David E. Bernstein of the Washington Post has reposted a very disturbing email by Isabel Storch Sherrell, an alum of the prestigious liberal arts college.
Isabel Storch Sherrell
WARNING: RANT ALERT
I don’t want to make it seem like i hated my time at Oberlin. it was a mixed bag and i got a great education and was blessed to learn from amazing professors. But i think being out of that environment has given me a chance to breathe and process everything that i learned/ encountered/ unlearned at oberlin. i learned about the historical context of anti black racism and its current manifestations and through that learning process was able to better frame and identify my own community’s struggle. However i quickly learned that process was to be kept personal and did not blend into the campus atmosphere or the collective fight for justice at oberlin. Because at oberlin, and indeed in the US overall, Jews are viewed as white and privileged (sometimes even above the avg white privilege, since yaknow, were all superrich and stuff) therefore our struggle does not intersect with other forms of racism and bigotry and ignorance that are so tenaciously fought against on campus. As a part of my processing and letting go of the pain I experienced, I will list a few memorable antisemitic moments/incidents here-
Obies feel free to read. But this is actually intended for all my friends and family outside of that circle…
1. The multiple times the Holocaust was referred to as “white on white crime” by my POC peers and hip white Jewish peers, (erasing the fact that ashkenazi jews were NOT seen as white and were being killed in the name of eugenics and white purity and also erasing the fact that blacks, Roma, and north african Jews were also killed in the camps.)
2. That time a Jewish person made a comment on fb saying “the only reason people care about the Holocaust is because it happened to white people” and got tons of likes from white and POC friends alike (Erasing the fact that the western world only decided to care a few decades after the fact, when it wasnt as fresh, and theyd had the time to really work out the details of how they were going to frame it and make it look like the US were the heroes liberating the camps after the US government knew what was being planned by Hitler, knew waht happening while it was happening, and did nothing.
Not to mention sending Jewish immigrants trying to escape before the war broke out back to Europe to die in the gas chambers.) This is just one example of Jewish obies stepping all over their ancestors memory in order to climb the white-ally-social-ladder-of-justice-and-excellence i cannot understand it as anything other than self hatred masked by love of “the other”..
3. That time Kosher Halal Co Op was told it couldnt serve “ethnic” food because Jews are white not “ethnic” (erasing identities of Mexican Jews, Asian Jews, etc)
4. That time SFP brought in a Jewish lady to talk about her work with electronicintifada and tell all the Obies that Zionism/Zionists “should burn at the stake” — (After that spectacle who could argue that antizionism has any crossover with antisemitism — “but that lady is jewish and she said xyz so i can say xyz and its not antisemitic or even violent or problematic at all hooooorayyyyy!”
5. That time I was told I should be ashamed for what my people are doing to the Palestinians, by someone I didn’t even know, upon learning I was Jewish. (Imagine a Alawite student at Oberlin being told “you should be ashamed for what your people are doing over there in syria” — yeah, it wouldnt fly. Or a Nigerian Muslim student being shamed for whats going on in their country… never literally would never happen. But Jewish kids? Jewish country? Fair game.)
6. That time my African Studies professor had an antizionist jewish south african man come in to talk to the class about jazz and resistance. During Q&A she praised a Jewish student for their anti Israel comments relating Israel to South African apartheid. The prof then made funny faces and funny eyes when I spoke up and tried to make the point that we should try to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict within its OWN historical context and that its unfair to both Israelis and Palestinians to rely only on shaky comparisons.
It was clear, in that classroom, who was the good Jew and who was the bad Jew, in that professors’ eyes. I was bad. My concern for anti black racism came into question because I didn’t write anti zionist across my forehead. After that class she literally had me come into her office and asked me ,”why are you here” and i was so shaken with so many emotions i just cried and wasnt able to talk to her and therefore my final paper suffered as a result. This professor also cut ties with the Hillel Rabbi because he, too, did not brand himself an antiZionist.
7. Those times antiblack and antisemitic incidents occurred simultaneously, and then the uproar followed but the antisemitism was essentially ignored by the campus at large. And if I brought that up I was told “dont derail the real issue here.”
8. That time a Jewish girl walked into her dorm room to find glass shattered all over her bed and floor because someone decided to throw a rock through her window, where she had hung an Israeli flag.
9. The fact my Mizrahi Jewish friend has had her identity policed on multiple occasions and was told she is white.
10. The fact that so many Jewish students are bullied into silence, whether its about their own ethnic identity, (PSA: you can identify as ethnically Jewish while still acknowledging your white privilege) their relationship to Israel, or their concern about antisemitism in general/ on campus.
11. The intense and unrelenting vilification of Israel out of proportion to any other nation on the planet where terrible shit happens // People literally refusing to talk to me because I identify as a Zionist.
12. When I overheard someone say “Islamophobia is like the anti-Semitism of our time” as if anti semitism is over/ started and ended with the Holocaust/ has been replaced by anti-muslim racism
13. When a self-identifying “radical” friend posted a picture of Neturei Karta holding anti Israel signs at a protest – “Look! There are Jews who arent monsters!” They have those funny outfits and everything! I’m not tokenizing an extreme minority faction of Orthodox Jews whose views i literally no nothing of in order to prove how not anti semitic my antizionism is!”
14. How inevitably during discussions about the establishment of Israel, people would say “the Jews decided to make Palestinians suffer for the crimes the Germans committed against them” while failing to understand that Zionism is way older than the Holocaust as is the need and the yearning for a Jewish homeland. How Israel is called “colonial and Imperialist, Britain gave it to the Jews” even though we had to FIGHT the imperial army to gain independence. (Revoking agency of Jews that fought for Israel’s independence// Rewriting history so that you would raise your eyebrows in disbelief when I told you my relatives were forced to stay in a DP camp in Cyprus for years after the war ended and that British navy vessels opened fire at ships full of Jewish refugees from Europe and North Africa attempting to make it to Palestine. We did not waltz right in. And we did not come there with an expansionist agenda.
15. Generally antisemitic ideas floating around such as Jews are milking the Holocaust for their own gain// everything is as bad as the Holocaust except for the actual Holocaust which wasnt as bad as people say it was// Jews only care about themselves (another AAST professor told me, “your people really take care of each other” at first i thought it was a compliment but when i told my mother about it she explained that it was not)
16. That time someone posted flyers depicting the Israeli flag with a swastika replacing the star of David and a derogatory slur for jews as a caption
17. Hip white activists boosting their radical resume by denouncing Israel’s right to exist and a handful of Ashkenazis on that bandwagon saying shit like “I hate my right to Israeli citizenship. Israel isn’t my country. It shouldnt even be a country” (Kay well thanks to your white privilege and your lofty rejection of nationalism you are erasing what Zionism means for so many Jews who do NOT share your privilege, such as Yemen’s remaining Jewish population who have recently been told by Houthi rebels that they will lose all their protection under law unless they flee or convert to Islam)
18. Having my own ethnic identity policed. Being told I was simply European and Judaism is a religion not an ethnicity/ or that I am a descendent of Khazarian converts to Judaism and therefore have no right to claim any sort of indigenousness in the Levant. (There is DNA evidence that the VAST MAJORITY of Jews have Middle Eastern genetic markers (yep even us whities) they can even tell what time period we originated there and started mixing with other populations and it lines up with our own historical narrative yet somehow anti-Jewish polemics still get the mic)
Wow, 18. Chai. Life. WOOSH. That felt great to put it all out there. Also please know that I am not tryin to generalize any specific community at oberlin for antisemitism. It is a complex form of institutional “othering” that is upheld by everyone who is not Jewish.. it manifests on racial grounds, cultural grounds, religious grounds, etc. And it kills, it doesnt just hurt.
I am blessed to believe that within myself I carry the capacity to care deeply about the freedom and wellbeing of all peoples. I believe I have the brainpower and the heartspace to continue educating myself and speaking out against ALL FORMS OF RACISM AND HATE INCLUDING ANTISEMITISM
What do you do when confronted at every turn. Do you become angry? Do you became an activist? This is the burden that makes you unable to look people in the eye and then your shoulders slump to lessen your image. You want to be quite and small and unseen. You have just become a victim. I see this as admitting they are right. They are wrong. You are privileged. You are a child of the most high God. Be proud whatever your fate.
FROM
Knut Robert Knutsen on FB
I hate this.
I hate that every time there is a legitimate discussion about some political issue where there is a a historically persecuted minority on one side, the racist underbelly of the Majority see it as a validation of their hatred and they start spewing muck.
Then there’s a natural defense against the muck that might go to far in labeling even reasonable arguments as muck, countered by some naive people among the less obviously racist parts of the majority who start picking up and repeating the rhetoric of muck.
And suddenly we have a trench warfare of racism and recriminations instead of a discussion of the real issues.
It happens in the discussion of Israel, it happens in the discussion of moslems and terrorism, in Europe it also happens with the issue of Romani who migrate to beg, it happens with the current refugee crisis.
There is not a single discussion we are having that cannot be derailed by the immoderate voices of racists and some over the top so-called anti-racists.
These are, so far at least, small groups of radicals with very loud voices, but too often the Majority stays silent and lets it happen, instead of saying “Stop this, You are poisoning the debate”.
No matter how one feels about the Israeli-Palestinian issue, it cannot be solved with hate and name-calling. And it certainly cannot be solved by silencing either side.
Anyone who claims to fight for the cause of Palestinians by silencing the voices sympathetic to Israel is a liar. Maybe they’re lying to themselves as well, but it is a lie.
As what some would call a “White Aryan ” myself I am sickened by attempts to minimize and marginalize the Holocaust. When the nazis did this, they did it in my name, in all our names. It doesn’t matter that I’m “lucky” enough not to carry as heavy an inherited burden of blame as the descendants of Nazis and Quislings.
It was done in my name and I have a moral obligation to wear that shame until all debt is metaphorically repaid, not just against jews but against every minority. That means fighting against the hate.
I am not a religious man and don’t believe that the burden of the sins of our fathers is imposed upon us.
Except when we ourselves repeat the sins of our fathers,. Then we carry the weight of their sins along with our own.
It is very easy to go to the rhetoric of hate and blame. It is far more difficult to actually provide solutions.
I think Nelson Mandela was right in this one thing: you cannot end a conflict without forgiving your enemy. What people forget is that forgiving your enemy isn’t just about a single cathartic moment.
It’s about waking up ever day and forgiving them all over again.
That is hard.I hate this.
I hate that every time there is a legitimate discussion about some political issue where there is a a historically persecuted minority on one side, the racist underbelly of the Majority see it as a validation of their hatred and they start spewing muck.
Then there’s a natural defense against the muck that might go to far in labeling even reasonable arguments as muck, countered by some naive people among the less obviously racist parts of the majority who start picking up and repeating the rhetoric of muck.
And suddenly we have a trench warfare of racism and recriminations instead of a discussion of the real issues.
It happens in the discussion of Israel, it happens in the discussion of moslems and terrorism, in Europe it also happens with the issue of Romani who migrate to beg, it happens with the current refugee crisis.
There is not a single discussion we are having that cannot be derailed by the immoderate voices of racists and some over the top so-called anti-racists.
These are, so far at least, small groups of radicals with very loud voices, but too often the Majority stays silent and lets it happen, instead of saying “Stop this, You are poisoning the debate”.
No matter how one feels about the Israeli-Palestinian issue, it cannot be solved with hate and name-calling. And it certainly cannot be solved by silencing either side.
Anyone who claims to fight for the cause of Palestinians by silencing the voices sympathetic to Israel is a liar. Maybe they’re lying to themselves as well, but it is a lie.
As what some would call a “White Aryan ” myself I am sickened by attempts to minimize and marginalize the Holocaust. When the nazis did this, they did it in my name, in all our names. It doesn’t matter that I’m “lucky” enough not to carry as heavy an inherited burden of blame as the descendants of Nazis and Quislings.
It was done in my name and I have a moral obligation to wear that shame until all debt is metaphorically repaid, not just against jews but against every minority. That means fighting against the hate.
I am not a religious man and don’t believe that the burden of the sins of our fathers is imposed upon us.
Except when we ourselves repeat the sins of our fathers,. Then we carry the weight of their sins along with our own.
It is very easy to go to the rhetoric of hate and blame. It is far more difficult to actually provide solutions.
I think Nelson Mandela was right in this one thing: you cannot end a conflict without forgiving your enemy. What people forget is that forgiving your enemy isn’t just about a single cathartic moment.
It’s about waking up ever day and forgiving them all over again.
That is hard.
As I white woman, an Episocopalian, who was once married to a Jewish man, who grew up with about a quarter of my grade school rooms inhabited by Jewish children, who attended Hebrew school with my closest grade school friend, and many of whom are still friends 50 years later, I recognize the pain of antisemimtism And I hate it. As a student of the world, I see ordinary Israelis and Palestinians try to make a difference leaning toward peace. But I see no useful leadership on either side that offers any pathway toward peace, not any at all.
Even worse, I see a pattern here that explains the whole micro-aggression problem. Almost all the situations cited by the author are micro-aggressions until you get to country-size. We should be taking all these subtle and not-so-subtle events of aggression as affecting numerous groups. I don’t mean diminishing what this one has said, but instead thinking about what she has written and applying to all sorts of other means of verbal aggression directed toward people of denigrated ethnicity or color. Where is the heart of this issue, especially antisemiticism, but al so all the other micro-aggressions so that we can stop demoralizing, hurting, demeaning people we don’t know and that they can stop, too. Don’t we all have something to learn about antisemiticism that could give us insight into how it unacts itself in our daily lives and then work on it? All of us?
Talking seriously with at least one person who is “different” in some ways, learning what ways that have affected them, this is at least a small pathway back to humanity. It’s not just forgive, because that is already necessary, but it is also learning to be a friend across boundaries. And I think we’re at a point where it may need to be one by one, thousands of one by ones, millions of one by ones. We should all commit to trying it