Commentary: Campus demonstrations are about antisemitism, not human rights By Cynthia Kahn Nirenblatt 17 hrs ago The irony that violent, antisemitic college demonstrations have occurred during the Jewish holiday of Passover is not overlooked by the culturally and ethnically religious Jewish people of the world.
These are not human rights protests. If they were, the protestors would be protesting against Hamas and its leaders who live in opulence in faraway countries such as Qatar. They would also be calling for the Uyghur Muslims in China to be freed from the genocidal Chinese government. Perhaps they would be protesting against Muslim women being beaten for not wearing head coverings or homosexuals being hung from cranes in city centers in Iran.
But that’s not the point, is it? This isn’t about human rights. These violent demonstrations are about antisemitism.
While you’re busy looking at the news coverage, ask yourself how the students in these pop-up tent cities stored these uniquely identical large tents in their bite-size dorms and apartments in large urban cities. When I moved my youngest into his college dorm last fall, there was barely enough room for him to hang his clothes, much less stash a full-size tent. It makes you wonder who these protestors really are and where they’re coming from. Perhaps the media should investigate the funding of these protests while covering this selective outrage.
The protestors say they are calling for a cease-fire to this war, a war that was not started by Israel or the Jewish people. But the same people also carry signs that say “Please keep the world clean” with pictures of a Star of David next to a trash can and “Hitler was right.”
It’s clear that this isn’t about a war in Gaza. This is about telling the Jewish people to put down their weapons so the world can be done with us.
We are not even 1% of the world’s population, yet the world seems to have a problem with us defending ourselves as we stand with Israel as our homeland.
Passover is the holiday when we remember and commemorate the enslavement of the Israelites under a brutal king in Egypt and our exodus from Egypt on the way back to Israel. It is the timeless retelling of our story of freedom and how we inhabited the land of Israel as ethnic tribes following that exodus.
When did this take place? Historians and archaeologists agree that it was in the 13th century B.C. The retelling of the event has been recited for thousands of years by culturally and ethnically religious Jews around the world in all the countries we have been kicked out of or murdered in because of our ethnic religion.
We are not just white Europeans who immigrated to Israel following the Holocaust. We are also Jews from Syria, Algiers, Ethiopia, Yemen, Lebanon, Morocco, China, Korea, Egypt and, yes, Israel. We have lived all over the world because other people invaded our homeland and forced us into the diaspora.
The story of Passover ends with the call of “Next Year in Jerusalem.” It also includes the cry that resonates even more loudly today: Let my people go!
As Jews react to hatred, we will repeat this again and again. We are not going anywhere. Never Again is now.
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