attendees to the secular Pesach seder were gentile friends of Jewish students. At one point, a friend and I sat in the Student Center handing out fliers protesting the fact that we had nothing to protest. I even wrote an article for the college arts magazine in which I encouraged the students to be passionate about something-- anything at all. Those years were best summarized by one friend's well-quoted proverb, "Just because you poke a dead horse with a stick, and it moves, that doesn't mean the horse is alive."
Then came graduate school at what I suppose you could call an average, mid-western public university. This time, the 10% of Jews on campus were much more active in their Hillel-- "active" meaning they attended events, went to Reform shabbos services once a month on campus, and tended to hang out with one another in their spare time. By then, the climate on American college campuses was changing, and this particular school was no exception in feeling the effects of the wind of change that was blowing. A growing Muslim exchange student population was using the Muslim Student Alliance to promote anti-Israel propaganda, screening films about the now-disproven "massacre" at Jenin, and hosting anti-Israel/pro-Islam speakers on campus. A small number of us Hillel members decided we needed to counter these activities before they got out of hand. Six of us got together (I, the only female among them) and decided to form a grass-roots action coalition. We opted to keep it quiet; however, it was not quiet enough, and soon news travelled to the parents of the Jewish students.
These parents proceeded to use the Parents' Day Hillel open house as a forum to scream at one another and our Hillel director about exactly what Jewish students should be doing with their campus club. "I don't want my kids talking about Israel!" and, "They're here to socialize and have a good time with fellow Jews while they get their education!" were but a few of the empassioned comments made at the event. Needless to say, after that meeting our activties went completely underground. While they were relatively small and few, they still had a profound impact on the campus, as well as the morale of the Hillel membership as a whole.
To my great surprise, unlike my undergraduate east-coast Hillel, this group hosted annual "Israel Day" festivities, a time where we all got together and listened to music, did folk dances, and talked Israel in support of the Zionist state. The event was held outdoors, making it open to the entire campus. Many people attended, including a large number of Christians who were then just beginning to understand the importance of Israel in their own lives as believers. Needless to say, many opportunities for conversation ensued since I was the only Messianic in Hillel, and therefore declared the unofficial "ambassador to the goys."
There was a dark side to being a Zionist on campus, though. During my last year, we had a speaker from Israel come to campus. He did a few smaller presentations for Hillel members and one larger presentation open to the entire university. A row of us sat together towards the back of the crowded hall, intently watching the people around us and waiting for the inevitable reaction from the crowd. We spotted the Muslim Student Alliance plants before the presentation even started, and were therefore far from surprised when a few of them stood up behind us and started shouting out random nonsensical arguments in the middle of the Israeli's speech. Of course, they were promptly escorted from the hall, but for a bunch of average, middle class American Jews, listening to that kind of hatred--seeing it right in front of your eyes--was a rude awakening. Being a Zionist wasn't just about cool conversations on campus courtyards-- it was about countering a sinister, malicious kind of evil, an evil that refused to listen to reason. It was an evil that, as American Jews, we had simply never personally known.
Four years ago I knew that college campuses were becoming dangerous places for Jews. Since then, things have only gotten worse. UT Austin hosted an "exhibit" by the campus Palestine Solidarity Movement that consisted of pairs of shoes meant to represent the number of palestinian "refugees" "murdered" at the hands of Israeli soldiers. In 2005, a Jewish student at Columbia University released Columbia Unbecoming a film about three Arab professors at one of America's preeminent Ivy League universities who, "...stood accused of imposing their politics onto their classroom and of verbally bullying Jewish students who did not tow the pro-Palestinian line." At UC Berkeley, the anti-Israel hatred has reached mind-boggling heights, resulting in large pro-palestinian marches and demonstrations, spates of anti-Jewish graffiti reading "Die Juden" and "F*CK JEWS", as well as acts of vandalism and violence against the Jewish population, all fueled by growing palestinian-solidarity movements populated by muslims and the radical left.
In response to Israel's 60th Anniversary, pro-palestinian movements in Great Britain, South Africa, Arabia, Norway, Australia, Canada, and the United States are hosting "Israel Apartheid Week" events from February 3-19. (They have a website, but I'm not giving them any help by linking it-- if you're that interested, Google-it.) These events will find their main forum on college campuses, where propagandists can pay little to nothing to plant seeds of ignorance, hatred, and evil into fertile, young, naieve minds that have been properly tilled by years of academic backwash. To prepare Jewish students to combat these events, Jewish organizations at the University of Toronto banded together to host a half-day seminar, which Ted Belman of Israpundit attended today.
What he was witness to was frightening.
Unfortunately the students weren’t interested. Less than fifteen showed up.Israel is on the chopping block at universities in the United States, as well as Canada and around the world. As goes Israel, so go the Jews.
The most dangerous speaker was Prof Derek J Penslar who described himself as a leftist Zionist. (What’s that?). He was the opening speaker. He started by saying Israel was a racist state. Later on he said Israel committed atrocities on the Arabs, or something to that effect, in the ‘48 war. He advised that students come to university to become education. He, as a professor, does his best to be objective and to deliver the unvarnished truth.
...And this guy is the Director of the Jewish Studies Program and the one chosen by the Jewish establishment to prepare our kids for the propaganda war.
And most Jewish students aren't doing anything about it. Sure, there are pockets of protest here and there, but for the most part, Jewish students remain largely silent when it comes to countering the growing anti-Israel hatred exhibited on university campuses. Perhaps Gen-Y apathy has taken over, and they just don't care. Perhaps their apathy is linked to the growing rift between young Jewish Americans and the sanctity of their Jewish identity, illustrated, for instance, by two Princeton University students who declared in not-so-nice terms a few years ago that they were sick of talking about the Holocaust and having a Jewish identity defined by death and persecution. Instead, they opted for a Jewish identity earmarked by sarcasm and shtick (which made it radically different from their white, upper-middle class gentile friends' identity how... I don't really know). Or, perhaps, since they are so few in number, many Jewish students are just too afraid to stand up and speak out against this anti-Israel, anti-Jewish anger for fear of retribution.
Now, many years after college, I can proudly say that I am a published writer. My work may not be gracing the pages of the New York Times, but it has managed to work its way into more than one publication; it has also managed to win an award from time to time. Which is why many people (including more than a few former professors) would be shocked to learn that I was given a 'B' in the only Creative Writing class I ever took in college.
One day, the professor of this class proceeded to begin our session by distributing an article about Israeli "agression" against "palestinian refugees." "Read this, just read this!" he said to a group of kids who came to write poetry for 45 minutes before heading off to party with friends. We sat there in silence, and as I read, I looked around the room. "Excuse me," I interrupted the silence, "but this article is extremely prejudiced. It's only presenting one side of the story." He sneered at me and said, "Be quiet! There will be time for discussion later." Five minutes later, he broke the silence by declaring, "I want you to think about that. I want you to think about what it means to be persecuted," before going on a five minute rant and then diving straight into the day's lesson, without giving us a chance to respond. I tried-- I sat with my hand raised, but he ignored me. And that was the only time I received an evaluation indicating that my writing was anything less than excellent.
You want to know the best part of the story? In the long term, his simple little 'B' didn't mean a thing to me or any of my readers.
But, perhaps, now it does.
I don't care if you're on a college campus or not. Now is the time to speak out in favor of Israel-- to counter the lies being taught in classrooms and spouted in public forums. We also must realize that we are already facing a tidal-wave of muslim influence in academia, the military, the federal government, and our economic institutions. For the first time ever in the course of this country's history, we stand the chance of seeing a president elected who has strong, direct ties to the muslim world. Don't just speak up: WAKE UP. Realize where we are at in time, and act before it is too late.
We have a responsibility to our land, our people, and ourselves. We have a responsibility to stand up for what is right. And if we claim to be the children of Israel, the chosen ones of G-d, we have an inherent duty to speak and live the truth, to acknowledge the world situation for what it really is, and to do something about it. And if you can't handle that, then you need to get out of the way.
Now is the time for passion, not apathy; pride, not fear. Now is the time to do what is right in the eyes of our G-d. If we don't, there will be no Israel left to defend and no Israel left to defend us. We will return to the dust with lives un-lived, and if we do that-- what will be the point of us all?
Labels: "Apartheid Week", AntiSemitism, Israel, Judaism, universities, Zionism
posted by Shoshana @ 8:01 PM
